Many nonprofit leaders are drowning in data but still struggling to answer a simple question: Are we making real progress on what matters most?
What does your leadership team truly need to monitor to ensure you’re making progress toward your goals?
A strong dashboard helps your leadership team focus on the vital few priorities that drive impact, performance, and long-term sustainability.
In our article, “How to Build a Nonprofit Dashboard for Your Leadership Team,” we explore a practical approach to answering that question. Drawing on Bridgespan’s work with nonprofit and NGO leaders, the article outlines how executive teams can use a dashboard to focus on what matters most and build habits of continuous improvement.
As a companion to that article, we’re sharing a resource with examples of what might be the right metrics to track in a leadership-level dashboard. It's a great first step to help you put the ideas into practice.
Start with What Matters Most
In the article, we describe three core elements of an effective nonprofit dashboard:
- Align on organizational priorities: A short list of the most important drivers of impact and performance
- Track “check-engine-light” metrics: Just enough data to know when to dig deeper
- Act and follow up: Establish simple habits that turn data into decisions
A dashboard is not about tracking everything. It is about helping a leadership team regularly answer:
Are we making meaningful progress on our most important goals?
About This Resource
This resource is designed to be used alongside the original article in support of leadership conversations. The document offers sample priorities and illustrative metrics across common nonprofit categories. It includes:
- Sample leadership priorities across five common nonprofit categories
- Examples of practical, easy-to-track metrics
- Guidance on choosing indicators that signal when to dig deeper
- Examples designed specifically for executive team dashboards
The examples are not meant to be prescriptive, but to help you think through what would be most useful in your own context.
Read the Full Article
If you haven’t yet read it, we recommend starting with:
How to Build a Nonprofit Dashboard for Your Leadership Team
By Libbie Landles-Cobb, Mariah Collins, and Bob Searle
The article walks through detailed guidance, practical examples, and a sample dashboard from a hypothetical organization to illustrate how priorities and metrics work together.
Organizational Effectiveness Updates
When you download this resource, you’ll also have the option of signing up for Organizational Effectiveness Updates, our newsletter for thousands of nonprofit leaders seeking practical research, tools, and insights to strengthen performance and mission impact.
Subscribers receive:
- Research-backed tools and frameworks
- Practical guidance for executive teams and boards
- Insights on strategy, leadership, and measurement
- Early access to new resources and webinars
Our goal is simple: to support leaders in making thoughtful, informed decisions that strengthen their organizations and advance their missions.
