Post-Event Reporting: Drawing Conclusions From Volunteer Data (Part 3)

As a professional event producer, you know how important it is to gather information about your staff and volunteers -- throughout the recruitment processes, and during the events themselves. But what about drawing conclusions from that data? When you understand where your volunteers are coming from, how they engaged, and how efficiently they used your event communication tool, you can better tailor your marketing efforts, efficiencies, and protocol to put on the best event possible.

MARKETING STRATEGIES:

Determine what worked & what didn't

For instance, an analysis of your data can indicate that you were more successful recruiting from social media and online inbound web traffic than from email blasts or the local newspaper. This information will help you decide whether you need to change or expand your marketing strategies in the future.

Identify your pool of volunteers

Examine the age groups and other demographics of volunteer staff that you're attracting. This will help you decide whether you're overlooking key talent that would be interested in filling some of your less popular roles. Determining who your volunteers are and where they come from can also help you identify which types of volunteers you are retaining -- and which ones you may be inadvertently turning away.

Match demographics with motivation

On that same note, you'll want to keep in mind how that demographic is motivated. For instance, if you're attracting mainly younger volunteers between the ages 18 - 34, you might find that these groups are mostly motivated by their interest in the type of event, opportunities to engage with their peers and event attendees, and the possibility of gaining valuable work experience. Besides having their own interests, seniors, for instance, may be highly motivated by safety and accessibility issues. 

Find next year's recruiting focus

By examining your volunteer demographics, motivations, training, and event performance, you'll be able to set goals for the future. For example, if you're looking to broaden your volunteer demographic to include younger demographics, the data on your volunteers will indicate whether you need to place more emphasis on their interests and needs.

EVENT EFFICIENCIES:

Look for specific improvements

Everything may have looked good on paper, but once the event takes place, your volunteer data may show a different story. If you had to make a lot of schedule changes on event day due to volunteer no-shows, you probably need a more stringent attendance policy. Another common discovery is that you may have scheduled too many or too few volunteers for one role. Decide which adjustments you need to make next year, such as having more volunteers scheduled in registration, or having a large pool of floaters to step into roles as appropriate.

Analyze shift lengths and staff engagement

Evaluate how practical the length of individual shifts were. If the shifts were too long or to short for top volunteers to be fully engaged with their work or with attendees, you'll want to adjust the shifts accordingly for next time so that nobody loses interest.

PROTOCOL & TRAINING:

Evaluate the effectiveness of your training documents & tutorials

Be sure to provide the appropriate level of due diligence after the event. By looking at how your volunteers performed, determine what sections of your training documents need to be updated or modified, and which documents and tutorials worked. 

Get event feedback from volunteers & staff

Have your event staff fill out their own evaluations on what their experience was like. Take into consideration their thoughts on the online and offline training that was provided.

Assess event staff engagement with your event tool

On that same note, the amount of engagement with your event communication app can indicate how useful the app and event training was. Check on the number of event staff that used the app for communication, how valuable those communications were, and whether the app promoted engagement among members of the event team themselves. 

Determine how well people responded to emergencies

Finally, analyze how effective communication was during emergencies. Review how prompt communication was and whether the right people were notified. Use the reporting from this to justify the actions your team made and to assess what training would be necessary to improve emergency response for future events.

InitLive will store all your data and allow you to break down and analyze it effectively before, during and after your event. Handle your safety, communication and scheduling for the entire event team with our all-in-one mobile event staff management tool. 

For more event data resources, take a look at our free infographic below to learn more about how to use the data to manage your team & why it will save you time!