By Peter Manzetti
I have the privilege of serving on the board (and as a volunteer) of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northern New Jersey (BBBS-NJ), a flourishing nonprofit serving the mentoring needs of approximately 1,000 children. I am also privileged to serve with a diverse and dedicated group of board members who oversees the activities of an extremely dedicated, professional and competent management team.
As a board, we take seriously our legal responsibilities—i.e., our duties of care, loyalty and obedience, as well as our fiduciary role in maintaining oversight of the organization's finances. We also appreciate that everyone involved—our board members and the BBBS-NJ management team—has a day job. Consequently, every interaction with BBBS-NJ senior management needs to be as efficient as possible and provide the maximum contribution to the health and well-being of the organization we serve.
The Performance Dashboard
As a board, we felt that management's traditional means of communicating financial, operational, and performance data and information, while satisfactory, could be enhanced. This enhancement would have multiple goals—to increase our ability to efficiently monitor those activities most important to us; to promote discussion of what's working and opportunities for improvement; and to free up time for more in-depth discussion of strategic imperatives. Not surprisingly, the CEO and her senior management team felt the same way.
In the fourth quarter of 2014, a subcommittee of board members with strategic/business planning and performance reporting experience was formed to work with the CEO and her senior management team to devise a performance dashboard approach to reporting. The directive from the Board's Executive Committee was to:
- Provide a simple and visual representation of the key measures important to the organization; and
- Make reference to relevant budget/forecast, historical and benchmark performance.
The prototype dashboard was delivered to the Executive Committee and full board this past January and received widespread approval. As a Board, we are all acutely aware that our dashboard represents a living, breathing document that will continue to evolve, consistent with the organization we serve and the reporting objectives that we have set out. To this point there's already been some initial discussion to consider reporting on critical legal or policy requirements, e.g., compliance with performing background checks of potential mentors, etc.
Our performance dashboard is organized in a manner most meaningful to our organization and mission, and includes the following types of measures:
While the graphs, tables, and charts are contained in the BBBS-NJ performance dashboard, please note that BBBS-NJ and BBBS national data points have been removed.
Impact Measures
Reflect the important measures for carrying out our organization's mission, i.e., establishing and maintaining mentoring relationships with children at risk, in compliance with national BBBS match support-reporting guidelines.
Click image to enlarge
Click image to enlarge
Foundational Measures
Reflect the important financial and efficiency measures affecting our ability to sustain the organization and efficiently deliver our services, e.g., revenue and expense performance, expense allocation, cost per child served, partnerships formed with community and affinity groups, sponsors, etc.
Conclusion
At BBBS-NJ, we have found the development of the performance dashboard to be an incredibly worthwhile experience and value-added reporting tool. It has provided the board and the senior management team the opportunity to think through and agree upon what's really important to the organization's ability to satisfy and sustain its mission, and to focus our dialogue on what's working and what needs improvement. The time and effort to develop a meaningful dashboard, while not trivial, was well worth it. So much so, that I'm reminded of the old adage, "It's not just the destination, but the journey that's important."
I would encourage each of you—whether a nonprofit board member or member of your association's senior management team—to give some thought as to how a performance dashboard could benefit your organization.
Peter is an experienced management consultant and business analyst with expertise in program and project management, organization analysis and performance measurement, productivity and process improvement, business systems development and implementation, and quality management.
Peter Manzetti is Director of the Governance, Risk and Compliance Services Practice at Friedman LLP. He can be reached at (212) 842-7534 or through their website at www.friedmanllp.com. In addition to his volunteer work with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northern New Jersey, he is a Board Member of Clothes for Kids' Sake.