The 'Developing Your Board Project', conducted by the Australian Centre For Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies (CPNS) at Queensland University of Technology, is developing both qualitative and quantitative evaluation tools for use in evaluating and benchmarking performance of nonprofit boards. These instruments are being framed for the Australian context and will be made available free of charge to nonprofit organisations. Nonprofit boards / management committees will be able to use them to assess and re-assess their performance over time and benchmark against similar nonprofit boards.

Pilot research indicates that board members and officers think about their governance in terms of five different areas: strategy, risk and compliance, oversight of the governance system, oversight and management of the chief executive and providing access to resources.

The research team is now looking for cooperation from a large number of Foundation and Not for Profit Boards to validate the diagnostic surveys that the initial pilot research produced.  Participants will be asked to complete online surveys to generate a governance effectiveness report for those Boards and validation data to refine the Board Effectiveness Tool.

Once the surveys have been fully developed it will eventually be possible for Not for Profit Boards to benchmark their own performance against that of comparable Boards and to assess their own performance over time.

Please contact Succurro if you are interested in having your board evaluated.