Are you asking the right questions in your post event surveys? Not sure. Guest Blogger Jennifer Ashbaugh has the answers

This Thursday my fundraising BFF, Jennifer Ashbaugh from Big Brothers Big Sisters, will help answer this very important question “In your post event survey are you asking the right questions?”

I call Jennifer my fundraising BFF because she’s someone I turn to when I have new ideas that I want to bounce off someone. Whatever job you’re in, it’s important to find people to bounce ideas off of or who can help you problem solve. In Thursday’s web seminar we’ll be discussing post event survey’s and how to ask questions that will help you develop strategies to increase revenue.  Jennifer’s going to share her 6 Survey Best Practices. Sign up today!  Here’s a sneak peek at Thursday’s session.

Take it away Jennifer. What did Big Brothers Big Sisters do?

In 2011, we wanted to evaluate our Bowl For Kides Sake website to see what was working and what might need to be updated.  We enlisted 11 agencies, representing a diverse geographic region, to assist us in learning more about our event. In July we sent out a survey to over 6,000 donors, participants, and team captains and got about 1,000 responses. We went through a similar process in 2012, although with a slightly different group of agencies. Here’s what we found:

Best Practice: Only ask questions about things you can change

Asking for advice is a great way to engage your participants, but only if it feels like that advice is being listened to. So don’t waste your time or your participant’s time by asking questions that you can’t change.

For example, our event takes place at a bowling center and for a significant number of our agencies, there’s only one bowling center in town. So asking a question like, “did you like the venue” isn’t a great idea, because there’s usually not a different place to go to.

However, we were considering adding social media elements to our website, so we asked several questions about if they used social media to fundraise, if they wanted to, if they used social media in general, to help our organization understand if this would have a benefit for our users.

Sign up for Thursday’s session to learn all 6 of Jennifer’s Survey Best Practices!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amy Braiterman

Amy Braiterman, principal strategy consultant at Blackbaud, supports customers with their peer-to-peer fundraising events with a process she refers to as “data-driven strategy.” Amy’s data driven strategy analyzes how effective event participants are using online fundraising tools and takes those results to develop an event fundraising plan. Prior to joining Blackbaud, Amy earned her fundraising stripes managing events for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Alzheimer’s Association and Share Our Strength. She shares her fundraising know how here on npENGAGE, by hosting educational webinars and speaking at customer conferences