Assessment FAQs

Please click here for a detailed visual overview of our process and timeline. After purchasing the tool (or redeeming your complimentary tool as a Board Support Program member), you will be sent a link to an intake form. Using this form, you will provide us with your participant list and the name of your designated facilitator (see “Roles” section below). If you are doing an assessment of the chief executive, we will also ask for a copy of your chief executive’s goals. 

After the form is submitted, the identified facilitator will receive an email with the timeline for the assessment, which will include a launch and close date. The process (from purchase to delivery of the PDF report) will take a minimum of 5 weeks, with the survey being open for response collection 3 weeks. If less than 70% of participants have completed the survey by the scheduled close date, our team will automatically extend the project timeline by one week to allow additional time for participants to respond. Once the survey closes, our team will compile your report (Sample BSA Report | Sample ACE Report) and the facilitator will receive the PDF within 5 business days. If you purchased the accompanying power point summary, you will receive this at the same time as your report.

Your Assessment Representative will email the facilitator once a week with an update on participation. If you would like to receive additional updates on participation throughout your project, you can request them as needed by emailing [email protected].

Survey participants will receive an email when the survey launches with their unique link for participation, as well as weekly reminder emails (if they have not submitted their response) until the survey closes. All emails will come from either [email protected] or [email protected]. We highly recommend instructing all participants to add these emails to their address book or mark them as safe senders to decrease the chances of spam filters blocking them.

The chief executive needs regular feedback from the board on their performance, therefore we suggest conducting an Assessment of the Chief Executive annually. 

We recommend that boards conduct a self-assessment once every 2-3 years.

Our assessment process takes 5 weeks minimum from intake to report. If you have a scheduled meeting or retreat where you plan on presenting the results, we recommend purchasing 6-8 weeks in advance. This allows sufficient time to extend the survey (if needed) and review the results as well.

Prior to purchase, we recommend reviewing our Preparation, Process, and Timeline page.

You’ll need the following details to complete the intake form:

• Order number associated with the purchase of the tool (can be found in original receipt email)
• Name and email of your designated organizational facilitator (see “What is an organizational facilitator” below)
• An Excel spreadsheet (template here) with all survey participants (including email addresses)
• Assessment of the Chief Executive Only: A document outlining your chief executive’s goals from the past year. Limit of 10 goals, and 200 characters per goal.

Once you purchase one of our tools, you can expect the following from BoardSource:

• Communication with your designated facilitator on the project timeline and participation rates
• Communication with survey participants (including their link to take the survey and reminders)
• Troubleshooting for participants, including issues with spam filters, and how to confirm their submission

The purchasing organization is responsible for communicating with and getting the appropriate buy-in from the full board prior to purchasing our tool. Please review our Preparation, Process, and Timeline page to ensure you have taken the necessary steps to successfully prepare for an assessment.

Before purchasing an assessment, it is important to understand all of the different roles in the assessment process.

The Governance Committee (or similarly tasked group) is responsible for:

• Overseeing the assessment process
• Taking the lead in selecting an assessment tool and implementing the process
• Reviewing results with the full board and taking the lead in creating and implementing a board development plan to address challenge areas
• Ensuring assessments take place regularly to track progress

The Board Chair is responsible for:

• Willingly engaging in the assessment process and encouraging others to do so
• Respecting the governance committee’s oversight role
• Showing initiative in adopting recommendations from the assessment

The Chief Executive or Executive Director is responsible for:

• Staying informed about the assessment process
• Completing the survey (if asked by the governance committee)
• Reviewing assessment results and encouraging/assisting the board in using assessment results to improve performance

The Board at large is responsible for:

• Completing the assessment questionnaire in a timely manner
• Reviewing results and/or recommendations shared by the Governance Committee
• Participating in a board retreat, if the Governance committee deems it appropriate

A nonprofit consultant* (should you choose to hire one) would typically be responsible for:

• Serving as a facilitator for the assessment process
• Summarizing feedback
• Facilitating the board’s discussion of the results

*For more information on using our tools as a consultant, please see the consultant section below

To ensure a smooth process, BoardSource asks for your organization to identify one individual as a “facilitator”. The facilitator is a representative chosen by your organization to be the primary point of contact. This chosen representative is often either the Board Chair, the immediate past Board Chair, the Chair of the Governance Committee, or a nonprofit consultant (if your organization has engaged one) but should always be someone who has access to the information needed to start the survey process and is comfortable coordinating this process in partnership with BoardSource. 

The organizational facilitator’s main responsibilities include completing the intake form to initiate the assessment with BoardSource, giving their board members a head’s up about the upcoming survey, tracking participation in partnership with the assessments team at BoardSource, and authorizing the close of the survey (once the desired participation rate has been met). The facilitator will also receive the final report once the survey has been closed and is responsible for distributing those results to the board (or a subset of the board) in the manner that best suits the organization’s needs.

For a Board Self-Assessment (BSA) we recommend including your full board and the chief executive/head of school. If you choose to include any staff, we suggest limiting it to individuals who are directly knowledgeable about the work of the board and could provide useful insights. We also recommend purchasing a segmented version of the report ($250) to view responses by role. Note: to protect the confidentiality of participant responses, we are unable to segment if there are less than 3 participants in any role.

For the Assessment of the Chief Executive (ACE), we recommend including your full board and the chief executive/head of school, who will complete the same version of the survey as a self-evaluation. Responses from the board will be compared side by side with the self-evaluation, to highlight discrepancies between how the chief executive perceives their performance, and how the board does.

While we do not restrict who you can include as a participant, please note that these tools are designed for the board, not for staff. In particular, the Assessment of the Chief Executive should not be used to solicit input from direct reports on the chief executive’s performance. If for whatever reason you feel that it is important to include staff in your survey, we recommend that you limit the staff participants to individuals who are directly knowledgeable about the work of the board and could provide useful insights. Direct reports included in the Assessment of the Chief Executive (ACE), will have their responses automatically separated out in the final report at no additional charge.

No. It is the policy of BoardSource that all individually identifying information provided by survey participants remains confidential. Names and e-mail addresses provided to BoardSource are not, under any circumstances, shared with any other companies or organizations, and the only outreach from BoardSource will be necessary communications to complete the survey process. You can review our full Privacy Policy here.

No. Answers are kept confidential and are submitted using a personalized survey link that is unique and tied directly to one individual. In the final report, data is shown in the aggregate for each question. Answers to open-ended questions will be shown in the report exactly as written, without any personally identifiable content included, and will appear in random order. Though the facilitator works to coordinate survey details with their Assessment Representative on the backend, they do not have direct access to survey responses, individual survey links, or report data that includes any personally identifiable information. The facilitator will be provided an update on participation from their Assessment Representative once a week which includes participant names and their completion status. Please feel free to review our assessment team’s privacy policy here.

The facilitator will receive the final report as a PDF via email within 5 business days from the survey close date.

The final report is a PDF document that contains a high-level overview followed by the breakdown of data showing the aggregated averages for each question within the survey. There are helpful resources embedded throughout the report to better understand specific topic areas in the survey and/or how to move forward with next steps now that the survey is over. The Board Self-Assessment report also benchmarks your board’s responses against other nonprofit organizations that have answered the same questions, which may be helpful as you consider your board’s performance relative to your peers across the country. Feel free to preview the sample reports for the Board Self-Assessment (BSA) and Assessment of the Chief Executive (ACE) below: 

Sample Board Self-Assessment (BSA) Report

Sample Assessment of the Chief Executive Report

The benchmarks are tabulated based on all responses received to that question for that specific tool since 2018. Unfortunately, we cannot filter or break down this data, so it should be interpreted keeping in mind that we service all shapes and sizes of boards.

Delivery of the PDF report concludes the BoardSource assessment process. Not sure what to do next? The final page of your report will include some prompting questions for your board to review to help develop a board action plan. The assessments team does not provide analysis of your results, recommendations for how your board should move forward, or additional hands-on support for your board outside of our resources, training, publications, and membership offerings. We do acknowledge that there is no replacement for direct support and guidance from a knowledgeable board consultant, which is why BoardSource has built relationships with a broad network of consultants for nonprofits from across the country who bring a wide range of strengths and experiences working with nonprofit boards. To learn more, please visit our Consultant Directory here.

Yes, we offer a year-to-year report for our surveys.  With this add-on option, you will be able to compare the results from a previous year’s results (from 2018 forward) to the current year’s report data. There is a fee of $250.00 associated with a year-to-year report and, if interested, you can follow the link here to add the product to your cart.

With both surveys, there are fundraising questions that can be toggled off if they are not applicable otherwise, any additional customizations (such as adding or removing questions) are not permitted.

Your deadline for completing the survey will be included in the e-mails sent to the facilitator, but generally we allow 3 weeks for response collection.  We estimate it will take individuals around 45 minutes to complete the assessment. There are approximately 100+ questions (a combination of multiple-choice & open-ended) in each survey, so please feel free to take a break as you can to relieve survey fatigue.

As a navigation aid, use the three lines icon to pull up the table of contents for the survey. You can also access the table of contents by clicking “Go toTable of Contents” at the bottom of the page.

Yes. You can begin the assessment and then return to complete it at a later time. Responses are automatically recorded as soon as they are entered. If you

exit and return to the survey later, you will be taken to the next blank page that needs to be completed. You can use the “Previous Page” button at the bottom to review your responses from the prior page. When you reach the final page of the survey, please use the table of contents as instructed to review and edit your responses.

When you are ready to submit you must click “Next Page” on the final page of the survey to have your survey count as complete. On the following page, you are encouraged to stop and click the link in the top right to download the PDF and save your response for future reference.

As long as your organization’s survey is open, you can change or edit your answers. If you wish to change a response after the deadline has passed, you must contact your organization’s facilitator to inquire about the possibility of doing so, as this requires re-opening the survey.

Please contact us at 202.349.2583 or [email protected] for support. Some initial troubleshooting steps you can take (depending on the issue you are experiencing) include:

• Confirm that you are using the most up-to-date version of your browser (or try an alternate browser)
• Confirm your internet connectivity
• Try accessing from a different device (i.e. phone, tablet, iPad, PC)
• Make sure that you do not have pop-up blockers blocking your access to the survey link
• Check your security settings to ensure that you can properly access your survey link

BoardSource has built relationships with a broad network of consultants for nonprofits from across the country who bring a wide range of strengths and experiences working with nonprofit boards. We don’t provide recommendations but encourage you to explore important questions to ask prior to engaging a consultant, and to use the filters within our consultant directory to find the best fit for you.

If an organization has engaged you to assist with their assessment, we will need explicit permission from someone at the organization to work with you on their behalf and to share their results with you. You can share this form for the organization to complete before their project starts. Note this form must be completed by an authorized representative at the organization you are working with prior to the expected report delivery date.

This is completely up to the organization. Some clients choose to purchase the tool directly, while some prefer the consultant to purchase it and submit it for reimbursement. If either party has a membership with us, generally the most cost-effective solution is for that party to purchase.

Pricing for our tools varies based on your membership with BoardSource. To learn more about our membership offerings, please click here or reach out to our member relations team at [email protected] | 202-349-2500.

Assessment of the Chief Executive (ACE)

$0-$699 Organizational Members | $899 Individual Members | $1,199 Non-members

Board Self-Assessment (BSA)

$0 – $549 Board Support Program Members | $749 Individual Members | $975 Non-members

DECK (BSA add-on only)

$399 Organizational Member | $499 Individual Members | $599 Non-members

Year-to-Year Comparison Report (Only valid for surveys conducted after 2018)

$250 

Please contact the assessments team for additional info at [email protected].

Yes. Purchases of at least 5 tools are eligible for our bulk rates of $549 for the Board Self-Assessment and $699 for the Assessment of the Chief Executive. If you are interested in purchasing in bulk, please reach out to our team in advance so we can provide you with an invoice, and align on timelines for the distributions of the tools.