Nonprofit Management
Why Nonprofits Need Surveys (and What to Do With the Answers)
The short answer:
Surveys give a nonprofit a direct read on what donors, volunteers, and the people your programs serve actually think, instead of a guess built from whoever happened to email in. Used well, a survey ends in something specific: a program change, a follow-up call list, a line for the next grant report. Argenta lets you build a branded survey, publish a public link, and watch results come in with live charts and one-click export, with no separate survey tool to buy.
Why guessing isn’t enough
Most of what a nonprofit knows about its donors and volunteers comes from whoever happens to speak up: a complaint, a compliment at an event, a reply to an email. That’s a real signal, but it’s a small and self-selected one. The donor who quietly stopped giving and the volunteer who quietly stopped showing up rarely send an email explaining why.
A survey reaches past that group. It goes to everyone you choose to send it to, asks the same question the same way, and gets an answer from people who would never have written in on their own.
Where a survey earns its place
• Volunteer experience, right after a shift or a season, while it’s still fresh.
• Donor satisfaction, especially after a major event or a campaign.
• Program feedback from the people you actually serve, not just the funders reading about them.
• Post-event feedback, to find out what to keep and what to cut next year.
• A quick needs assessment before you commit staff time to a new program.
The volunteers who don’t come back for a second shift are the hardest group to learn from in person, since they’ve already stopped showing up. A short survey right after that first shift is one of the few ways to actually ask them what happened while they’re still around to answer, and we’ve covered the most common reasons here.
The rule that matters more than the wording
A ten-question survey with a 60 percent completion rate beats a thirty-question survey nobody finishes. Before you write a question, decide what you’d do differently depending on the answer. If there’s no action on either side of it, cut the question. Three to seven questions covers most of the uses above; save the long version for something people already expect to spend time on, like a program evaluation they asked to take part in.
Building a survey in Argenta
A survey starts as a builder page where you pick from nine question types: short text, long text, single choice, multiple choice, dropdown, rating scale, yes/no, date, and number. Each survey can carry its own headline color, button color, and button text color, so it reads as yours rather than a generic form. Add a welcome message before the first question and a thank-you message after the last one, mark which questions are required, and choose whether someone can respond more than once.
Publish it and Argenta gives you a shareable public link. Nobody needs an account to answer it. Responses come back tied to a constituent record when you know who’s answering, or fully anonymous when you don’t.
Reading the results
Argenta counts complete and in-progress responses separately, so a survey with a lot of half-finished attempts doesn’t quietly inflate the total. Every question gets a summary: rating averages, choice-option counts with percentages, and the full text of any open-ended answer. When you’re done reading on screen, export the whole thing to CSV or Excel and take it into whatever you already use to write the report.
The step most surveys skip
A survey that ends in a spreadsheet nobody opens again wasn’t worth sending. The donor who rated something poorly is worth a follow-up call, not just a lower number in an average. If you’ve already segmented your donor list, a survey response is one more thing to segment on: who said yes to a follow-up call, who flagged a specific problem, who said the event ran too long.
Common questions
How many questions should a nonprofit survey have?
Enough to answer what you actually need, and no more. Most volunteer and donor surveys work well at three to seven questions. A longer program evaluation is fine when the respondent already expects to spend real time on it.
Do respondents need an account to take an Argenta survey?
No. A published survey gets a public link that anyone can open and answer without logging in.
Can a survey be tied to a specific donor or volunteer record?
Yes, when you know who’s answering. A survey can also run fully anonymous, and you choose which setting fits each survey you create.
What kinds of questions can I ask?
Nine types: short text, long text, single choice, multiple choice, dropdown, rating scale, yes/no, date, and number.
Can I stop someone from submitting a survey twice?
Yes, that’s a setting on each survey. You can also allow multiple responses when that fits better, like an ongoing feedback form at a recurring event.
How do I see the results?
The results page shows completed versus in-progress responses, an average for every rating question, and a count and percentage for every choice option, plus the full text of any open-ended answers. You can export all of it to CSV or Excel.
What should I survey volunteers about?
Whatever you’d act on. A short survey right after someone’s first shift, asking whether they had a clear job and someone to ask questions of, catches the two reasons most volunteers don’t come back for a second one.
Start here
The Nonprofit Operations Guide covers where surveys fit alongside the rest of how you run donors, volunteers, and programs in one place.
Surveys give a nonprofit a direct read on what donors, volunteers, and the people your programs serve actually think, instead of a guess built from whoever happened to email in. Used well, a survey ends in something specific: a program change, a follow-up call list, a line for the next grant report. Argenta lets you build a branded survey, publish a public link, and watch results come in with live charts and one-click export, with no separate survey tool to buy.
Why guessing isn’t enough
Most of what a nonprofit knows about its donors and volunteers comes from whoever happens to speak up: a complaint, a compliment at an event, a reply to an email. That’s a real signal, but it’s a small and self-selected one. The donor who quietly stopped giving and the volunteer who quietly stopped showing up rarely send an email explaining why.
A survey reaches past that group. It goes to everyone you choose to send it to, asks the same question the same way, and gets an answer from people who would never have written in on their own.
Where a survey earns its place
• Volunteer experience, right after a shift or a season, while it’s still fresh.
• Donor satisfaction, especially after a major event or a campaign.
• Program feedback from the people you actually serve, not just the funders reading about them.
• Post-event feedback, to find out what to keep and what to cut next year.
• A quick needs assessment before you commit staff time to a new program.
The volunteers who don’t come back for a second shift are the hardest group to learn from in person, since they’ve already stopped showing up. A short survey right after that first shift is one of the few ways to actually ask them what happened while they’re still around to answer, and we’ve covered the most common reasons here.
The rule that matters more than the wording
A ten-question survey with a 60 percent completion rate beats a thirty-question survey nobody finishes. Before you write a question, decide what you’d do differently depending on the answer. If there’s no action on either side of it, cut the question. Three to seven questions covers most of the uses above; save the long version for something people already expect to spend time on, like a program evaluation they asked to take part in.
Building a survey in Argenta
A survey starts as a builder page where you pick from nine question types: short text, long text, single choice, multiple choice, dropdown, rating scale, yes/no, date, and number. Each survey can carry its own headline color, button color, and button text color, so it reads as yours rather than a generic form. Add a welcome message before the first question and a thank-you message after the last one, mark which questions are required, and choose whether someone can respond more than once.
Publish it and Argenta gives you a shareable public link. Nobody needs an account to answer it. Responses come back tied to a constituent record when you know who’s answering, or fully anonymous when you don’t.
Reading the results
Argenta counts complete and in-progress responses separately, so a survey with a lot of half-finished attempts doesn’t quietly inflate the total. Every question gets a summary: rating averages, choice-option counts with percentages, and the full text of any open-ended answer. When you’re done reading on screen, export the whole thing to CSV or Excel and take it into whatever you already use to write the report.
The step most surveys skip
A survey that ends in a spreadsheet nobody opens again wasn’t worth sending. The donor who rated something poorly is worth a follow-up call, not just a lower number in an average. If you’ve already segmented your donor list, a survey response is one more thing to segment on: who said yes to a follow-up call, who flagged a specific problem, who said the event ran too long.
Common questions
How many questions should a nonprofit survey have?
Enough to answer what you actually need, and no more. Most volunteer and donor surveys work well at three to seven questions. A longer program evaluation is fine when the respondent already expects to spend real time on it.
Do respondents need an account to take an Argenta survey?
No. A published survey gets a public link that anyone can open and answer without logging in.
Can a survey be tied to a specific donor or volunteer record?
Yes, when you know who’s answering. A survey can also run fully anonymous, and you choose which setting fits each survey you create.
What kinds of questions can I ask?
Nine types: short text, long text, single choice, multiple choice, dropdown, rating scale, yes/no, date, and number.
Can I stop someone from submitting a survey twice?
Yes, that’s a setting on each survey. You can also allow multiple responses when that fits better, like an ongoing feedback form at a recurring event.
How do I see the results?
The results page shows completed versus in-progress responses, an average for every rating question, and a count and percentage for every choice option, plus the full text of any open-ended answers. You can export all of it to CSV or Excel.
What should I survey volunteers about?
Whatever you’d act on. A short survey right after someone’s first shift, asking whether they had a clear job and someone to ask questions of, catches the two reasons most volunteers don’t come back for a second one.
Start here
The Nonprofit Operations Guide covers where surveys fit alongside the rest of how you run donors, volunteers, and programs in one place.
