Episode 22: Creating an internal event recap

Welcome back to that sounds like a plan, the podcast where we talk about all things related to nonprofit awareness building and fundraising events. I'm your host, Alicia Barga. If you listened to episode number 14 of this podcast, you learned from my interview with Jen Gilhoi what an external event recap is and why you should have one.

In today's episode, we're going to talk about an internal event recap.

An internal post-event recap is a document where you capture all of the main lessons of the event planning process. The key difference between an external recap and an internal one is the purpose and use of the document.

If you want to understand more about an external event, recap, check out my interview with Jen Gilhoi, episode number 14. The purpose and use of an internal recap is to capture what went well, things that didn't go so great (I prefer to call them challenges) and any recommendations for the next event.

It's especially important to create a recap document if it's an annual event or if you're planning to make it an annual event. But even if it's a one-off event, you should do a quick recap because you never know if and when you might want to host that type of event again, and you don't wanna lose those learning moments.

In order to have a thorough recap, you want to capture feedback from all your audiences and stakeholders. You should always plan for a post-event survey to go out to your audience immediately after your event. It can be challenging getting people to respond to a survey, but if you let them know that you value their feedback and that getting survey responses will help your organization to make the event even better next time, you're more likely to get people to respond.

It's best to keep your survey short, 10 questions or less, and anonymous so that you'll get unfiltered feedback. Make sure you set a deadline for responses. The more urgent the deadline the better. You don't want your survey hanging out there for weeks.

The 10 questions you ask will depend on the feedback that you're looking to get, but your 10 questions should be about the key areas of your event, such as the venue, entertainment, the food, your program, your last question should be…”Would you recommend this event to a friend? Why or why not?” I recommend having a comment box for nearly every question of the survey so that your respondents can expand on their short answers, but you for sure need to have one for that last question of, “Would you recommend the event to a friend? Why or why not?” This is where you're going to get some of the most unfiltered and key feedback from your audience.

Now be prepared for both negative and positive feedback. Try not to take the negative feedback personally. Use it as a tool to shape your next event. Also keep in mind that if you're getting one negative response in a sea of positive reviews, that's quite a bit different than negative feedback from multiple people. You wanna take that, that latter scenario more seriously.

In addition to your survey responses from your audience, you'll want to conduct a debrief meeting with your team immediately following the event. If you can't get together right afterward, have your planning team right down all of their thoughts while the event is fresh in their mind. If you wait too long, people either tend to forget or their perceptions skewed.

Another audience that I highly recommend you get feedback from is your event sponsors. Ask your sponsors for a quick 15-minute call immediately after the event. Now, obviously I don't mean same day but in the week or so following the event. I'll have a future episode where I talk more in depth about conducting a post event interview with your sponsor, so stay tuned for that. But if you do talk to your sponsors and the feedback is largely positive, use that meeting as an opportunity to ask your sponsor to commit for the next event.

Your internal recap document is a way to capture those lessons learned from your audience survey, your sponsors and your planning team. Even the most successful events have room to grow and can get even better. Some events may have been totally successful from an audience or a guest perspective, but maybe there was some chaos going on behind the scenes so you wanna make sure that that doesn't happen again and your recap document will help you capture those lessons.

As the leader of the event, you should put together the structure of your recap document in advance so that you make sure you capture all the relevant feedback, sort of like you create an agenda for a meeting.

I'll walk you through how I construct a recap document so stay with me. The format that I use is either PowerPoint or Google slides. And there are two reasons. I like this format. One is that I like to include event photos in my recap document. It's important to capture lessons, but photos make it more interesting and can help jog memories when someone is looking back at a recap. And number two, the layout of the recap, which we'll talk about in a little bit is better suited to a PowerPoint. Personally, I would rather advance through a slide show than read a multi page word document.

So step one. I set up my recap template well before the date of the debrief meeting with the planning team and here's how I structure the template. First slide is a title slide that includes either the event logo or the name of the event and the year. And then subsequent slides are for each element of the event. And for each element I have three slides. Now stay tuned for today's action item because I have a free download for you so that you can see exactly what that looks like. I know it's hard to visualize a document when somebody is simply talking it through, which is why I created the download for you.

Step. Number two is I usually add my feedback to the PowerPoint first. So me as the event leader, as the event coordinator, I add my feedback first, before I share it with the team. Once I've added my feedback, I'll upload the document to Google drive or to Dropbox, however it is that we're sharing documents as a team.

And I upload it so that then the team can go in and add their own highlights, challenges and recommendations. If I have time, I'll add photos to the recap before sharing it, but most often I don't have the photos back from the event photographer in time for the initial round of the recap. And so I'll just get the document uploaded and then wait until after the debrief to add the photos.

Step number three is the debrief meeting and don't skip this part. The reason why I add my feedback first is that sometimes it will get the team members to think about their own feedback, or they might look at something I put in the document and disagree with it. So either way it spurs conversation at the debrief meeting and then during the meeting is when I'll add any additional comments from the team that is part of that discussion.

Step four, if I haven't already, this is when I'll go back through and add the photos as the final touch and then invite the team to view it again. It can sometimes be really fun for the team to review the recap once those photos are in.

A couple of things to note about the structure and content of your recap document. Always start with highlights. You want to start on a positive note. It's easy to get mired in what went wrong, but there is always something positive to acknowledge. And never use the recap to call someone out in a negative way. In fact, I don't recommend using names at all. The point of the document is to focus on the outcomes and the lessons learned not to assign blame.

That's it for constructing the recap document. Once it's done, you tuck it away until it's time to start planning the next event.

Just make sure that you refer back to it before you start planning the next event, as a reminder of those lessons and recommendations. Otherwise, all that work was for nothing.

For today's action item, go to that sounds like a plan.net and find episode number 22.

Get the link for the recap template and download it so that you can edit it to fit your event. I put in a few examples of recap lessons, so you can see how it's formatted, but you'll wanna get it set up specifically for your event and have it ready to go before your post event debrief.

Now that sounds like a plan.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I'll see you next week.

nonprofit event planningEvent Recap

Alicia Baraga

Episode 22: Creating an internal event recap

There are many lessons learned each time you and your team plan a nonprofit fundraising or awareness building event. An internal recap document is how you capture those lessons and use what you've learned to build on and improve your event the next time around.

Listener Action Item:

Episode 23: Keeping your cool on event day

Episode 21: Two ways to stay on track on event day