Volunteer recognition
Maybe there are other ways around this by having the recognitions built into Community driven process.
For example, Wikiprojects could enter names of users into a pool and a lottery chooses which people get top recognition by the Foundation with the rest of the people getting mentions because their names would be linked to pages about the recognition/announcement.
Each Wikiproject could use their own criteria (within reason) for deciding the people to nominate. Content improvement contest winners and project coordinator would be examples of some people that I would expect to see nominated.
This process allows the Foundation to get involved with the recognition but not be burdened with the heavy task of selecting one volunteer over another to recognize.