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Why Boards Matter: The Relationship Between Strong Boards and

Organizational Success

© TCC Group, 2015

Julie Simpson Director of Nonprofit Strategy

and Capacity Building TCC Group

Charles Gasper Senior Consultant

TCC Group

Anne Wallestad President & CEO

BoardSource

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Quick Question

Is there a relationship between Board effectiveness and organizational effectiveness?

Why do we think there is a relationship?

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How do we find out (with data) if there is a relationship?

We used the Core Capacity Assessment Tool (CCAT)

• Database includes: 5,202 administrations between 2004 and 2015

• We used: Sample of 855 organizations

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What is the CCAT?

4 Core Capacities

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What is the CCAT?

Lifecycle Stages • Core Program Development • Infrastructure Development • Impact Expansion

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How we use the CCAT

Strategy

Assess the capacities necessary to achieve strategic goals

Capacity Building

Identification of organizational needs of both individual nonprofits and cohorts

Evaluation

Capacity to support efforts

Impact of capacity building efforts

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Our Question: Do Board capacities influence organizational capacities?

Our Method:

Step 1:

Correlations

Step 2:

Develop Hypotheses

Step 3:

Test the Hypotheses

Step 4:

Results

Step 5:

Confirm with Qualitative Research

Step 6: Rationalizing our Results

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6 Measures to Define Board Capacity

Outside Engagement

Internal Engagement

Strategic Planning

Board Relationship

Governance

Board Vision

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Step 1: Correlations

Adaptive Overall

Leadership Overall

Management Overall

Technical Overall

Organizational Culture Overall

Outside Engagement

.792** .783** .644** .665** .532**

Internal Engagement

.845** .754** .741** .901** .559**

Strategic Planning .791** .618** .557** .458** .485**

Board Relationship .535** .789** .606** .432** .605**

Governance .612** .782** .628** .510** .523**

Board Vision .555** .780** .565** .422** .541**

Do the 6 Board capacities correlate with the 4 core organizational capacities?

6 M

eas

ure

s o

f a

Bo

ard

4 Core Capacities of an Organization (+ Culture)

** significant at p<.001 level

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Defining a “Board Score” and a “Good Board”

Good Boards: Learn from their programs

Adapt to changes

Have tools to make effective decisions

Have strong internal leadership

Sub-Capacity

Correlation with Overall Board

Measure

Programmatic Learning .700**

Internal Leadership .743**

Organizational Learning .804**

Decision-making Tools .775**

Outside Engagement

Internal Engagement

Strategic Planning

Board Relationship

Governance

Board Vision

Board Score: Outside Engagement

Internal Engagement

Strategic Planning

Board Relationship

Governance

Board Vision

Board Score

** significant at p<.001 level

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Step 2: Develop Hypotheses

http://xkcd.com/892/

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Part 1: Find organizations that have administered the CCAT more than once

Part 2: Calculate “change” scores

Part 3: Regression analysis

Step 3: Test the Hypotheses

Sample = 855

Most recent score

First score

Change score

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Wait – There’s More!

What Boards currently do

vs.

What Boards may do

Two Emergent Views of Boards…

…so we ran the analysis two ways

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Defining 2 Ways to Slice the Data

Narrow

Only analyze CCAT questions that directly pertain to Board responsibilities

Good predictive ability

Broad

Analyze CCAT questions that pertain to both the Board and staff (i.e., potential Board responsibilities)

Incredibly high predictive ability

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Reminder... 6 Measures to Define Board Capacity

Outside Engagement

Internal Engagement

Strategic Planning

Board Relationship

Governance

Board Vision

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Narrow View of a Board’s Role

Adaptive

Overall

Leadership

Overall

Management

Overall

Technical

Overall

Organizational

Culture

Outside Engagement

Internal Engagement 3 3

Strategic Planning 1 2 2 2 2

Board Relationship 2 1 1 1

Governance 1

Board Vision

R .734 .680 .528 .439 .527

R2 .539 .463 .277 .468 .278

6 M

eas

ure

s o

f a

Bo

ard

4 Core Capacities of an Organization (+ Culture)

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Broad View of Board’s Role 6

Me

asu

res

of

a B

oar

d

4 Core Capacities of an Organization (+ Culture)

Adaptive

Overall

Leadership

Overall

Management

Overall

Technical

Overall

Organizational

Culture

Outside Engagement 3 2 2 1

Internal Engagement 1 4 1 1 2

Strategic Planning 3 3 3

Board Relationship 3 2 4 4

Governance 1 5

Board Vision 2 5

R .782 .718 .720 .691 .576

R2 .611 .514 .517 .476 .330

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Step 4: Results

Narrow Most powerful Board

capacities

Board relationship

Strategic planning

Broad Most powerful Board

capacities

Internal engagement

Outside engagement

Outside

Engagement

Internal Engagement

Strategic Planning

Board Relationship

Governance

Board Vision

Outside Engagement

Internal Engagement

Strategic Planning

Board Relationship

Governance

Board Vision

vs.

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Step 5: Confirm with Qualitative Research

Interviews with sample organizations

P.F. Bresee Foundation Seth Eklund, Executive Director

Bike Bakersfield Jason Cater, Executive Director

Image: blogs.msdn.com

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Step 6: Rationalizing our Results

Phase II of Board Priorities

Phase I of

Board Priorities

Priority #1: Strategic Planning & Board Relationships with Staff

Priority #2: Board Engagement Internally and Outside the Organization

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So… What Next? How do you move these levers?

Board Capacity What are We Talking About?

How Can You Cultivate It?

Board Relationship

Accountability Mutual Respect

Trust Transparency

Invest in Chair/CEO Partnership

Regular Assessment (Board & CEO)

Build Social Fabric

Strategic Planning

Clarity of Vision & Purpose

Agreement on Priorities

Full Board Engagement in Visioning & Planning

Regular Reflection on Progress & What’s Changed

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Questions?

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Contact Us

© TCC Group, 2015

Julie Simpson jsimpson@tccgrp.com

Charles Gasper cgasper@tccgrp.com

Anne Wallestad anne.wallestad@BoardSource.org