Introduction
For organizations that coordinate or host events – internally as staff trainings or for community stakeholders – feedback surveys are the last thing that is often thought about.
Here are the best things about awesome Feedback Surveys
- The opportunity for the community to share may curb negative social media posts where later venting could occur (yikes!).
- The after event debrief among event organizers can focus partially on the responses as well as how to communicate with the event participants post-event (e.g. sending a follow-up email to those who registered or sent a RSVP).
- The results can inform your team on whether or not the event was designed to match the needs of the participants (e.g. Was there a mismatch?).
- The results can tell your team about how much knowledge, skills, etc. was gained by participants.
“2 Tips” for Better Feedback Surveys
Tip 1
Make sure that the event coordinator facilitates survey completion prior to the end of the event, giving instructions on how to complete it during a 5-minute pause in the agenda.
Tip 2
Ask specific questions about what the event participants need in the future or how much they grew from participation in the event, directly or indirectly.
Here are a few situations where we’ve seen Feedback Surveys underwhelm (some of us are also culprits of these things!)
- No one on your team has time to actually think about what questions on the Feedback Survey would actually be useful for your organization to later use to refine events (e.g. questions focus entirely on satisfaction).
- Few participants completed the Feedback Surveys (e.g. 5% were completed).
- People who were gracious enough to fill out the Feedback Surveys varied in how they read and responded to the survey questions (e.g. responses can’t be compared).
All three of these situations are unfortunate when all you want is short, quick, actionable feedback for planning the next event.
Closing
Some organizations have two established Feedback Surveys that in the past they refined and, therefore, rarely need to spend any time on in the present. Just print and go.
This is a great strategy. During an off season, consider teaming-up with key staff in your organization to develop a Feedback Survey for internal activities and a second survey for your core program or service event. The key staff can finalize the Feedback Surveys, train the rest of their peers on what’s asked in the survey and how to administer it, and bang, your organization is ready to go all year around.
Why did we develop “2 Tips” videos?
The Anchoring Success team trusts the talent and sophistication of professionals in Human Services and Education organizations. We know that many professionals and organizational leaders do not have the funds to partner with specialists (like us) and/or the time to strategize on what might seem like extra projects.
Therefore, we launched these “2 Tips” videos to support you with making tweaks, adjustments, and refinements in programs and operations — doable for busy professionals in these organizations!
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