Year in Review: BoardEffect Flourishes in 2017
2017 was a new high-water mark for seismic change in the US: political, economic, environmental and societal. Many serious issues hit nonprofit boardrooms across the nation. Trustees have needed to pay close attention to changes in regulations, funding sources, natural and human-made disasters, cyber risk and cases of sexual harassment – just to name a few. It has become much tougher for trustees to stay ahead of the curve as new governance principles and best practices continue to evolve.
Change was no stranger to BoardEffect either. As we continued to grow and develop, we used this year of change to make strides in product development, security and service delivery so that our offerings will help boards deal with the challenges they face head-on. Our technology is becoming more sophisticated in both the refinement of the tools and in the new features provided to help clients address specific needs. Since each advancement in technology brings with it a new dimension of risk, we also doubled-down on security, customer service and programs designed to help our clients utilize boardroom technology to maximize productivity and proficiency.
BoardEffect Experiences Record-Setting Growth in 2017
BoardEffect’s board software platform helps organizations elevate the level of board performance, fueling the growth and development of their organizations and benefiting their stakeholders. By the end of 2017, more than 2,100 leading organizations with over 155,000 users put their faith in BoardEffect to help boards operate efficiently and effectively.
BoardEffect’s product enhancements are supported by our dedicated Customer Success team that assists our customers 24/7 every day of the year. Our product and its mobile versions are intuitive and cost-effective. We’re dedicated to promoting a high level of board effectiveness and engagement among trustees, committees, executives and staff of nonprofits, hospitals and healthcare systems, educational institutions, associations, credit unions, foundations and more.
These are many of the reasons that BoardEffect enjoys a growing and loyal customer base, with more than 96% client retention year over year and an increase of new clients by more than 20% last year. In addition, our customers added many new users to their BoardEffect platforms last year and so we saw total users increase by more than 20% as well.
Meanwhile, the BoardEffect team is growing to keep pace. We outgrew our offices in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C., opening a new and improved location in Arlington, VA, which is designed to give our staff the tools and the room that they need to be creative and continue to supply the best in governance software services.
Investment in Research & Development Makes BoardEffect the Leader in the Industry
In 2017, BoardEffect invested $1.5 million in research and development as part of our commitment to providing the most cutting-edge and innovative product enhancements – like “watermarking” for added security on meeting book pages, board member “term information” management, expanded reporting options for custom user profile fields and many other new features. BoardEffect listens closely to the needs of our customers – as well as researching governance trends – to ensure we remain a best-in-class solution for nonprofit governance. Discussions with our clients motivate us to update our product based upon the solutions they’ve told us they need.
In total, BoardEffect released 50 product features and enhancements in 2017 alone, including eight updates to its mobile applications for tablets and smartphones, on both iOS and Android platforms. These updates give greater ease and flexibility to our fully customizable, searchable and intuitive board software platform.
BoardEffect Fuels Governance Education & Thought Leadership
Good governance affects our nation’s economic development, public safety, technological safety and health safety. That’s why BoardEffect gets directly involved in creating and offering workshops and presentations for nonprofit leaders designed to marry the wise use of technology with best practices in board governance. Our knowledgeable staff is eager and willing to share their expertise about the latest developments in principles and best practices for good governance at events with other sector leaders.
At sector conferences and other events in 2017, the BoardEffect team accomplished the following:
- Presented 12 workshops and presentations at nine conferences for directors and leaders of nonprofits, healthcare institutions, credit unions, colleges and universities and other groups.
- Presented 18 webinars on a variety of governance issues.
- Partnered with Independent Sector and became members of the Technology Working Group — a group of industry leaders convened to help advise the nonprofit sector on technology issues.
- Partnered with Gulf Coast Community Foundation to present the “Governance for Lunch” webinar series, which reached more than 1,000 nonprofit leaders last year.
- Partnered with AICUP, WAICU and other state associations of independent colleges and universities to provide BoardEffect technology to higher education.
- Partnered with KHA, IHA, THA and other state hospital associations to bring BoardEffect to the boards of healthcare institutions.
BoardEffect engaged in extensive network building over the course of 2017 with the goal of information sharing and collaboration among various banks, hospitals, colleges and universities. Staff from BoardEffect joined the faculties of the American Hospital Association, Credit Union National Association and Credit Union Executives Society to bring good governance and technology education to their members.
BoardEffect + Diligent: Better Together
Diligent Corporation has been the industry leader in the enterprise governance management space since 2001. Over 400,000 users at over 14,000 corporations use Diligent products to manage governance work. Seeing the value in bringing the nonprofit sector together with the corporate world, Diligent integrated the leadership team of BoardEffect into the broader leadership structure across the Diligent corporation – including leaders in finance, marketing, product development, security, client services and executive management.
For example, members of the BoardEffect product leadership team work in collaboration with Diligent Corporation’s product teams to bring the same excellence and high-grade security systems to the BoardEffect platform. Diligent’s product teams work hand-in-hand with BoardEffect’s product teams to strengthen product offerings and other modules that integrate into BoardEffect’s platform.
BoardEffect Aims for Future Growth and Innovation
The significant financial investment that BoardEffect is making in research and development is a reflection of our focus on providing “relentless care” to our clients and of the high value we place on client satisfaction. As the pace of change in the world of governance continues to accelerate, BoardEffect is not taking its “foot off the gas”; we continue to evolve and change right along with it. The substantial growth of our customer base is proof that we offer a quality product that continues to improve. BoardEffect is approaching 2018 with the confidence of knowing that changes and challenges only make us better.
Our entire team is proud of the numerous enhancements and updates we brought to our loyal customers in 2017. We look forward to navigating 2018 with excitement about forthcoming tools and groundbreaking product developments.
