Collecting Feedback with Surveys

Most Scout groups rely on ad-hoc chats to find out how families and volunteers are feeling. Surveys make it structured: send a one-question "how likely are you to recommend us?" to a whole cohort, track who has responded, and read the results without chasing anyone. Follow-up text questions are optional, and recipients submit from an email link — no login needed.

Opening the Surveys page

In the sidebar, open Insights → Surveys. The page shows four summary cards at the top — Active, Total Responses, Avg Response Rate, and Avg NPS — followed by a table of every survey you have created.

The table has columns for survey name, status (Draft, Active, Closed, Archived), cohort, sections, response count with a progress bar, NPS score, and the date created. Click any row to slide in the results panel.

Creating a survey

Click New Survey in the top right. A four-step wizard opens.

Step 1 — Basics

Field	What it does
Title	Shown in the sidebar notification and email subject. "Spring Term Feedback" works better than "Survey 1".
Description	Optional. A short note about what the survey is for.
Rating Type	NPS Scale (0–10) for adult cohorts or Emoji Scale (1–5) if you want a friendlier format for younger audiences.
Anonymous responses	On by default. Responses cannot be linked back to individuals in the results.
Questions	The rating question is added automatically (it's locked as question 1). Click Add Follow-up Question to add free-text prompts.

Step 2 — Audience

Pick one or more cohorts:

Cohort	Who gets the email
Parents	All parents and carers. Each child counts as a separate invitation so you get section-level feedback.
Volunteers	Leaders, assistant leaders, and admins.
Trustees	Executive committee members.
Young Leaders	Explorer Scouts helping with sections.

If you pick Parents, an optional section filter appears — toggle the section pills to survey only Beavers parents, for example. You can also link the survey to an event.

A preview panel tells you exactly how many people will be invited before you send.

Step 3 — Schedule

Field	Options
When to send	Send Now or Schedule for Later with a date and time picker.
Auto-close after	1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, or No auto-close. Once a survey closes, no more responses are accepted.
Send reminder	On by default. Non-responders get one gentle nudge after five days.

Step 4 — Review

A summary card shows every selection — recipients, questions, schedule, close date, reminder setting, anonymous status. Two buttons at the bottom:

Save as Draft — creates the survey but doesn't send. You can edit and send it later from the survey list.
Send Survey — dispatches invitations immediately (or queues them for the scheduled time).

If you toggled off anonymous on a survey that includes your own role, a warning explains that peer responses may be less honest when tied to names.

What recipients see

Recipients get a branded email with an inline 0–10 (or emoji) scale they can tap straight from their inbox. Numbers are colour-coded — red for 0–6, amber for 7–8, green for 9–10. A single tap opens the response page with that score pre-filled.

The response page shows:

A short context line (for parents: child name and section, so they know which child the feedback is about)
The rating they tapped, which they can change
Any follow-up text questions
A Submit button

When a parent has several children in the survey, all children appear on the same page with an Apply score to all shortcut, so they can score once and be done in under 30 seconds. After submission, a contextual thank-you screen appears — promoters see a warm thank-you, detractors see "Thank you for being honest."

Reading the results

Click a survey in the list to open the results panel. It slides in from the right, so you can close it and quickly open another survey without losing your place.

The panel includes:

NPS gauge — a semicircular score from -100 to +100 with a plain-English interpretation ("Excellent — your families love this group" / "Good — room to grow" / "Needs attention" / "At risk").
Promoters / Passives / Detractors — the breakdown of 9–10, 7–8, and 0–6 responses, with counts, percentages, and progress bars.
Response Rate card — how many invitations have been responded to, with a Send Reminder button if you want to nudge non-responders again.
Section breakdown — a stacked bar per section showing how Beavers parents rated you versus Scouts parents, with a score pill on each row.
Comments — every free-text response, colour-coded by score category. For anonymous surveys, the display order is shuffled and no section tag is shown.

Use the section filter above the comments list to narrow down what one part of the group said.

Closing and managing surveys

Each survey row has an Actions menu with options to close the survey manually, archive it, or — for drafts — send it. Surveys also close automatically if you set an auto-close duration in Step 3.

Who sees what:

Leaders see results for their own sections.
Group admins see every survey across the whole group.
The person who created a survey always sees its full results, regardless of section.

Using the feedback

The results panel has an Export button to save a PDF for AGMs, trustee reports, or section meetings. Comments tend to be the most actionable part — the rating tells you the mood, but the free-text answers tell you what to do next.

A healthy rhythm is one short survey per term — spring, summer, and autumn — with the same rating question each time. That lets you see whether the score is moving up or down over the year.

What's next

Sending Emails to Parents — for when a survey comment needs a direct follow-up.
Insights and Analytics — the other metrics available alongside surveys.