How to Create a Certificate of Appreciation

Want to create and send printable certificates of appreciation to recognize someone in under 10 minutes? We’ve got you covered.

Oct 13, 2022
6 min
|      by
Sucharita Myakal
digital badges education

A certificate of appreciation is used to acknowledge efforts and award truly deserved recipients. You may have held an event, a group seminar, organized a workshop or wished to acknowledge employees within your company.

During such events, a well-made, captivating certificate of appreciation will make your recipients’ day as they are recognized for their incredible efforts. 

But there’s a catch. If your recipient group is larger, creating and editing multiple certificates is tedious and time consuming. However, with a pro tool such as Virtualbadge.io, you don’t need to worry about this anymore.

Before we prove this claim, do you wish to try it out yourself?

What should you include in a certificate of appreciation?

Appreciation certificates serve a wide variety of purposes. You can use them to appreciate students, employees, a program’s attendees, donors, and speakers - the list is endless.

Here are some of the general elements every certificate of appreciation must contain:

  1. Issuer’s logo to add authority
  2. Title - usually ‘Certificate of Appreciation’
  3. Recipient’s full name with a picture (adding a picture is optional, but recommended to personalize the certificate)
  4. A word of thanks for event attendees/speakers/donors, etc. (Or highlight the special reason behind the award if it is being issued to your employees or students)
  5. Name, title, and signature of the person issuing the certificate
  6. Date and location

Now let’s start creating your first certificate of appreciation with Virtualbadge.io.

How to create a certificate of appreciation: A step-by-step guide

In this section, we take you through creating and sending an impressive certificate of appreciation with Virtualbadge.io.

1. Sign up or log in to your Virtualbadge.io account

You get a 7-day all-access free trial. Access it here.

2. Explore your all-in-one dashboard

Your Virtualbadge.io Dashboard
Your Virtualbadge.io Dashboard

Turned off by scattered bits of work and information? Virtualbadge.io offers an extremely user-friendly dashboard to create, access, and track all your creations from a single place. 

You can group multiple certificate types by creating dedicated collections using the Certificate Collections option. If not, the completed or in-progress certificates appear under Ungrouped Certificates

You can find the unsent, saved certificates under the Active tab. And the in-progress certificates are auto-saved under the Draft tab, so you never lose your work.

3. Launch certificate creation

Let’s start creating your certificate. Click on Create new Certificate on the top right corner of your dashboard. This action triggers the editing page:

Edit your certificate details
Edit your certificate details

The 3-step creation process is super quick and easy. Let’s begin.

Step 1: Enter basic details

  • Enter the Course Name, in this case, the title - Certificate of Appreciation
  • Select the name from the dropdown menu if you have already created an exclusive Certificate Collection on your dashboard
  • Upload your logo if you have one, to add more authenticity
  • To boost your company’s/institute's online visibility, we suggest you select the Enable option for the Social Media button so that your recipients can share their achievements online
  • Does your certificate have an expiration date? Select or enter the date
  • Enter your business’ Website URL if applicable
  • You’re all set. Click on Continue to start designing your certificate

Step 2: Design your certificate of appreciation

Virtualbadge.io provides two options to create your certificate: start with a blank canvas or use an existing template. We suggest you choose a pre-made template for seamless editing.

If you wish to fast-track your creation process, Virtualbadge.io has a few default templates. For a certificate of appreciation you can choose from:

Choose an attractive template or start with a blank canvas
Choose an attractive template or start with a blank canvas

Step 3: Time to get creative - Edit your certificate template

 Start editing your certificate template
 Start editing your certificate template

Note: Refer back to the elements section to make sure everything is included in your appreciation certificate before saving the final one.

Virtualbadge.io makes it simple and straightforward for you to edit a certificate. Just click on the desired element, and edit the details on the right pane. 

On the left pane of your editing screen, you have multiple options to Add Elements such as text fields, upload logos, import images, add custom shapes, add backgrounds, and more customizations.

Once you're done designing the certificate, click on Save to proceed.

Here’s an impressive sample certificate of appreciation for an employee designed with Virtualbadge.io:

Sample certificate of appreciation

4. Setup a campaign

So, what’s a campaign in Virtualbadge.io? You can set up a quick email or a social media campaign on the tool so that your certificates can be shared across different platforms - effortlessly.

Setup an email or social media campaign
Setup an email or social media campaign

Under Email Content on the right pane, you can edit the email content, such as the subject line and body. Under Style, you can choose one of three email appearance formats.

Virtualbadge.io sends this customized access email to the recipient. Once done, click on Continue.

Next, you can also create a Twitter or LinkedIn campaign so that your recipients can give you a shout-out:

Create a social media campaign
Create a social media campaign

Enter the post details under Post Text and add your institute's or program’s hashtags for more reach. Click on Continue to proceed.

To prevent plagiarism, Virtualbadge.io creates a unique Credential ID for every certificate in the final stage of the campaign setup:

Unique Credential ID
Unique Credential ID

5. You’re almost done - drop in your recipients

No more re-editing headaches. With Virtualbadge.io, you can send certificates to any number of participants with the click of a button.

Create a CSV file with recipients’ names and email addresses and upload it, or you can also add your recipients’ email addresses line by line by clicking on Add single

If you’re confused about what to enter in your CSV file, click on download sample to check it.

Upload a CSV file with recipients 
Upload a CSV file with recipients 

6. You’re all set - send your certificates in one go

Once you’ve added the awardees’ email addresses, click Send emails to send the certificate access email instantly.

Recipient List

Here’s what the final overview would look like:

Final Overview

You can access the recipient's view to see what the access page looks like, add more recipients, and click on Duplicate to instantly create a duplicate appreciation certificate (with a different credential ID).

7. Secured certificate access

Virtualbadge.io prioritizes easy and secure access to the certificates.

How is it done? Once your recipient receives the access email, they can click on Get Certificate to be redirected to the access page, this email already contains their unique access token, which identifies the recipient of that certificate.

Access your Certificate

The recipient can authenticate themselves via email, or proceed by connecting to their preferred social media platform. Once successfully authenticated, they can access, share or download their certificate of appreciation!

And voilá! You’ve successfully created and sent certificates in a matter of minutes. 

Let’s start creating certificates that build trust. Try Virtualbadge.io today to send high-quality certificates of appreciation that can be validated. 

An intelligent and easy-to-use certificate generation tool to create and send highly secure, unique, and authentic certificates on the go.

Sign up for your 7-day free trial!

* You can find the organisation ID in the URL when you access your LinkedIn Company page as an admin.

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