Some could be forgiven for wondering why anyone would be willing to spend 44 minutes filling out a survey if there was no reward at the end.

Unlike the more skeptical in our ranks, we believe that this is what amateur radio is all about. It's about sharing our knowledge freely. It's about helping others to know more about the practice and about their own preferences.

So no, you get no reward for filling out the Census. You get nothing tangible by spending an average of 44 minutes to complete all six parts. All you get is the answers, everyone's answers, for free. You get insight into the practice and you get to contribute to its future. We think that's reward enough.

The good news is that you do not have to fill it all in one go. You can continually save drafts (don't forget that even if you save drafts, you have to hit 'submit' at the end of each part).

Thank you for shaping the future of amateur radio and doing so simply because it's the right thing to do.

We do not, and will not, ever, sell data. This is an open source project meant to support the amateur radio community. It is a public service offered by Ham Community. Also, we ask you for only four bits of information, your legal amateur radio call sign, an email address, a first name and a password to protect the first three. Additionally, for security purposes, we store your originating IP address but we purge them monthly. That's it, nothing else. We treat your privacy the way we want ours to be treated.

At the bottom of every page on the site, you will find multiple privacy related links including our cookie policies, an impressum for our Austrian and German friends, and all of our privacy compliances including GDPR for the EU and CCPA for California, among others.

The founders of this project are like you, concerned with privacy and security issues. While we can never be perfect or fully shielded from nefarious actors, but we definitely we strive to do so diligently. Our data is here too!

No. Absolutely, unequivocally, not. You do not have to donate. Can you donate? Yes, absolutely. Will we appreciate it? Yes we will. This Census is a major commitment and requires both time and actual payments to operate. We are doing it because we want to and expect no support. But you're welcome to offer it and we will, believe us, appreciate it. Know that your donations will be used exclusively for the operation of the Census, notably server expenses, software licenses, and whatever additional paid staff contribute to the effort.

Like we said, this is an open-source, free-to-contribute, free-to-use project. All we are after is good data that is useful to us all. The only way we could think of to encourage people to complete the six parts is to force them to fill out the six parts entirely before gaining access to the results section. In the words of our friend Al, KN3U, "It was a lot more fun to complete than I had originally thought it would be; I actually enjoyed it."

Absolutely! We look forward to those suggestions. Just hop over to Ham Community and visit the Ham Census Q&A forum. Please note that the suggestions forum is only open to those who have completed the six parts of the Census and registered on Ham Community as members.