White-Labelling Your Surveys

When a participant opens your survey, the first decision they make is not whether to answer the first question — it is whether they trust the engagement enough to continue. The trust they bring is yours, not the platform's. Your name, your community partner, your funding body, your ethics approval — these are the signals they recognise. The platform's job is to step back and let those signals do the work.

This guide explains what white-labelling means for a research or evaluation survey (which is structurally different from a marketing survey), how the layers fit together, and how to configure them across brand kits, sponsor disclosure, and trust signals.

Why this matters

Most platforms treat white-labelling as a tier upgrade — pay more, remove the platform's logo. That framing misses the point for serious research and evaluation work, where white-labelling is trust architecture, not aesthetic personalisation.

Three things happen if your participants see "Powered by [platform]" or otherwise platform-mediated chrome instead of your organisation:

Your participants disengage. A community member receiving a survey from their community health centre is more likely to participate than the same survey from "Microsoft Forms wearing a CHC logo." The trust they have is in the CHC. A platform that asserts itself competes with that trust and weakens it.

Your sponsors are misattributed. Canadian research surveys typically have multiple legitimate sponsors — a university, community partner organisations, a funder, an ethics board. A single-sponsor platform forces you to leave most of them out, which is methodologically poor practice and may fail your REB or community governance review.

Your data quality suffers. The methodology literature is clear: visible sponsor identity, especially on sensitive topics, raises participation willingness without biasing answers (Edwards/Dillman/Smyth 2014; Singer et al. 2011; Crabtree et al. 2020). Failing to disclose sponsorship is a measurable data-quality cost on the surveys that most need quality data.

For Quebec organisations under Law 25, BC public-sector contracts under FOIPPA, and First Nations research under OCAP, the participant-facing surface is also where you communicate legal-grade commitments about data residency and governance. These are not marketing claims; they are part of your contract with your participants. The platform must let those commitments be visible and credible.

Research surveys are not brand surveys

It helps to be precise about why our approach differs from a marketing-platform pattern.

A brand-feedback survey has one sponsor (the company), one audience (the customer), and one purpose. White-labelling is straightforward: match the company's visual identity. Brand kit settings cover almost all of it.

A research or evaluation survey is structurally multi-party. A typical community-based participatory research project lists a university PI, three to five community partner organisations as co-investigators with veto power over publications, a funder, and an REB approval. A community needs assessment for a community foundation lists the foundation, the regional health authority, and possibly a funder. An independent evaluator's contract may have the community organisation client as the visible sponsor with the funding health authority acknowledged separately.

In each case, the participant's trust is anchored in specific organisations they recognise, not in the platform and often not in any single entity. The Welcome slide must let multiple legitimate sponsors share the surface, with role labels that reflect who actually does what. That is what white-labelling means here.

The four layers

White-labelling on the participant-facing surface operates through four mechanisms. They build on each other; you can configure as much or as little as your context requires.

1. Visual identity

This is what most people picture when they think of white-labelling. It includes:

Logo — your organisation's mark in the chrome
Hero / banner imagery — a visual on the Welcome slide that grounds the survey in a specific community or context
Colour palette — a set of colour pairs that match your brand
Typography — fonts that match your visual identity

The first three matter the most. The hero image in particular is what differentiates a "this came from our CHC" feeling from a "this is a generic web form" feeling. Without a hero image, the Welcome slide reads as institutional regardless of what colours you use.

2. Sponsor disclosure

This is the methodologically-grounded layer, and the layer most platforms get wrong.

For a single-sponsor survey (a company surveying its customers), you set your organisation name and you are done. For everything else, you need a sponsor block that lists multiple organisations with role labels:

Builder — the organisation administering the survey
Co-investigator or Community Partner — organisations that share authority over the research
Funder — funding bodies that require acknowledgement
Research Host — an institutional infrastructure host (often a university)
Ethics Approval — REB or ethics committee identifier where applicable

For example, a CBPR project in an urban Indigenous community might list four organisations as Co-Investigators, the university as Research Host, the federal granting agency as Funder, and the university's research ethics board with a protocol ID. None of these is optional; together they tell the participant that this engagement has community legitimacy, institutional infrastructure, and ethical oversight.

For a community foundation's annual needs assessment, the sponsor block might be just the foundation plus the regional health authority that supplied catchment data. For a CHC's client experience survey, it might be just the CHC.

3. Trust signals

Small commitments on the Welcome slide that reduce participant anxiety and on the Thank-You slide that reaffirm them. They are tiny, but they shape the participant's experience of the engagement.

Time estimate — "About 5 minutes." A respect signal. People who plan the time finish.
Question count — "12 questions." Same purpose.
Sensitivity advisory — "This survey asks about food insecurity" or "Some questions ask about experiences with the health system." Honest disclosure pre-Q1 is good research practice — it moves the moment of "this is uncomfortable" to before the participant invested time, which lowers mid-survey break-off, not raises it.
Data handling commitment — "Your responses are stored in Canada" for Quebec, BC public-sector, or First Nations contexts. For these audiences this is a legal-grade signal, not marketing copy.
Ethics approval reminder — when applicable, a short note like "Approved by the [University] Research Ethics Board, protocol [number]."

Not every survey needs every signal. A staff engagement survey does not need an ethics approval reminder. A community needs assessment of food security probably does need a sensitivity advisory.

4. Close-the-loop messaging

The Thank-You slide is not a confirmation page — it is your last chance to honour the participant's contribution and your first commitment to data return.

Confirmation of submission. That you received their response.
Data destination — "Your responses go to [community partner] and will be analysed jointly with [research team]." For OCAP-aligned research this is required. For Law 25 it is good practice. For all participants it closes the loop on what was committed in consent.
Results delivery commitment — "Results will be shared with the community by [date]." For community-based research and evaluation work, this is the difference between extractive research and reciprocal research.
Optional next-step link — for longitudinal studies, the next wave date or recontact preference. For evaluation work, a link to the program. For community surveys, sharing options for peers.
Sponsor reaffirmation — the same multi-sponsor block from Welcome, recognising contribution.

A "Thank you for your response" page that does not include any of this is a missed opportunity at every layer. For research with Indigenous communities, the absence of data-return commitment language is methodologically problematic.

How configuration layers

The platform organises white-labelling at three scopes, each with a default and overridable downward.

Scope	What it owns	When to set it
Account	Platform-level identity — custom domain, default sender domain, "Powered by" toggle (tier-gated)	Once, when you set up your account
Brand kit (per app)	Visual identity defaults shared across the app's forms — logo, colour palette, typography, default hero image	Once per app (or per project) — sets the default look for every survey
Form	Per-survey overrides and form-specific content — hero image override, sponsor block, sensitivity advisory, data destination, results commitment	Per survey, only when this survey needs to differ from the brand kit default

The pattern is form-primary, kit-fallback. You set up your brand kit once for an app, and every form inherits it. When a specific survey needs a different sponsor mix or hero image, you override at the form level and that wins. Setting a form-level field back to empty falls through to the brand kit default.

This means a community foundation running 12 surveys per year sets the foundation's visual identity once on the brand kit. A particular survey — say, a partnership campaign with a different sponsor — overrides the hero and sponsor block on that one form, and every other form keeps the foundation's defaults.

For an evaluation consultant running multiple Apps for different clients, each App has its own brand kit reflecting that client's identity. Forms in that App inherit the client's identity; the consultant never has to re-configure per survey.

Configuring it

Brand kit defaults

Open Design → Visual style in the form builder. The picker offers prefab kits or a custom brand kit. For a custom kit, set:

Logo — uploaded image, displayed in the participant chrome
Colour pairs — primary and accent colours used across all surfaces
Typography — font family from the curated allowlist
Default hero image — used on Welcome unless a form overrides it
Appearance — card (each question in a tinted surface) or flat (questions in a flow with hairline separators)

If you have multiple Apps under one Account, each App can have its own brand kit. If you are an evaluation consultant or research network, this is how you keep distinct visual identities for distinct clients without re-configuring per survey.

Per-form overrides

Open the Design tab in the form builder — its Welcome, Disclosures, and Thank-You sections hold the per-survey settings. You will find:

Hero image override — uploads a hero specific to this survey, replacing the brand kit default
Sponsor block — add organisations with role labels (Co-Investigator, Community Partner, Funder, Research Host)
Sensitivity advisory — toggle on, write the advisory text
Time estimate override — defaults to an auto-computed estimate based on question types and count; override when you have better information
Data destination text — what happens to responses (rendered on Thank-You)
Results delivery commitment — when and how results will be shared (rendered on Thank-You)
Optional next-step link — title, URL, optional description (rendered on Thank-You)

Each of these is optional. A simple staff survey may need none of them. A community-based participatory research survey will need most of them.

Account settings

Open Account → Settings. You can set:

Custom domain — your participants see your domain instead of the platform's
Default sender domain — outbound email comes from your domain, not ours
"Powered by" footer — visible by default; tier-gated to hide

The "Powered by" footer is the most visible white-label artifact, but it is not the most important one. The sponsor block and trust signals matter more for participation rate and research integrity. Removing the footer is a finishing touch, not the foundation.

Practical examples

An evaluation consultant under contract to a First Nations Health Authority. The consultant's firm is the least important visible entity. Configure: the brand kit reflects the community partner's visual identity, hero image of the partner community (chosen with the community), sponsor block lists the community partner as Builder and FNHA as Funder. Sensitivity advisory if the survey touches health experiences. Data residency commitment ("stored in Canada"). Thank-You: data destination text the community partner authored.

A community health centre running an annual client experience survey. Configure: CHC brand kit as the app default, hero image of the CHC's community, sensitivity advisory if the survey covers mental health or social determinants. Funder slot for the M-SAA / Ontario Health acknowledgement. Thank-You: data destination ("anonymised responses inform our annual report"), results delivery commitment.

An Indigenous community-based participatory research project. Configure: hero image with community-approved imagery (governance committee chooses it), multi-sponsor block listing each community partner organisation as Co-Investigator, the university as Research Host, the granting agency as Funder, REB approval ID. Sensitivity advisory for sections touching racism or systemic exclusion. Thank-You: explicit data return commitment (the community governance committee will receive a copy of the dataset and the results report at study close), reaffirmation of OCAP commitment, results delivery date.

A community foundation's annual needs assessment. Configure: foundation brand kit, hero image of the region or community, sensitivity advisory for sections touching food insecurity or domestic violence, data residency commitment if the foundation operates in Quebec. Thank-You: data destination text the foundation authored, results commitment with the publication date.

A corporate engagement survey. Configure: company brand kit, no sponsor block needed (single-sponsor), no sensitivity advisory needed for a typical engagement survey. Time estimate and question count are still useful. Thank-You: brief acknowledgement, optional link to the next quarterly survey or to the engagement plan.

What this is not

White-labelling is not the same as anonymity. White-labelling makes the survey look like your organisation's; anonymity is a separate decision about whether participant identity is collected. The two work together — an anonymous survey with strong sponsor disclosure and a clear data destination is the gold standard for sensitive research — but they are configured independently.

White-labelling is not the same as the brand kit. The brand kit covers visual identity (logo, colours, fonts, hero). White-labelling extends that into sponsor disclosure, trust signals, and close-the-loop messaging. The sponsor block and data-return commitments are not visual styling — they are content layered on top of it.

White-labelling is not a marketing exercise. The text on these surfaces — sensitivity advisories, data residency statements, data destination commitments — is part of your contract with your participants. Treat it as carefully as you treat your consent text.

Summary

White-labelling is how you make sure your participants see you, not the platform — and that is what protects participation rate, data quality, and research integrity. Configure your brand kit once for visual identity defaults. Use per-form overrides for sponsor disclosure, sensitivity advisories, and close-the-loop messaging where the survey context calls for it. The platform's job is to step back and let your trust signals do the work.

If you are unsure whether your survey context calls for a particular layer, the question to ask is: would a participant who knows nothing about the platform recognise the entities responsible for this engagement and the commitments they have made about my data? If yes, you are configured well. If not, the gap is your next configuration step.