Blockchain for nonprofit organizations: Ecsite holds e-voting using Polys platform

Ecsite, the European network of science centers and museums, chose Polys, a blockchain-based voting system powered by Kaspersky, to make a collective choice at its recent annual meeting. Nonprofit organizations (NPOs) are increasingly interested in such voting methods, and Ecsite is among the first to shift towards this kind of digital decision making.

Voting is an essential part of NPOs and allows every members’ opinion to be heard. However, NPOs often find organizing a vote problematic as it is difficult to prepare the required documents or find personnel to manage the process. Whilst e-voting addresses these issues, it cannot assure security and transparency of the process, which are critical when dealing with sensitive topics such as budgeting or selecting a governing body. 

As an answer to this, Polys offers a blockchain-based platform which allows online polling without the threat of votes being rigged or a manipulation of the results. The decentralized nature of the technology implies that data is stored in blocks on every device that is used during the voting process, making it impossible for malefactors to interfere with the results of a vote. 

Ecsite boasts a network of more than 325 organizations, including science centers, museums, research bodies, festivals, universities, planetariums, as well as foundations and learned societies. The Annual General Meeting (AGM) was held on June 7. At the event, they had to decide on six topics: approval of activity report for 2018, financial report for 2018, budget for 2019, membership fees for 2020, election of the President and election of the board of trustees. To streamline the process, the organization held voting on online platform Polys. At the beginning of the meeting, Ecsite members received a QR code, which led them to a web page. They scanned it with a smartphone camera and logged in with their unique code. Those who did not have smartphones were able to vote at a voting station.

In total, up to 90 members casted their votes, depending on the topic being voted on. The results were announced immediately after the voting was completed. It saved Ecsite a lot of time during the event and avoided a potentially stressful situation. Previously, the organization had traditionally ran elections by undertaking votes through paper ballots, which required at least four team members to count. Other questions were addressed by a show of hands.

“The Polys team helped us take our Annual General Meeting to the next level with their user-friendly, reliable and secure voting system. The system allowed for smoother, faster and more efficient voting.” says Catherine Franche, Executive Director of Ecsite.

“For NPOs, voting often took a lot of time and effort. For example, manual counting of ballots becomes especially irritating when happens at a conference or meeting, as it requires attendees to wait for the final results. Such organizations need a secure and easy-to-use tool to allow members to express their opinions and know the winners without delay. We already have several requests from other NPOs that would like to learn more how our solution can be used. We congratulate Ecsite as it is a pioneering force among NPOs by choosing to vote on blockchain,” comments Evgeny Barkov, Business Development Manager at Polys.