Totally Agree. This is a must-to-do function, especially that it must utilize the database of members or potential voters. To increase validity and avoid bias, 2 or more secured password admins may be assigned to report results of voting, especially if external observers are needed.

Regards

I totally agree that polls are important getting members involved.

But creating a proper polling functionality in WA is not a small task to do. I believe that as a workaround some external systems can be used for now.

Polls, voting, or surveys are really important. I have sites that have the feature and they really help promote site use by getting members involved. I'm only on WildApricot because one of the sites had technical problems. They had surveys and were my top choice until they couldn't fix the issues.

Integrated polls are really beneficial since you can integrate email messages and report results back to the membership. The key reason for having a website is to promote communication and planning. That's what this tool does. On one website that has members around the world the costs would have been prohibitive if surveys weren't available. Not only that, but the website usage soared.

My understanding is that it was not difficult to implement. The best one is very much like building the member fields with the ability to pose a question and then add fields under it primarily using buttons or multiple choices. Text fields are needed too for comments. The ability to have multiple questions is also important. Having multiple surveys that you can turn on and off like you do with events is also important. Must also have control so that only one response per individual is allowed; keeping track of who responds helps.

Reporting is not that hard. Exporting results is nice, particularly if you want to input data into an analysis program is desired. Summarization of results by questions and totals, and including comments, is needed. Charting is helpful. Being able to report results by individual internally is nice, being able to email results is really nice.

I see this feature as being critical.

Voting is a fundamental necessity for any association and a requirement for non-profits. I imagine that a polling feature would cover voting and also be useful for many other types of member surveys.

As noted above, voting would need to be anonymous and votes limited to one per member. It would be useful if voting was capable of being restricted to member level (role).

I will also add a request for an imbedded polling/survey that is tied to our membership database for elections and voting on proposed Bylaws or organizational directives. I'd like the ability to limit votes to one per eligible member (based on membership category and group status), and anonymize results.

Thanks!

Jarren Kinch

WSRID Webmaster

I agree .. adding the ability to conduct our annual officer elections directly in WA and/or conduct Polls of members is a much needed feature

As an update to my previous response, it would be very convenient if voting were handled through WA.

There are lots of online voting systems, but they're not very convenient.

1. Most charge for the service

2. It's a hassle for users and administrators to piece together several different services

3. There can be technical issues with a lot of the online voting systems (like a lack of control of of how votes are tallied)

Thanks for the details. For sure we will keep the topic alive and consider it for future system updates, but not in the nearest future (~half a year), sorry.

Just as a matter of keeping this topic active, I would like to voice the support of an election/voting system from our organization as well. I would assume that the majority of organizations using wild apricot conduct, at a minimum, board level elections and/or surveys. I can see how an integrated function for voting would be very helpful to W.A. users. I am not a programmer, so I have no idea how detailed and time consuming programming something like this would be, but I do believe that something like this would be used by nearly every user of wild apricot.

Last year we did use Google Forms for our election process. It worked, but it is not secure and still requires someone to go through and valid each and every 'ballot' cast in order to look for multiple votes or votes by members not of the region where voting was taking place. This year I am looking to a third party program called Helios (www.heliosvoting.org) which looks promising. It seems to be very secure. My workflow is to export from W.A. the list of members who are eligible to vote. From that I need only the WA ID number, email address and name (I have to merge first and last names when I bring it into Excel). That information is then saved as a .csv file and imported into helios.

I think this process will work for us this year, but having an integrated system within WA, I think, would be a wonderful upgrade. I can vision where votes could be stored within the members profile so that they can look back on past votes if they wanted to.

So anyway....please keep this topic active and continue consideration of this in future updates!

This would be good, but it can also be done using free third party services like http://www.ballotbin.com

I'd just like to add my voice to that of others in the past. It would be great if there was a mechanism to have members vote electronically for Board representatives, based on their membership category.

The ability to conduct member voting has become a high priority for our club. Being able to assign 2 votes for households and 1 for individuals and none for other level of membership is important. And, to track voting results along with who has or has not voted is important. I know this has been discussed since 2010, and we would like to know when this might become a reality. Unfortunately, this is becoming critical from our end.

PBGVCA

I'm also wondering if you can keep the votes confidential with the event registration workaround.

You can see the history of our releases here http://help.wildapricot.com/display/DOC/Release+history

and our current plans here http://www.wildapricot.com/blogs/newsblog/2013/03/27/wild-apricot-software-news-march-2013---state-of-the-(wild-apricot)-nation

Once something is done, we move it from this forum to the archive so by definition this forum contains only the things that haven't been addressed (yet),

Thank you ko1215! Can you provide any more detail? Can you ensure that each member gets only 1 vote?

It's my perception that nearly every time I go the forums to look into a feature I need I see many other people that want it and often promises that it will be developed soon, but years later the feature hasn't been added. I'm starting to wonder if we made the right choice.

This is a neat workaround, thanks for sharing!

We have been doing board elections by setting it up as an event and it has gone really well. We are also able to do reports on this data. I'm happy we have found a solution that will work until something has been developed.

This would be a good feature for us when we are thinking about succession planning. We did create a Request for Speakers form on jotform.com and have it loaded to our Wild Apricot site. However, this adds another layer of complexity to someone who may take over my role. A poll is such a widely used gadget in the web right now and I don't think we should have to rely on a 3rd party for it. I have come to expect most every site I interact with to have this feature.

Hi Colleen,

We use a form at http://www.wufoo.com and embedd the form on a page on the website. the Form is up to you - there's a limit with 'free' portion. It's great and looks/ works seamless with WA. You can even direct the response email to whomever you choose.

Just found this info and put together a poll for my site. Thanks so much for the information. Is there a way with Google Docs/form to email me when people submit their responses? Or do I just periodically review the form and responses?

Again, thanks for the post/info.

Colleen