Do you want to get valuable and honest feedback after your next event?
You put a lot of planning and effort into your fundraising event and it’s a great success. How do you capture what worked so you can do even better next year? Build a post-event survey into your planning process so you can get feedback from your participants. That way, it’s all ready to go out with your initial thank you email or with a later email containing the report of your campaign’s success.
Not only will you obtain valuable information, you’ll be engaging your donors in doing something other than donating. They’ll feel a part of your mission and invested in making it better, which makes it easier to donate later.
Ask Good Questions
Decide what you need to know about your event and frame your questions accordingly. Some things just don’t matter. The design of the t-shirts, for instance, is guaranteed to change next year, so don’t waste valuable real estate asking about them. Instead, ask questions about the things you do care and can change.
Provide multiple-choice answers as much as possible and include a write-in option wherever appropriate. Some possible questions are:
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- What did you like best about our event?
- What did you like least?
- What would have made it better?
- Which live auction item did you think was the most appealing and why?
- Which items would you like to see in the auction next year?
- Was the event too short, too long, or just right?
- How would you rate the food and beverages?
- Did you think the entertainment was appropriate for the event?
- How would you rate the registration process?
- How easy was it to check-out at the end of the event?
- How did you find out about the event?
- Is this your first time at our event or have you attended before?
Another great strategy is to plan for segmentation. For instance, by asking if this was their first time attending your event, you’ll be able to track the differences in behavior between newcomers and multi-year participants.
Plan for Success
Here are some important points to consider in building a good survey.
- Find good tools. You can use online tools like Survey Monkey or Zoomerang, or a simple paper survey that people fill out at the end of the event.
- Keep it simple. Everyone is busy, so keep your survey as short as you can. Let your donors know how long it will take to complete.
- Focus on your donors. Rather than make the survey about helping you, explain that this is to help improve their experience at your event.
- Promise feedback. Nobody wants to waste their time. Let your donors know you’ll be sharing the results of the survey and your plans for improving next year’s event. Give an approximate date for providing the results (2-3 months after survey ends) and be sure to follow through. Not only will this build trust, it will help generate enthusiasm for next year’s event.
By soliciting feedback on your fundraiser, you’ll be able to improve your process and engage your donors at the same time. A win-win for everyone.
Asking questions about things that are bound to change in the next event is pointless and there is no worthy insight one can achieve with the answers obtained from such questions. I am looking for a survey tool to create an event survey myself. Could you recommend something apart from Survey Monkey or Zoomerang? SoGoSurvey, perhaps? The questions mentioned here are very simple and I loved the idea of different surveys for new comers and multi-year participants.
Great question. There are many options out there. Here is a more comprehensive list of different survey tools: http://idealware.org/articles/fgt_online_surveys.php
Hey Jill, thank you so much for your quick reply. I had a glance through the list you provided and simply loved it. It is comprehensive and till now I wasn’t aware of majority of these online survey tools. Thank you once again