Privacy policy for survey respondents

Last updated: 17 June 2026

This page explains what happens to the information you share when you take one of our surveys. If anything here is unclear, you are welcome to contact us using the details at the bottom.

In short

A few key things to know:

We are LogicalOutcomes, a Canadian non-profit organization. Most of the surveys we run are used to help evaluate and improve programs. We also collect survey data on behalf of partner organizations conducting research studies.
Most of our surveys are anonymous. If a survey can identify you, we tell you in the consent form before you begin.
We store your information on servers in Canada. In some cases, we process parts of the information we collect using tools hosted outside of Canada, on infrastructure that is not Canadian. We only process information outside Canada after it has been stripped of anything that could identify the people who fill in our surveys.
We use AI tools to help make sense of written answers, with safeguards. We never use your information to train AI.
Taking a survey is always your choice, and you can stop at any time.
If you have questions, you can contact our Information Security Officer at privacy@logicaloutcomes.net.

Who we are

LogicalOutcomes is a Canadian non-profit that helps social-purpose organizations measure and improve their work. When you take one of our surveys, we are usually acting on behalf of the organization that asked you to take it, as its data processor. Sometimes we run surveys for our own evaluation projects, and in those cases we decide how the information is used, as the data controller. Either way, we handle your information as described on this page.

What information do we collect?

We collect survey information to support two kinds of work:

Program evaluation projects.
Research studies carried out by or with the organizations we work with.

Depending on the survey, the information may include:

Your answers, which may cover your opinions, experiences, outcomes, and demographic details (for example, gender, age, preferred language).
Technical information such as your IP address or cookies, used to run the survey and keep it secure.
Contact details such as your name or email, but only when they are needed, for example to send you a survey link, follow up with you, or send you an incentive. We always store contact details separately from your answers.

Is the survey anonymous?

Most of our surveys are anonymous. For an anonymous survey:

Your answers are not linked to your name.
When reporting on survey results, we hide small groups (fewer than five responses) so that no one can be identified through use of demographic filters.
We cannot give you a copy of your answers or delete them on request, because we have no way of knowing which answers are yours.

Some surveys are not fully anonymous. For example:

We may use a code to connect your answers to your contact details, such as an email address you give us so we can send an incentive. The code means that we could, if needed, identify you. In these cases, contact details are always stored in a separate table from survey answers, and we only connect these tables when needed for a stated purpose.
A staff member from an organization may help you complete the survey, in which case they will know your answers.
We may share all the information collected in a survey with the organization whose programs we are evaluating, in which case there’s a chance that staff could identify respondents from their answers.

Whenever a survey is not fully anonymous, we explain this in the consent form before you start, including who can see your information and what rights you have.

Why do we collect this information?

We use survey information only to:

Understand and improve programs and services.
Support our research partners to answer their research questions.

We will never sell your information.

How do we use AI?

We use AI tools to help us make sense of written, open-ended answers, for example to group similar comments together and summarize common themes. We do this in two ways, both with safeguards:

Inside our secure Canadian system: We show the AI only the text of your written answers. Your name, contact details, and other information that could be used to identify you are not part of this analysis, and are not exposed to the AI tool.
Using other tools, after removing identifiers: Sometimes we take responses out of our survey platform and analyze them with other AI tools. Before we do, we remove anything that could identify you. We process this de-identified information in Canada whenever we can, or sometimes in the European Union. We also process de-identified data using tools hosted in the US or owned by US companies. Some of our surveys are conducted with partners who insist on processing data in Canada alone; data collected through those surveys is always processed in Canada.

In every case: We never use your information to train AI models, a member of our team reviews the AI’s output before we rely on it, and we tell readers when AI has been used in a report.

Who do we share your information with?

In most cases, we share summarized, anonymized results with the organization that commissioned the survey. In some projects, the organizations we work with may also receive responses at the individual level. When that is the case, we tell you in the consent form. We do not share your contact details unless the consent form says so. We will not sell your information.

Where is your information stored?

All personal information is stored on servers in Canada. The only information that is ever processed outside of Canada is information that has been stripped of anything that could identify you, as described in the AI section above.

How do we keep your information safe?

We protect your information with measures including:

Encryption, both while stored and while being sent.
Multi-factor authentication for staff access.
Role-based permissions, so people can only see what they need to.
Daily backups to Canadian data centres, kept for 30 days.

Access to survey data in our systems, such as LimeSurvey and Azure SQL, is limited to a small number of staff and consultants on an as-needed basis. In Power BI, organizations can only see the data that relates to them.

How long do we keep your information?

For surveys we run for other organizations, we keep the data for 12 months after the project ends, unless the organization asks us to delete it sooner. In those cases, we may provide all or some of the data to the partner organization, to store in accordance with their own privacy policies. When that is the case, we tell you in the consent form.
For surveys we run for our own evaluation and research projects, we keep the data for 12 months after the project ends.
We may keep anonymized, summarized results longer for research synthesis or benchmarking, if the consent form says so.

What are your rights?

For anonymous surveys, we cannot identify your individual answers, so we are not able to retrieve or delete them. For surveys that can identify you, you have the right, under PIPEDA, to:

See the personal information we hold about you.
Ask us to correct it.
Ask us to delete it, subject to legal or contractual limits.

To exercise these rights, contact our Information Security Officer using the details below.

Cookies

Our survey platform, LimeSurvey, uses cookies that are necessary for surveys to work:

To keep your place as you move through the survey.
To prevent duplicate submissions.
To protect against certain security risks.
To remember your settings, such as language.

By taking a survey, you agree to these essential cookies.

If something goes wrong

If there is ever a data breach, we follow a formal plan: We report it immediately to our Information Security Officer, promptly notify affected organizations and individuals, act to limit the impact and prevent it happening again, and meet all legal reporting requirements.

Oversight and audits

We carry out a privacy assessment at the start of each project, and an annual security audit. We have an Information Security Officer responsible for privacy, and we also work with an external Data Privacy Officer.

When we might have to disclose information

We focus on anonymity and avoid collecting sensitive information. In rare cases, we may be legally required to share information with Canadian authorities. If that happens, we follow the law while protecting your privacy as much as we can.

Changes to this policy

We update this policy from time to time, for example when laws or our tools change. We post any changes on this page with a new date.

Questions or concerns

If you have questions about how your survey information is handled, you can:

Contact the organization that asked you to take the survey; their details are in the consent form.
Contact our Information Security Officer directly at privacy@logicaloutcomes.net.