Washington State Volunteer Service Awards
Nominations now open until January 5, 2026!
How to nominate an indivual or group for an award:
- Review the nomination guidelines [PDF] for eligibility and what information you'll need for the nomination form.
- Complete the online nomination form.
- Information & How-To video.
- Feedback Survey on video - we invite your feedback on how helpful you found this video by completing this very brief survey!
What are the Washington State Volunteer Service Awards?
The Washington State Volunteer Service Awards seek to honor the many acts of kindness individuals, families and service groups perform in communities across the state of Washington.
This annual recognition effort gives Serve Washington a chance to celebrate the incredible impact volunteers make in communities across our state while inspiring others to serve. Below are some answers to FAQs about the awards.
Get notified when the award nomination period opens! Subscribe to email updates to receive notices when the nomination period opens. After entering your email, make sure the "Washington State Volunteer Service Awards" box is checked.
Nominations are open to anyone who has performed any type of volunteerism—formal or non-formal—in the past year in the state of Washington.
We seek nominations that demonstrate all types of volunteerism: neighbors helping neighbors, giving time to hospitals, disaster preparedness efforts, supporting food banks, delivering meals, participation in national service and those who informally give their time, care or assistance to meet challenges.
We’re looking for nominees of all ages, backgrounds and abilities. Through the Washington State Volunteer Service Awards, we want to recognize individuals and groups who reflect the diversity of our state for their efforts toward effectively addressing issues that face their communities.
The nomination period for the 2026 Washington State Volunteer Service awards is now open! You can submit your nomination by completing this online submission form.
Before you fill out the form, we encourage you to review the nomination guidelines [PDF].
If you have questions or need the form and guidelines in an alternate format, call (360) 902-0657 or email us.
No! You may nominate as many different people or volunteer programs as you want, just keep in mind they could be competing with each other if in the same category and in the same region. However, you may only nominate them once per open nomination period.
Feel free to download the flyer to share with your networks:
Washington State Volunteer Service Awards Flyer [PDF]
A panel of Serve Washington commissioners and community members will select the award recipients.
Awards will be presented to one individual and one group of volunteers or volunteer program in each of the following regions (18 awards total):
- Peninsula/Coastal: Clallam, Jefferson, Grays Harbor, Pacific and Kitsap counties
- South Puget Sound: Mason, Thurston, Pierce and Lewis counties
- Southwest: Cowlitz, Skamania, Clark and Wahkiakum counties
- South Central: Benton, Franklin, Kittitas, Klickitat, Walla Walla and Yakima counties
- Southeast: Adams, Whitman, Garfield, Columbia and Asotin counties
- Northeast: Ferry, Stevens, Pend Orielle, Lincoln, and Spokane counties
- North Central: Okanogan, Chelan, Douglas and Grant counties
- North Puget Sound: King and Snohomish counties
- Northwest: Whatcom, Skagit, San Juan, and Island counties
Serve Washington will notify nominators if the person they nominated was selected.
Serve Washington will only inform nominees who were selected. However, Serve Washington will list all other nominees under "Honorable Mentions" on our Recipients and Honorable Mentions page.
Serve Washington will work with the nominator and the award recipient(s) to verify volunteer service details and offer support to honor award recipients through local or regional recognition efforts.
You can watch an informational and how-to video that gives an overview about Serve Washington, the awards, the nomination form and tips on writing a good nomination.
We invite you to provide feedback on this video to let us know if this was helpful and where we can improve by completing this very brief survey. If you have any additional questions or need materials in an alternative format, please send an email to servewa@ofm.wa.gov or call (360) 902-0657.
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