Benchmark your board 

By establishing clear and measurable standards for the governance of board diversity, organisations can:

• Identify gaps: Review current practice and consider whether any aspects of governance could be changed to support a more diverse board
• Set goals: Organisations can set specific, achievable targets for changing their governance arrangements based on the identified gaps
• Measure progress: Regular assessment against benchmarks allows organisations to track their efforts and demonstrate accountability to their communities

The EDI Benchmark uses EDI to stand for Equality (or Equity), Diversity and Inclusion. Some people prefer Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), but in either case:

• Equality: every person has the same opportunities.
• Diversity: differences are recognised and respected.
• Inclusion: every person is welcomed, respected and able to participate.

We use organisation to mean any group, society, association, company, charity or other body with an identified number of people tasked with strategic decision making. The EDI Benchmark has been specifically designed for cultural organisations in the voluntary sector, but it may also be helpful for other bodies such as collaborations and informal partnerships.

We use ‘board’ to describe those people who are tasked with the strategic decision making for their organisation. It may be a formal board of directors or trustees, a committee or steering group.

The current (2024) version of the Charity Governance Code includes Principle 6:

“The board has a clear, agreed and effective approach to supporting equality, diversity and inclusion throughout the organisation and in its own practice. This approach supports good governance and the delivery of the organisation’s … purposes”

The EDI Benchmark is designed to be a tool to help the board’s approach to EDI.

Not directly. Arts Council England and other bodies already collate diversity data, and the EDI Benchmark is designed not to duplicate what is already happening. Instead, it measures 10 Core Principles to see if an organisation’s policies and procedures support a diverse board. In time, we hope to show the correlation between a high score using the EDI Benchmark, the Arts Council England diversity data, and successful organisations.

The EDI Benchmark consists of 10 Core Principles for the governance of board diversity. Each organisation is invited to reflect on the extent to which each Core Principle is part of its current governance arrangements. Each Core Principle can be allocated a score:

1. Not applicable, don’t know, no opinion
2. The board is aware of key issues to be addressed but currently has no or very few plans to address them
3. The board acknowledges the key issues and is developing approaches or plans to address them, but there needs to be more implementation.
4. The board has well-developed plans to address key issues with significant examples of implementation.
5. The board can show clear evidence of good practice and is reviewing its approach to ensure long term improvement.

Each Core Principle has:

• A description to explain why the principle is important
• Suggested Track 1 indicators of good governance for all organisations
• Suggested Track 2 indicators of good governance for medium-sized organisations, or with additional resources to support a more sophisticated approach
• Suggested Track 3 indicators of good governance for larger organisations or those that require the most sophisticated approaches.
• Sources of further information and guidance

Once completed, the Benchmark score will help each organisation:

• Identify strengths and weaknesses relative to the benchmark.
• Analyse performance gaps to understand areas for improvement.
• Rank the ten core principles based on their impact on overall performance.
• Focus efforts on the areas with the most significant potential for improvement.
• Establish specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals for each prioritised core principle.
• Align governance and diversity goals with their overall strategy.
• Develop and implement action plans to address identified gaps.
• Monitor progress towards goals.
• Make necessary adjustments to plans as needed.
• Assess the effectiveness of improvement initiatives.
• Determine if the EDI Benchmark remains relevant and accurate.
• Share EDI Benchmark results and improvement efforts with stakeholders.
• Build consensus and support for change.
• Celebrate successes and learn from challenges.
• Foster a culture of continuous improvement.
• Share best practices and lessons learned with others in the sector.

Each track has 10 Core Principles. If you know the answers to all 10 questions, you will be able to complete the EDI Benchmark in about 15 minutes. We hope that some questions will prompt discussion and reflection, and that the resources made available will be useful training material. We also hope you’ll have the time to provide us with some feedback too.

The information you provide will be stored by Clore Leadership so that anyone with your log in details and password can access and update it. We will use the data to create the benchmarks, and publish data for the sector. We will not publish your organisation’s score nor any information that could lead to any individual or organisation being identified without your express consent. We will share your information with our EDI Benchmark team to support the online tool and the further development of the EDI Benchmark. Further details are in our Privacy Notice.

You are welcome to share your EDI Benchmark score with your supporters.

This is a pilot phase for the EDI Benchmark. We look forward to your feedback to help us further develop the tool. We acknowledge that EDI language and best practice changes over time, and hope to have sufficient funding to continue to adapt the tool in the future.

Yes, we aim to publish a sector benchmark each year so that you can compare your score with the industry average. We hope to make further information available to Cultural Governance Alliance members at their annual conference.

Yes, when you create your EDI Benchmark profile, your information will be stored so you can revisit and update your profile as often as you like.

The EDI Benchmark was created for the Cultural Governance Alliance by Keith Arrowsmith, a creative industries solicitor and governance lead for Clore Leadership. Supporting resources have been collated by [Freya]. The Project has been managed by [Jonathan / Katherine /Hilary] at Clore Leadership. Hatched designed the digital tool.