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Using EveryAction for surveying

  • June 16, 2026
  • 5 replies
  • 59 views
H
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I’ve seen another question on here about a post-donation survey, but we’re hoping to do a relatively in-depth survey of our members. We plan to link it in a giving form or email. Ideally, we will use EveryAction to ask a series of questions, either linking relevant information to a contact record or producing some easy-to-understand report of who the folks in our community are. 

I’ve spent quite a bit of time exploring EveryAction to see what might work. I created this draft survey that includes the breadth of some of the questions we’d like to ask. I see that radio buttons (the last question on the survey) can be mapped to survey questions that are created separately in EveryAction, and therefore show up on a contact record. Some things can also be mapped to activist codes, which could be useful. But when it comes to multiple-choice questions, responses are captured in a Google Sheet, like this, which is hard to interpret. 

Has anyone successfully used EveryAction to survey their community? If so, how did you get it to work well? 

Thanks in advance! 

 

    5 replies

    rachel moody
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    • rachel moody
    • Community Manager
    • June 17, 2026

    Hi ​@heatherelizabeth29! The draft survey you created looks great and you’re right that radio buttons are helpful because they allow you to map to custom fields in the software. I’m curious to hear what other customers have done as well!

    Rachel at Bonterra
    L
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    • Lark Valente
    • Active Advisor
    • June 23, 2026

    Hi Heather! We’ve been toying with the idea of a survey for our members as well. I wish there were some more options and tools within EA, but we’ve been running into many of the same questions as you -- namely, how do we record the data that’s not just radio buttons? 

    For a very simple new donor survey, we’ve been using EA and mapping activist codes to different responses. Then, we set an alert for when someone has completed a survey so we can go in, check their answers, and manually copy and paste them into the notes tab. It’s not ideal, but even some of the pre-formed questions (especially demographic ones) weren’t a good fit for our org. For example, the “pronouns” field has dozens of responses that auto-populate, which ends up being super cumbersome to scroll through for 99% of our folks, especially on mobile. Instead, we created a separate question with checkbox options and some fill-in-the-blank prompts that we individually move over. Plus, it makes it a lot easier to choose multiple sets of pronouns (ex: he/him and they/them). 

    Unfortunately, now that we’re talking about a more comprehensive survey, we’ve been discussing Google Forms, which allows for a lot more question types, visual branding, and instant feedback loops. Curious to see if others have made the switch as well. 

      H
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      Thank you, ​@Lark Valente! These are all extremely helpful points to consider. I think we may also go the route of a Google Form, but I’m hopeful that EveryAction will continue to improve and will one day offer more functionality for comprehensive surveying 🤞I appreciate you taking the time to respond! 

      J
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      • jacobk
      • First Timer
      • June 29, 2026

      Hi there! I’m also dealing with navigating how to best collect and report data via custom questions like this. We have several forms that have several multiple-choice questions, so the reports can get lengthy and hard to read with all of the columns it creates and lots of 1’s and 0’s. 

      One of my workarounds has been playing around with Excel formulas, such as ones outlined here, but this also requires lots of Excel work after pulling the reports and is inconvenient when more form responses come in.

      Custom fields in EveryAction worked for some things, but as far as I know only lets you do a drop-down, not a question that allows users to check several boxes. Hopefully there will at least be improvements on the readability of the reports in the future.

        rachel moody
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        • rachel moody
        • Community Manager
        • June 29, 2026

        Hi again, folks! This might be a good opportunity to connect with someone from our product team. Our product managers offer booking times to chat about the platform/get feedback on what enhancements you’d like to see. You can book time here: https://bonterratech.zoom.us/zbook/d/-l7afyc9/lets-talk-about-your-everyaction-experience

        Rachel at Bonterra
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