Post-Event Reporting for Race Organisers
The week after a race is when the most useful information about it exists, and it's also when organizers are most tempted to skip writing any of it down. A short, structured post-event report, covering registration numbers, no-shows, feedback and finances, is what turns one event into a repeatable, improving series rather than a fresh start each year.
Registration numbers and category performance
Record final registration counts by category, not just the overall total, alongside how registrations were distributed across your early-bird, standard and late pricing tiers. This tells you which categories are pulling their weight and which might need repricing or repositioning for the next edition, and it's the first input for any decision about how to price race categories going forward.
DNS rate: who registered but didn't start
Your did-not-start rate (registered runners who never showed up on race day) is a useful signal in its own right. A high DNS rate can point to a few different causes: a registration date too far ahead of the event, a category priced low enough that the cost of skipping felt trivial, or a real external factor like weather or a scheduling clash. Track it by category if you can, since it often varies meaningfully between, say, a 5K and a full marathon.
Collecting and organising feedback
A short post-race survey, sent within a day or two while the experience is still fresh, gets a noticeably better response rate than one sent a week later. Rather than reading every response individually and trying to hold it all in memory, group feedback into themes: course, timing and results, bib collection, aid stations, communication. This makes it much easier to spot a real pattern (three people mentioning the same water station) versus a single outlier complaint.
| Report section | What to capture |
|---|---|
| Registration | Final counts by category, tier distribution, comparison to prior edition if applicable |
| DNS rate | No-show percentage overall and by category, with likely contributing factors |
| Feedback themes | Grouped by topic, with rough frequency, not just a list of individual comments |
| Financials | Revenue by category, total costs by line item, net position |
| Carry-forward notes | Specific, actionable changes for the next edition |
Financial reconciliation
Reconcile actual revenue against actual costs while the details are still fresh and receipts are easy to locate, rather than weeks later when memory of which vendor charged what has faded. Break this down by category if your pricing was built around cost recovery per category, since that's the only way to tell whether your pricing framework from how to price race categories actually held up in practice.
What to carry into the next edition
Close the report with a short, specific list of changes for next time, not vague intentions. "Add a third water station between the 8K and 12K marks" is useful. "Improve aid stations" is not. This list is what makes a post-event report worth the time it takes to write, since it's the part that actually changes what happens at your next race.
Keep registration data, categories and pricing organised in one dashboard on Find Your Finish.
List your eventMy honest read, from looking at how organizers use registration data on the platform, is that most of it goes unused after race day, not because it isn't valuable but because there's no set process for reviewing it. Based on what we see, organizers who build a short, repeatable post-event report into their race-week routine tend to make noticeably sharper pricing and category decisions in their second and third editions than those who start each year from a blank slate.
Frequently asked questions
How soon after the race should we send a feedback survey?
Within a day or two of the event, while the experience is still fresh for runners. Response rates and the quality of feedback both tend to drop off noticeably if you wait longer than that.
What's a normal DNS rate for a road race?
It varies by category and city, so there's no single universal benchmark. What matters more is tracking your own event's rate over successive editions and investigating any category with a notably higher rate than the rest.
Should the post-event report be shared with sponsors too?
A summarised version often should be, particularly registration numbers, reach and feedback highlights, since it supports future sponsorship conversations. See [[the marathon sponsorship guide|/blog/marathon-sponsorship-guide]] for more on that relationship.
What's the most commonly skipped part of post-event reporting?
Financial reconciliation broken down by category. Many organizers track total revenue and cost but skip the category-level breakdown, which is the part that actually tells you whether your pricing structure worked.