Terms of Use
Last Updated and Effective: 26 September 2013
Survey Graph is a tool that organizations use to collect anonymous feedback from their stakeholders, in order to help our members improve their performance. To ensure Survey Graph is a valuable tool, all users are required to abide by the terms and conditions contained in our Terms of Use.
Before using Survey Graph, please read our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy, and only use Survey Graph if you are in agreement with these two documents.
Survey Graph is a tool that our members use to engage their stakeholders. Consequently, we have divided our Terms of Use into these three sections:
Section-A: For informants who complete surveys and provide feedback to our members
Section-B: For members who use Survey Graph to collect feedback
Section-C: Forall people who use Survey Graph
A. Informants who provide feedback
Protect your own identity
To protect your identity and to help our member organizations reflect on your feedback without bias, please follow these practices. First, in open comments, do not provide personally identifying information such as your name or details that can be linked to you of your organization. Second, after you have provided feedback, do not discuss your particular feedback to persons who are associated with the organization.
Your constructive feedback
We ask all informants, who provide feedback to our members, to share their honest opinions, and to express what they think, however they feel. However, to ensure feedback is constructive and well received, informants are required to do so in a respectful way. Informants must avoid expressing their views with insulting, abusive or potentially offensive language. Informants who are found to be routinely abusive or insulting may be excluded from future participation. Additionally, all informant feedback will be subject to anonymous automated assessments that identify responses that are potentially insincere or indicative of respondents who have not read the questionnaires. We reserve the right to investigate and ban the accounts of informants who are found to be routinely abusive or insincere, and will use anonymous processes to facilitate this.
Member surveys
Our members are responsible for their organizational description which shapes to their member survey. If you find that any member survey is inappropriate or questionable, you should contact that member organization directly, through their member profile page. If they do not respond and you feel that they are potentially abusing our service, please contact us at privacy@Survey Graph.com. We will respond in 2-3 business days.
Opting-in and opting-out
As Survey Graph is a service that our members use to collect feedback from their stakeholders, the email list that they manage in Survey Graph may be different from the email lists they manage with other technologies or services. If you opt-out of their Survey Graph list, you may still be on their other list. Likewise, if you opt-out of their list, you may still be on their Survey Graph list. To add or remove yourself from either list, you will need to opt-in or opt-out through Survey Graph and also, through our member organization. To make it easy, we include opting-in and opting-out options in the majority of our communications.
B. Members who receive feedback
Legitimate representation
While we protect the identity of informants who provide feedback, we insist that our member organizations, which receive feedback, must be legitimate organizations and maintain a verifiable public profile. We have a zero-tolerance policy towards any individuals or organizations that misrepresent themselves as another party or illegitimate organization. Should there be any question of the authenticity of any member profile, we may employ a number of methods to validate their identity. We reserve the right to delete any profiles that are found to be misrepresented, fraudulent, deceptive or inappropriate. To ensure that your organization is legitimately represented, all organizations are obliged to maintain a public profile with a contact person who may be reached by informants.
Anti-spam
Survey Graph is a tool for members to collect feedback from their existing stakeholders. The people that you invite to provide feedback must already be associated with your organization or program. For example, legitimate informants can include staff, volunteers, directors, donors, consultants, partners, newsletter recipients, end users of services, people who participate at events, and other groups that are connected to the work of your organization. We have a zero-tolerance policy towards members that may use Survey Graph as tool to send invitations to audiences that have had no connection to the member organization. Any members who use Survey Graph to engage significant numbers of informants who have never had a relationship or connection to their organization may risk having their account suspended.
Managing shared informants
There may be times when one or more of your informants are also the informant for other organization using Survey Graph. In this case, we reserve the right to limit the number of times we engage them, in order to respect their time. There may also be cases where informants have independently joined other Survey Graph services, such as signing-up for our newsletter or panels. In all of these cases, all communications with informants will include simple instructions on how to opt-in or opt-out of their various relationships and communications.
Contributing to comparative indexes
Member organizations can elect to receive benchmarking information that shows their performance relative to organizations within their sector. This information allows members to compare their performance with peer organizations. In exchange for access to anonymous benchmarking data within their sector, they agree to share their anonymous feedback with other organizations that need benchmarking data. Within these indexes, there is no identifying information that relates to any particular organizations, and this disassociated data, once contributed, forms part of the index. If organizations do not wish to contribute to these indexes, they can simply elect to not receive comparative benchmarking information.
Not professional advice
The information available in Survey Graph is intended to help your organization improve your performance. However, you should not construe our reports as definitive evidence or as professional advice. All research methods and data sources have their limits, and only provide a partial picture. We do not recommend reaching conclusions or making decisions solely on the basis of our reports, and cannot be held responsible for any consequences arising from any such actions. Rather, our reports should to be treated as an additional source of evidence that requires triangulation with other evidence before conclusions should be drawn, and actions taken.
Publishing Survey Graph data and reports
We encourage you to use and publish your Survey Graph data and reports, without any restrictions. However, in research it is common to cite research tools and data sources, and to share credit where credit is due. Consequently, whenever you publish data or charts derived from Survey Graph, we would appreciate if you cite “Survey Graph (www.Survey Graph.com)” and add any appropriate credits.
C. All users
Lawful use
You warrant that you will not use Survey Graph for any purpose that is unlawful or prohibited by these Terms of Use, our Privacy Policy and other notices. You may not use Survey Graph in any manner that could damage, disable, overburden, or impair the site or interfere with any other party’s use of Survey Graph. You may not obtain or attempt to obtain any materials or information through any means not intentionally made available or provided for through our website and services. Any fraudulent, abusive, or otherwise illegal activity may be grounds for termination of your account, at our sole discretion. Moreover, any illegal activities may be reported to appropriate law-enforcement agencies.
Protecting the privacy of other users
We discourage members from trying to identify informants who provide feedback. Likewise, we discourage informants from sharing personal information. By using Survey Graph, you warrant that you will not hold Survey Graph liable for any consequences resulting from members or informants who have acted in breach of our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Copyrights and trademarks
You have unlimited rights use of your own organizational data and charts, as described in the section “Publishing Survey Graph data and reports”. Also, with proper citations and acknowledgements, we encourage you to build upon our online materials and to use our logo when discussion or linking to Survey Graph. However, other content on Survey Graph, as well as the organisation and layout of this site, are copyrighted and are protected by Canadian and international copyright laws and treaty provisions. You may not store, modify, reproduce, transmit, reverse engineer or distribute a significant portion of the content on this website. The systematic retrieval of data (including spidering, data mining, and screen scraping) from Survey Graph is prohibited. If you have any questions on acceptable uses of our content, please contact us.
Data protection and accounts security
We take data protection very seriously. Notwithstanding, we do not warrant that the services provided by Survey Graph will be uninterrupted or error free, that defects will be corrected, or that this service or the server that makes it available will be free of potential hazards. All users are required to notify us about any known or suspected unauthorised use(s) of your account, or any known or suspected breach of security, including loss, theft, or unauthorised disclosure of your password. All users responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of their password.
Links
For your convenience, we may provide links to various third-party resources that may be of interest to you and for your convenience only. However, we do not control third-party websites and are not responsible for their content nor the accuracy or reliability of any information, data, opinions, advice, or statements contained within these third-party resources.
No Warranties
THE WEBSITE, AND ANY CONTENT, ARE PROVIDED TO YOU ON AN “AS IS,” “AS AVAILABLE” BASIS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND WHETHER EXPRESS, STATUTORY OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, QUIET ENJOYMENT, SYSTEMS INTEGRATION, ACCURACY, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT, ALL OF WHICH WE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS. WE DO NOT ENDORSE AND MAKES NO WARRANTY AS TO THE ACCURACY, COMPLETENESS, CURRENCY, OR RELIABILITY OF THE CONTENT, AND AlterSpark WILL NOT BE LIABLE OR OTHERWISE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY FAILURE OR DELAY IN UPDATING THE WEBSITE OR ANY CONTENT. WE MAKE NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES THAT USE OF THE CONTENT WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED OR ERROR-FREE. YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY RESULTS OR OTHER CONSEQUENCES OF ACCESSING THE WEBSITE AND USING THE CONTENT, AND FOR TAKING ALL NECESSARY PRECAUTIONS TO ENSURE THAT ANY CONTENT YOU MAY ACCESS, DOWNLOAD OR OTHERWISE OBTAIN IS FREE OF ANY HARMFUL COMPONENTS.
Limitation of liability
YOUR USE OF THE CONTENT IS AT YOUR OWN RISK. WE SPECIFICALLY DISCLAIMS ANY LIABILITY, WHETHER BASED IN CONTRACT, TORT, NEGLIGENCE, STRICT LIABILITY OR OTHERWISE, FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR SPECIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF OR IN ANY WAY CONNECTED WITH ACCESS TO, USE OF OR RELIANCE ON THE CONTENT (EVEN IF WE HAVE BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES) OR THAT ARISE IN CONNECTION WITH MISTAKES OR OMISSIONS IN, OR DELAYS IN TRANSMISSION OF, INFORMATION TO OR FROM THE USER, ANY FAILURE OF PERFORMANCE, ERROR, OMISSION, INTERRUPTION, DELETION, DEFECT, DELAY IN OPERATION OR TRANSMISSION OR DELIVERY, COMPUTER VIRUS, COMMUNICATION LINE FAILURE, THEFT OR DESTRUCTION OR UNAUTHORISED ACCESS TO, ALTERATION OF, OR USE OF RECORDS, PROGRAMS OR FILES, INTERRUPTIONS IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS CONNECTIONS TO THE WEBSITE OR VIRUSES, WHETHER CAUSED IN WHOLE OR IN PART BY NEGLIGENCE, ACTS OF GOD, TELECOMMUNICATIONS FAILURE, THEFT OR DESTRUCTION OF, OR UNAUTHORISED ACCESS TO THE WEBSITE OR THE CONTENT. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE LIMITATION OF LIABILITY, SO THIS LIMITATION MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU.
Indemnity
You agree to defend, indemnify, and hold AlterSpark and any of its officers, directors, employees, agents, licensors, and suppliers, harmless from and against any claims, actions or demands, liabilities and settlements including without limitation, reasonable legal and accounting fees, resulting from, or alleged to result from the use of this site or in connection therewith. You also agree to pay a reasonable legal fees and costs arising from any claims or suits hereunder.
Governing Law
These Terms of Use shall be governed in all respects by the laws of the Province of Ontario, Canada, without reference to its choice of law rules. If an applicable law is in conflict with any part of the Terms of Use, the Terms of Use will be deemed modified to conform to the law with the provision unaffected by any such modification.
Changes to our Terms of Use
Survey Graph reserves the right to change this Terms of Use from time to time at its sole discretion. If at some point in the future, there is a change to our Privacy Policy, unless we obtain your express consent, such change will only apply to information collected after the revised Privacy Policy took effect.
Consent to this agreement by using the site
This Terms of Use describes the requirements for people who use Survey Graph, while our Privacy Policy discusses the information we collect, how we safeguard it, and how we use it. By using Survey Graph, you consent to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. If you disagree with any part of our Privacy Policy or Terms of Use, please do not use our website and contact us so that we can better understand your concerns and learn how to make Survey Graph a tool for all.
Want to talk?
Survey Graph is owned and operated by AlterSpark Consulting (www.alterspark.com). If you have any questions, concerns or suggestions regarding our Terms of Use please contact us at: privacy@alterspark.com.