Episode 253: The Why and How to Create Board Level Metrics and Dashboards
As Mister Rogers once said, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood. Right here on this edition of around with Randall. I want to talk about boards in our conversation today in my 21st century classroom. Talking a little bit about how we measure them. Now, in the past, in the different podcasts and in if you can read them as well, because we do the verbiage or the transcripts of each one of them.
We've talked about orientation in episode 13. We've talked about the idea of governance, from an appropriate, appropriate standard and what should be done in episode 68 176. We even talked about creating a formalized position of governance to ensure good things. The right things are done. Episode 178. We've talked about selecting boards and some processes. That's episode 197, and we've even talked about how boards need to be more strategic and less operational and how to do that.
In episode two, 24. But today, I want to jump in to how we evaluate our boards and really put the onus back on our boards to own their own measurements. What we know is that our boards can drive a lot of the organizational, not only structure, but best practice, and that if we measure what we're trying to accomplish just in life in general, a little on our boards, we end up finding out that we're more likely to accomplish those things that we put numbers to.
And so let's talk starting at the top about measurement. And then we'll kind of leap in to the idea of the concept of how to introduce this. If it's not something that's normalized. And then the final piece is what you should measure. And I actually probably think about this much differently. May give you something to think about as a part of the larger conversation you might have with your board, or if you're a board member with your fellow board members.
We talk about measuring data in a number of ways. I've talked about it in numerous different contexts. The one I tend to do most often is why we do metrics for gift officers. And what we find out is, is that when we measure things as at a top, we actually have a stronger sense of accomplishment. We tend to get things done, but there are four important things that we should consider when we look at the idea of measurement and why boards should consider this.
And you can take this back to your board and say, here's why I think we have to be more diligent around the measurements that we're trying to bring into our sense of being or sense of purpose. The first is, is that the data that we have, if we measure correctly, helps us to make decisions rather than judgments. All too often we have a lot of opinions about different things, and I've learned that opinions most often don't have a lot of data to support them.
I'm not saying that makes them invaluable or wrong, but if we're going to have a group of people trying to make some kind of uniform directional decision, I'd rather have people doing it based on the data than a whole lot of opinions. And maybe it's only 1 or 2 from people who seem to think they know, but maybe actually, don't we?
When we operate without metrics about data, we tend to do the I'll call it research or we tend to make our decisions based upon anecdotal stories, one offs that may be construed as, hey, this is what happens all the time, and it may not be. The second thing is, is that emotion comes more into it. And for a board strategy, I'm not saying there shouldn't be passion or emotion for the mission, but we talk about strategy and certainly decisions that a board is likely to make.
We should concentrate more on the factual rather than emotion. The second thing is, is that when we do this correctly, we can pick metrics, data, measurements that align with our mission. What are we actually trying to accomplish? I would add not just mission, but strategy. While there may be some metrics and we'll get into this in the last part of today's conversation and classroom discussion around what you measure, there may be some baseline things that are always measured.
You may have one year where you want to add a measurement or remove a measurement based upon the strategy initiatives that the organization is trying to accomplish, to highlight or to prioritize or deprioritized things that maybe don't need as much attention. And so that measurable impact can be determined based upon the needs of that year. And there may be, again, some baseline things which we'll talk about here in a few moments.
The third is, is that when we have measurements, we create a sense of trust and accountability. And isn't that what we want with our boards? Isn't that what we want with our organizations? Number one, trust that is internal because I've learned you can't have trust. That's external meaning with donors, the community, if you don't have it internally, sophisticated donors who can sniff a sense of discontent or issue or misalignment.
It's amazing how great their sense of smell is. And so the first thing to think about in terms of our boards is that, number one, they need to have a sense of trust with each other before they ever get into the conversation about, do other people trust the organization or the board itself as a representation of what the mission should be?
All this is to say is that transparent data creates a sense of confidence, and if we measure it and have how we do this in a moment about what our board members and our leadership are doing, we tend to talk about it more vibrantly and with a lot more confidence. The last piece is, is that if we measure what we're trying to accomplish and there's a challenge, we can course correct because we have data in real time, and we can only do that if we know what to measure, if we have a sense of a bigger picture of what our boards are trying to accomplish, both collectively and individually.
This could be as grand as our strategy is not the focus of our conversations at the board level, because when we look at our metrics of our board, we're not doing what we should because we can see the whole or even more individualistic. It can be a board member who's not living up to their particular agreement with the organization and with their fellow board members about what they agree to do.
And so all four of these are reasons that these are critical conversations to have internally, whether it's making more informed, data driven decisions, whether it's aligning the impact, what we're trying to accomplish with the mission and with obviously, than the data that we're looking or the accountability pieces we're looking for, that we're building trust internally than building it externally.
And finally, that we can allow ourselves the opportunity for course correction. Which brings us to the challenge of what happens if we've been doing this for a while as a board and we don't have the metrics or we have very loose metrics. So I think there are four things that we can do here, another four that would help us build this in.
I would advocate taking this a step at a time. Notice I didn't say slow. It could be fast. But I think the four steps that we're talking about here need to be done in this order. Because if you try to do too much or do them out of order, you're going to get some resistance from those that may be incredibly valuable board members, but don't see change as a positive and as a result, sometimes hijacked when change comes too quickly to almost anything, let alone being a board member.
So what are the four things? Number one, I believe you should start small and relevant. Pick a small number of core metrics that seem reasonable, and we'll get what those opportunities for measurement are here. In the last part of our classroom conversation today. But if you try to do too much, we're going to measure 15 things. Whoa. Jason Jennings is an author who talks about strategic planning and organizational behavior in a number of books, and I love his theories.
One of the theories he talks about is the idea of small bats, and that you can only execute what you have as a reservoir of resources. And sometimes resources is not just money. In this case, it's not money at all. It's time. It's attention. It's competition with other things and people, board members lives, their family, their businesses, their profession, whatever that might be.
Too much might signal, I don't want to do this. And so what we want to do is do a small amount. And the second part of that is, is we want to tie those directly to the strategic initiatives that we're trying to accomplish. I'll talk more about that about three minutes. The second thing is, is that we have to frame this in the right way.
So we've got a few number of things. But the reason we're doing this is this is better governance, not micromanagement of individual board members. If board members feel like they can't express themselves, if they can't be themselves, then what happens is one of two things. They come and they don't say anything, or they just get off. And so the idea of clarifying what these measurements are is critically important and most importantly, why we're doing it.
It's for the benefit of the mission of the organization and to improve the board's governance in achieving those goals. The third is it should align or collaborate with leadership. If your board's metrics don't align with the organization's metrics, then it's like you're having two organizations or two separate conversations. The alignment is important. So what you're asking your staff to do in the Advancement Development Foundation office should generally be similar things.
We'll talk about this in a moment that you're asking your board to do. And in doing so, what you can do is align all of these into those strategic initiatives that will drive organizational success.
The final piece is how to demonstrate or show this. I love great dashboards. And so if we're not showing dashboards that clearly and easily articulate, this was our goal. Here's why it was a priority. Here's the metric, here's our target, and here's where we're at currently. And I'll repeat those. What's the goal. What's the priority or what's the specific metric.
What is our target. What's our goal for the year. And where are we at currently. Then how in the world do you show board members, individually or collectively in a general board meeting or committee, what everybody's accomplishing? And I'm not saying you post everybody's individual metrics, which we'll talk about here in a moment for board member Randall. Board member Mary.
Board member Margie, board member J. Collectively.
So those four things getting people to start small, getting the organization to start small. Number two to frame is governance, not micromanagement. To three, to collaborate with the leadership and their goals. And number four to have dashboards and by the way, teach a literacy on what the dashboards mean, which bring us brings us to our tactical piece. What is it you should be measuring?
What do you want in these dashboards? Well, a lot of dashboards are these kinds of categories or measurements. And I'm not saying don't measure them, but I'm going to articulate maybe a different way of looking at it.
A lot of times it's about financial health. So operating margin, cash on hand, fundraising, ROI, things of that nature, fundraising performance, things like donor retention, acquisition give sides, engagement metrics, meeting board level giving, volunteer hours, event participation, and finally mission outcomes. Those may be program outputs. People serve things of that nature. I have to say most of those I'm okay with.
That's really not what I want to talk about today. Those are should be things that the organization, if you're not doing in dashboards, comes out in the regular reporting from the organization, the financial hole, something we should all be aware of. The fundraising and what's going on is something we all should be aware of. The engagement metrics, we'll need to talk more about that here in a second.
And then mission outcomes. How many people are we serving or whatever it is we do? I think those are too generic and missed the point. Yes, they're important. Yes, they should be kept, but not the point of what we're talking about here today. Nor does it bring better board participation. The kinds of dashboards and their metrics that I like to see, in addition to what we just discussed here a moment ago, are very specific.
When we talk about board level engagement, what are we actually talking about? So the first thing is has every board member given. And do we have a chart that shows 12 of 18 have give it. We're missing six. And I'm not putting the names up on a big PowerPoint. These six are bad people, but I want everyone to see how we're doing.
I think that's a minor involvement. Remember back in some of the basic, best practices of boards, episode 68 and 176, I talk about a new way of looking at board involvement, not based upon the financial success, but on how board members are owning relationships. Introductions. So do you, from a board level engagement perspective, have a dashboard that says how many person introductions has each board member made?
Or on average, each board member is responsible for three per year. And so we have 20 board members. At 60, we're at 36, and we got three months left, which means we're not far enough along. Also, are they hosting small private receptions? We want those 20 board members, each one to host one reception in their home or somewhere where they invite people from their community, their world or social network to better understand why this organization means so much to the board member and hear more about the organization as a whole.
Have we done 20 of those? If the 20 was the goal and let's say it's now here, October, November, we're at eight and it's not looking good. Have they attended and more importantly, brought the right people to the events that you might be having? I think events bringing dollars, as I've talked about many times, $0.50 on the dollar from an ROI eye to 2 to 1, not great.
But if you use them for multiple purposes, not only the marketing and the communication of the mission of the organization, but for cultivation or qualification in bringing new people in, they become much more valuable. If everybody was supposed to bring three guests, 20 board members, are we at 60?
Those are participation engagement things I'd like to measure having a dashboard for each one of those. And then it's basic things like attending board meetings that they're an active keyword, being active member of the of the of a committee on the board that they are have completed their own evaluation of themself. Have they completed their evaluation of the board as a whole?
And if you have 20 board members and our goals 90%, that means and we're now at the end of year to 18, do both of those.
I think that the metrics around the basic financial health of the organization, fundraising performance, certainly mission outcomes, who we serve. I'm all for that. But it misses the point of what we need our boards to be doing. And this is where we can use the metrics of individual responsibility and not, again, put up everybody's individual. But the collective board becomes critically important.
And this is why you need a simple dashboard 1 to 2 pages color coded indicated meaning green, yellow, red, green means we're in great shape. Yellow means we got a problem. Red means we got a problem. We're behind comparing it to last year, showing trends over time, and trying to avoid spreadsheets of raw data because that gets too detailed.
Too many questions. I like building these in Excel. You don't have to like go invest a ton of money in this. We all have Excel or I believe spreadsheets are from Google, if that's what you use that make this really easy to do. And I've shown one for the examples I was just talking about to a number of boards that I deal with and they go, well, that looks pretty simple Mike.
Yep. The key is are your goals aligning with your responsibilities with the strategy? Do you have dashboards to show it, and are we showing our progress as we go? If we thought about these responsibilities and how to measure them, and then how to measure and show their success or failure as the year went along? What we know is, is that if you show it and there's a red meeting we're behind, you're going to get some board members attention and they're going to ask questions like, why are we behind?
What's the problem? How do we fix this?
The challenge is, is that I think sometimes these basic thoughts of quick dashboards, maybe you have one page for the financial health, the fundraising performance and the mission outcomes, and a second dashboard for the individual responsibilities for the board members and the collective. Are they meeting goal whatever the goals were for making introductions, carrying a portfolio, obviously making their gift, holding private receptions, attending events, but bringing people, introducing new people into those processes or into those opportunities.
Are they a member of a committee? Are they attending, and are they doing their evaluations? Just basic things. What you would get, I believe, because I've seen it work time and time and time again is more ownership of the board, by the board of the board's individual and collective responsibilities.
This is not difficult and it needs to come. If you're maybe the exact director, president, vice chair, some staff member. Yes, you can drive the conversation, but the decision to do this has to come from within the board. You have to have a board members willing to say, we don't know how to evaluate in the moment how we're doing, because we've not clearly identified all the things we should be doing, and we're not measuring it and showing it as we go.
You can find that board member, chair of the board, Governance committee, chair, Governance Committee, who can begin to introduce small parts of this and build into it. What you will find is a more engaged board, I promise you, and in doing so, elevate your foundation, your nonprofit, your, your organization to much higher levels of engagement.
Don't forget to check out the blogs at How It Bleeds. Be two per week. Write on a whole ton of things, from goings on in the philanthropy world, to leadership, to how the government is affecting what we do. Two things that I see with my own life and how it pertains to being a good professional or a good leader.
Hallett. Philanthropy. Backslash blogs. You get RSS feed, come right to you. If you'd like to, you can reach out to me a podcast of how it's linked to be.com. We have a topsy turvy world right now. It's not very smooth. I'm not saying it's upside down, but there's a bump or two every day. We read about it, we feel it, it affects what we're doing and part of what we have to do.
And I hope you understand this, feel it and are willing to embrace it is to kind of push through the fog, push through the noise, to be the one part of my favorite saying the old Gaelic verbiage. Some people make things happen, some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wondered what happened. We need to push through to be people who make things happen internally and externally.
Are nonprofits to be an organization that makes things happen because we got a lot of people and a lot of parts of our community that are wondering what happens. And you fall into these categories. A lot of times it's choice. And when it's not, that's when we need help. Nonprofits and philanthropy is all about making the world a better place.
It doesn't mean money. It means love of mankind, love of humankind. And in doing so, when we embrace this idea of being someone, as you are choosing to do today, tomorrow, the next day, to be someone who makes things happen, you're affecting people who are wondering what happened, and I hope you understand that and know the value that it delivers, not only for your community, but for you and what you see yourself as in this professional life.
I'll see you the next time, right back here on the next edition of Around with Randall. And don't forget, make it a great day.