How long does the assessment take?
About five to six minutes. There are 19 questions total: fifteen forced-choice (pick the one most like you and the one least like you) and four short rating-scale questions interspersed.
Is this really anonymous?
Yes. There is no login, no email, no account creation. Your IP address is never stored, only a one-way hash with a per-deployment salt, so even an operator with full database access cannot recover the original IP. The 16-character session token in the result URL is the only handle on your data; if you do not save the link, even we cannot find your result again. Read the full details in our privacy notice.
Do I need to give an email address?
No. We deliberately do not collect email addresses. The MyImpactStyle project is research, not a marketing funnel. After your result you can copy the URL or download a PDF; that is your record. There is no follow-up email and no way for us to send you one.
Who funded this?
The project is funded by Better Impact, a volunteer-management software company headquartered in Hamilton, Ontario, with a 25-year history in the volunteer-engagement field. Better Impact funds the research, but the framework and the published findings are governed independently. Better Impact does not control which questions are asked or how the data is interpreted.
Is this related to DISC, MBTI, or 16Personalities?
No. The MyImpactStyle framework is volunteer-native: built specifically for the volunteer context, not adapted from a general personality model. The scoring math borrows the ipsative (forced-choice) approach from DISC because it is well-validated and resistant to faking, but the underlying six styles are derived from the volunteer-motivation literature, not from corporate personality work. We are not affiliated with DISC, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Big Five, StrengthsFinder, or 16Personalities.
What is the science behind it?
The framework re-organizes the existing volunteer-motivation literature (particularly the Volunteer Functions Inventory tradition by Clary et al., 1998) into six recognizable styles. The hidden Bridging Index draws on intergroup- contact theory (Allport 1954, expanded by Linda Tropp and others). The scoring model is ipsative with a mathematically symmetric question bank that ensures no design-level bias. Pre-launch, the engine has to clear a 1,000-trial Monte Carlo simulation. See the methodology page for the full design and the validation results.
Why six styles, not five or seven?
The volunteer-motivation literature converges on roughly six factors. We tested the framework against five-style and seven-style alternatives during design and the six-style version best preserved interpretability without sacrificing coverage of the underlying factor space. Each style maps cleanly onto one or two academic motivation factors while remaining recognizable enough that a coordinator can identify the style of a volunteer they have just met.
Can my answers or my style change over time?
Almost certainly, yes. Volunteer identity is dynamic. The framework explicitly anticipates that respondents move between styles over a lifetime of service. Many Anchors started as Champions; many Catalysts evolved out of Companion roles. We expect test-retest reliability of about 80% for primary type over a one-week window; over years, drift is the rule, not the exception. The research roadmap includes a longitudinal cohort to study the typical trajectories.
What is the Bridging Index, and why is it shown as "Connection Reach"?
The Bridging Index measures cross-difference contact: how much your volunteer experience has put you across age, background, language, or belief from the people you serve. It is a 0-to-100 score derived from four short Likert items. We surface it as "Connection Reach" in the user-facing result because the academic name is jargony; the underlying construct is the same. Bridging Index is the only research dimension shown to the respondent.
Why do you collect demographics? They are optional, right?
Yes, completely optional. The five demographic questions plus one open-text reflection appear after the result and are presented with a prominent Skip button. They make the research dataset roughly ten times more useful for cross-cohort analysis (e.g., does volunteer style differ by tenure, by region, by organizational type?), but no individual response is required and no result is gated on completion.
How do I save or share my result?
Your result is at a unique URL like /result/XXXX-XXXXXXXX. Bookmark that link; it is the only way to find the same result again later. We show a "Save your link" prompt the first time you reach a result for this reason. To share it, copy the URL or use the LinkedIn or Email share buttons on the result page; you can also download a personalized 9-page PDF Field Guide.
Can I delete my data?
Yes. Each result page includes a deletion endpoint that removes your session, your answers, your result, and your demographics from the database within 24 hours. Because the data is already anonymous, deletion is irreversible. Once gone, it cannot be reconstructed.
Can my organization use this with our team?
Yes. The assessment is free and open forever. There is nothing to license. A coordinator can share the quiz URL with their volunteers; each person gets their own anonymous result. We are working on a coordinator team-link feature for v1.1 that will let an organization see aggregate (anonymized, minimum-cohort-size-gated) style distribution across their volunteer base, but no individual results.
Where will the research findings be published?
The first major output, The State of Volunteer Service, is targeted for late-2026 publication. Subsequent outputs (per-cohort findings, longitudinal analyses, methodological refinements) will be published openly. See the research page for the current timeline.
I work in academia / press / a foundation. Can I cite or partner?
Yes, we welcome both. The framework is permissively licensed and the eventual research outputs will be openly available. For citation, the canonical reference is the research methodology page and (once published) The State of Volunteer Service. For research partnerships or press inquiries, reach out via the contact details on the About page.
Still curious? Take it for yourself.
Five to six minutes. Anonymous. No email needed. The fastest way to see how the assessment works is to take it.
Take the quiz→A research initiative of Better Impact.