Data & Impact for the Not-For-Profit Board

Is your board focusing more on compliance than impact? 

Is it engaged or disengaged with critical organisational matters? 
What questions does it ask of its executive team and what evidence does it require in dealing with the response? 
Is the board using data to make impact-led decisions? 

Quite rightly, much has been written and spoken about our compliance duties as board members in recent years. And we still have a way to go yet to give ourselves, and our stakeholders, comfort that we have appropriate systems and processes in place to manage data safety and security.

But what about your board’s key function - to deliver on the organisation’s mission? In our experience, most board’s are not using good, reliable data to make impact-driven decisions.

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Data checklist for Boards

A Board should take these actions to improve its use of data and enhance its performance -

• Dedicate parts of each board meeting to review data and evidence on progress against program objectives, including key contract performance and risks;
• Identify one or two Board members who can take a lead role in advancing the data agenda in the organisation - this could be through a Quality and Risk Sub-Committee;
• Request a Board 'dashboard' with relevant metrics to track performance against strategic goals and to monitor risks;
• Interrogate the organisation’s claims of impact for key cohorts. Ask about the quality of the evidence and how would outcomes compare across different programs;
• Review the impact data in relation to the organisation’s ‘opportunity cost’ - Ask if there are other areas the organisation could apply its resources to increase impact;
• Use long-run impact data (through some form of data ‘deep-dive’) to help set the annual strategic direction, or use it as needed for mission-critical issues that may arise;
• Make sure data is used in the regular performance review process - the Board's but also the CEO's;
• Set data maturity and literacy goals for the organisation and staff, tracking skills, data quality and use of data by frontline staff;
  

​A Board can get its own advice from a specialist data analyst in consultation with the CEO to design its dashboards and ensure it receives the right data to assist in making decisions. This is a step in the wider 'Data Impact Journey' that we recommend to clients.

​Getting to data maturity

If you find that your board is in the bottom-left quadrant - then you may well have 'ticked the compliance boxes' but the lack of engagement from the board in the delivery of impact is an ongoing risk. Getting the board to focus on quality data for impact is a critical next step in managing this risk and building organisational resilience.

Those boards in the top-left quadrant feel pretty comfortable with the impact that their organisation is having. However, the risk here is that the funding flows stop when a level of evidence is required that the organisation can’t provide. The organisation’s reputation is on the line.

The bottom-right quadrant is a strong place to be. The fundamentals are in place and you have an engaged and inquisitive board. Now is the time to build your organisation’s data maturity.