Have you heard of votetrends.com?

Some new friends from the site votetrends.com reached out to my lately to talk about a rather boring subject. Survey technology. Most of us are sold on surveymonkey, or something we rigged together using HTML and radio buttons, but instead we should be checking out their service. Here’s why.

Nonprofits are always looking to have bigger and better impact on a budget. That requires them to gather accurate data on the effectiveness of their strategies. For example, many nonprofits are looking to create effective summer programs this time of the year. Unfortunately, the feedback they receive from parents is usually at the end of the program, by which time it is too late to apply any new strategies for the current summer. Ideally, they need an easy and inexpensive tool to provide them with instant feedback on the effectiveness of their programs, even on a daily basis.

That what votetrends does. They have developed an tool that allows non-profits to “create once, collect indefinitely.” votetrends seamlessly collects people’s opinions and shows trends using interactive visualizations. Voters can change their minds at any time.

The good part for you? The service is currently free for use (and will always be free for individuals), and can help non-profits make decisions using actionable longitudinal data. Importantly, votetrends is anonymous and respects its voters’ privacy; its mission is to become an anonymous safe haven for people’s changing opinions.

 And they have a damn good team behind it. The idea germinated with a Harvard PhD student, Kevin Vora, who wanted to create a tool that benefits the community through data. The votetrends team also includes: Gokul Madhavan, a Harvard PhD student in the computational humanities; Niral Vora, who specializes in e-commerce analytics; Erin Hegarty, who works in corporate philanthropy; and Stephanie Medeiros, who focuses on social media.

So what are you waiting for? Go try it out today.

Thanks!