Are you a member of a fraternity or sorority whose elections always seem to be a hassle? From hand counting paper ballots to voting and re-voting because members missed the voting meeting, sorority and fraternity elections can be overwhelming, stressful, and disorganized. Luckily for you, AssociationVoting is built to make your election season simple, effective, and efficient! That’s right, we can even support your sorority or fraternity’s needs! How can AssociationVoting best support your organization? As a recent graduate and member of a sorority, our Marketing Intern, Avery, shares the ways that AV could have been used during her chapter’s election season.
Throughout my college experience, I voted in many elections for my chapter. Witnessing my chapter presidents, risk managers, and advisors struggle to hand count paper ballots made me wonder if there was a better way for us to be voting. Using an online voting software would have made our elections more efficient and less stressful, even allowing us to vote from home if we couldn’t make that week’s chapter meeting.
Many chapters have varying rules and regulations surrounding their voting practices, but AssociationVoting’s flexible configuration allows you to support your specific voting rules. For example, AV ensures top-tier security and conveniency by enforcing a one member-one vote system. Voters are required to identify with a member number or other unique identifier ensuring they cannot submit multiple ballots. This feature guarantees a fair voting process for candidates and eliminates stress from members managing the election.
With AssociationVoting, your organization can also run a hybrid election with the same one member-one vote features as in-person elections. A hybrid feature would have been a game changer for my chapter as we constantly struggled to meet minimum voter requirements due to members not attending the voting meeting for a number of reasons. With AV’s hybrid election feature, some members can vote by paper ballot, while the rest can vote electronically from the convenience of their cell phones either before or during the meeting to ensure quorum amounts are met. For paper ballot users, once voters fill in the ballots, members mail their ballots or drop them at the chapter house, and we include them in the final count. Click here to read more about AssociationVoting’s hybrid election feature!
Voting is just half of what goes into Executive Board elections. My organization had an extensive nominations process that occurred prior to members even getting the chance to vote. The nominations process was lengthy and tedious. AssociationVoting offers an Awards and Nominations feature to ensure this process is less time consuming, but still accurate and reflects the preferences of the chapter. This feature even allows nominations and voting to occur in the same meeting, within minutes! Once the nomination results go through, the voting manager for your organization can easily create a ballot for members to vote on within minutes. Click here for more information about AssociationVoting’s Awards and Nominations feature!
Besides Executive Board elections, AssociationVoting can also support Approvals and Motions, Bylaw and Budget Amendment/Propositions, Awards, and more! For my organization, we conducted elections and votes multiple times throughout the year. AssociationVoting’s General Meeting Voting feature is the perfect fit for budget and bylaw change voting, allowing voters to cast their ballots from their devices. This feature is also useful for impromptu voting needs that may arise throughout your meetings. Whether you’re voting on what location members want to hold their next philanthropy event at or you’re voting for the next term’s Executive Board, AssociationVoting has you covered. Even better, if your ballot doesn’t pass with the first vote, your organization can easily make changes and allow members to re-cast their votes within the same meeting! Our Annual Election Subscription allows for an unlimited number of non-concurrent elections. That means that your organization can cover all your voting needs for one price!
All in all, there are so many ways AssociationVoting could have helped alleviate stress throughout my collegiate sorority experience. To learn more about AssociationVoting, email sales@associationvoting.com or click here to start your free trial TODAY!