Anonymous surveys with CiviCRM?

One more type of intake form you might be thinking about: anonymous surveys.

Say you've got a list of 20 questions, you’d like to collect responses from your constituents, and you have good reasons not to identify the people who answer.

(Usually it's because the questions are of a sensitive nature, and you believe you'll get more honest answers if respondents can remain anonymous.)

If you’re looking for the best CRM tool to build such a form, think again.

Anonymous surveys are in the category of things that don't fit well in your CRM.

Think about it. You’ve decided to collect no personally identifying information. In a contact relationship management system, which contact are you going to attach these answers to?

None, of course.

You'll be better off using one of the CMS-driven form builders. You might even prefer to use an external service like Google Forms or SurveyMonkey.

Any of those solutions will let you create a set of questions, configure the possible answers — from multiple choice to long texts, to dates, to lots more — and send the link for that simple and beautiful form to your pool of anonymous respondents (say by email — which, by the way, is a great use of your CRM).

Then you can export that data to a spreadsheet and analyze it however you like.

That's all you really need to do here. No need for a CRM at all.

Here's the thing:

When you have a really nice hammer, it's tempting to see everything as a nail.

CiviCRM is a fantastic hammer. But not everything is a nail.

All the best,
A.