Welcome to Governance Cornerstone

Meet the Board Strength Survey

How effective is your nonprofit board? Are you confident that your board is making a significant contribution to organizational impact and effectiveness? Is the board leaving anything “on the table” in the way of performance? To answer these questions, one must first ask, as compared to what? To what standard are we, as a board, to be measured? The answer to that question is: against the basic responsibilities expected of every nonprofit board.

The Board Strength Survey will help your board assess how well it is performing against the four core mandates and twelve responsibilities of all nonprofit boards.

This online survey is totally automated. It is secure, confidential and board member responses are anonymous.

Once you have completed the simple, straight-forward purchase process and entered the names and e-mail addresses of participating board members, everything else is done with the click of a button:

• The survey program automatically sends out invitations to participate to your list including a “Completed By” date you have specified.
• The Board Strength Survey can be completed with virtually any computer or mobile device, including smart phones.
  • It allows you to track participation and, when necessary, send out automated reminders
  • When you are ready you can print out the report on your own printer for distribution and discussion.

 

This time-tested survey will efficiently gather and summarize the perspectives of each board member presenting a straight-forward report of your strengths and opportunities for development as a board. It will guide you through an engaging discussion of “How are we doing and, how can we do better?” And, finally, the report is designed to facilitate the development of an action plan for increased board effectiveness.

Special Report Section about Your Board Meetings

Meetings are the playing field of an effective board team, and for many of these teams, it’s a losing season. It is in meetings that the collective IQ of the board needs to be expressed in its deliberations and decisions. However, weak facilitation, poor agenda development and management, and/or interpersonal stress rob the board of any chance of achieving its governance responsibilities. The reality is that high quality deliberation and decisions are tough to come by in low quality meetings!

The Board Strength Survey includes a special section evaluating the quality of your meetings It will allow individual board members to “critique” your meetings against the characteristics of highly effective board meetings and then develop an effective strategy to close the gap between the current situation and truly effective meetings

The Benefits

• Proven, time-tested governance factors that agree with broad consensus regarding the primary responsibilities of a nonprofit board
• Board Meeting Appraisal included as a special report
• Cost-effective – One low price regardless of the number of board members
• Totally automated – The Board Strength Survey is a highly effective web-based survey that provides a simple, straight-forward, and convenient way to survey your board members
  • Easy access for your board members via desktop, e-tablets, or smart phones
• A powerful self-assessment that will reveal the path to increased board effectiveness
  • Quickly and simply track responses and, with the click of a button, remind board members that their participation is still needed
  • It’s more than just check the box -- every question allows board members to enter amplifying comments 
  • Immediate results – You can track progress and click the “Print Report” button at your convenience
  • Secure, confidential, anonymous process
• Clear, straight-forward report that facilitates understanding and actionable insight and action planning regarding the results.  
• Coming soon: The ability to retake the survey and compare results from the previous assessment

The Process

1. Purchase a survey
   • Enter your organization's information
   • Complete your payment
2. Enter participating Board member names and e-mail addresses 
3. Select a due date (optional) 
4. Send out invitations with the click of a button
   • You can include a personal message on the invitation (optional)
5. Board members will recieve a link to the survey in their email. You can monitor the progress of your board members to see who has started and completed their surveys.
6. When 75% of your board members have completed their surveys, a "Print Report" link will appear on your Board Administrator page. This will provide a high resolution PDF containing your Survey results.
7. Meet with your board to discuss the results of your survey and create action plan using the tools provided in the Board Strength Survey Report.
8. Implement your plan and review progress. 
9. Retest to see your progress in results comparisons and set new goals. (Coming Soon)