Most board packets are full of numbers boards don't act on.

New research looked at a decade of financial data from the largest nonprofits in the country and asked a simple question: which financial signals do boards respond to? It turns out, many of the indicators we build our reporting around, including revenue, expenses, profit margin, and savings margin, show no measurable effect on board action.

There's one measure boards do respond to, but by the time it moves, the financial decline has usually been underway for years. Boards catch the problem late enough that fixing it means cutting programs instead of adjusting course.

In this episode we get into what board capture is, why it happens without anyone acting in bad faith, and what to do with all of it depending on which chair you're sitting in.