Two very cool things happened yesterday: first we moved into our new offices in a historic building in downtown Seattle; and second, all the two dozen non-profits that live in our building threw a massive annual open house party spanning 14 floors with hundreds of people!

It’s clear that we’re housed in a building that has a great sense of community and purpose, and we wanted to give back to the festivities. With no time to throw our own little party, we instead decided to sponsor a contest to give away $200 to the one cause that got the most votes. But how to collect those votes in a huge party with lots of people?

That’s were Precision Polling came in. In less than 10 minutes we designed and recorded a survey that people could dial into to vote for their favorite org. We also created a poster to advertise the contest (see below), and gave it to the non-profits to post at their parties (they loved it).

As the evening went by, people dialed in to cast their votes. We could see who was leading in real-time from our iPhones, and at the end of the night could instantly announce the winner: GroundWire, a non-profit that helps other non-profits use technology to reach their goals. Congrats guys!

If you’re setting up a contest, or organizing an event where you want live participation, think about using Precision Polling. It takes minutes to setup, and at 10 cents a minute, it would take 100 calls for you to get charged just $10.