Reports, guides and research
Knowledge exchange is a key part of Bayes CCE’s mission to inspire positive transformation and change in the nonprofit sector.
These Centre for Charity Effectiveness resources, including reports, research, toolkits and guides, will be of interest to anyone leading and working in a charity, helping you make the most of CCE’s wide-ranging knowledge and expertise to inspire, improve and sustain your nonprofit organisation.
Current research
The future charity chair
A research project looking at the essential attributes that charity Chairs of the future will need to embrace.
Health and care commissioning and the VCSE sector
Research evaluating the vital relationship between health and care commissioners and VCSEs, and how they can collaborate better.
Key CCE reports, toolkits & guides
Building Better Governance
CCE’s 'Building Better Governance' is a series of practical guides to improving board effectiveness, covering all the essentials of nonprofit governance. (Revised and updated 2019).
Building the road as we walk: leadership through uncertain times
A CCE nonprofit sector collaboration collating new thinking about how nonprofit sector leaders lead and thrive in uncertain times.
The chief executive's last 100 days
This practical online resource explores what it means for a CEO to leave their organisation well. What a good departure looks like and how this can be achieved. (Launched 2022)
Lived experience on nonprofit boards
This comprehensive online resource aims to encourage and assist nonprofit organisations who are striving to ensure the full participation at board level of those with lived experience of their organisation's cause. Includes insights and case studies from contributors across the nonprofit sector, CCE explorations of key topics, and a host of useful links including ways that you can get involved. (Launched 2021).
Looking through a shared lens
'Looking through a shared lens' explores the Chair/CEO relationship in the nonprofit sector, in the context of challenges in contemporary governance. We examine the challenges and opportunities inherent in that vital relationship in a series of linked reports and a webinar recording. (Published 2020-21).
Tools for success
Tools for Success is an essential toolkit, designed to help smaller nonprofit organisations focus on the key areas of organisational capacity crucial to long-term sustainability. With self-assessment tools and seven individual guides on a whole range of core topics, including Compliance, Finance, Governance, People and more. (Fully revised and updated 2021).
Other CCE research, reports and resources
Bridging the gap: a guide to trusteeship and volunteering in the charity sector
'Bridging the gap' is aimed primarily at those who are working within the private sector and who wish to take up a trusteeship or other volunteer role within the charity or nonprofit sector. It comprises a series of chapters that aim to provide an overview of the sector, the differences that you may find and how to become successfully engaged. It is also recommended for those who wish to recruit from outside the sector. (Published 2014)
In this document you may still see us referred to as Cass Business School or The Business School (formerly Cass). Find out more about our name change.
Chair/Chief Executive: working together to build resilience
'Chair/Chief Executive: working together to build resilience' examines the challenges and opportunities inherent in the vital Chair/CEO relationship in the nonprofit sector, and how that partnership can be essential in responding to periods of crisis. (Published 2020).
The thinking behind this report emerged from CCE’s first series of discussion forums in 2019-20, for invited Chairs and Chief Executives of national charities and entitled ‘Challenges in Contemporary Governance’. It also encompasses insights from a CCE presentation at the Civil Society Trustee Exchange online conference held in July 2020. This learning went on to be further developed as part of CCE’s ‘Looking through a shared lens’ reports and webinar.
In this document you may still see us referred to as Cass Business School or The Business School (formerly Cass). Find out more about our name change.
Charities in a dynamic world: upskilling the charitable sector in financial management
'Charities in a dynamic world' looks at how to upskill the charitable sector in financial management, considering topics such as collaboration, sustainability, efficiency, risk appetite, use of reserves, and innovation and scalability. This report by Lynne Berry CBE, Visiting Professor at Bayes Business School, presents key learning from a series of six round table ‘Charity Learning’ discussions hosted throughout the UK by CCE in 2017, in conjunction with Barclays. (Published 2018).
In this document you may still see us referred to as Cass Business School or The Business School (formerly Cass). Find out more about our name change.
Peering over the precipice: a toolkit for nonprofits to reinvent and thrive
'Peering over the precipice' is a toolkit aimed at charity trustees and executives who want to consider where they are on the organisational lifecycle curve. It will enable them to explore what impact the current environment is having on their organisation and on the economic and social value that it creates. We ask the tough questions to help you consider if your organisation is already in decline. We provide the equally tough answers that will ensure that the decisions taken are in the best interest of your organisation's mission, before that of its existence.
By drawing on Bayes CCE’s cumulative knowledge, derived from in-depth work with our students, delegates and clients, ‘Peering over the precipice’ offers a health check to revitalise and a framework to consider reinvention for greater beneficiary impact. (Published 2018).
Philanthropy – Beyond Reason: Brexit, Philanthropy and the threat to democracy: a research paper by Dr Peter Grant, CCE
In this research paper, 'Beyond Reason', CCE's Dr Peter Grant, considers the likely impact of the UK leaving the European Union around the three key referendum issues of the economy, sovereignty and immigration. It suggests some of the ways charitable organisations and private philanthropy should respond, in particular regarding potential threats to British democracy. (Published 2019).
In this document you may still see us referred to as Cass Business School or The Business School (formerly Cass). Find out more about our name change.
Taken on Trust: the awareness and effectiveness of charity trustees in England and Wales
'Taken on Trust' presents a comprehensive picture of trusteeship, recommending that charity boards do more to promote diversity and encourage applications from trustees from non-traditional backgrounds. (Published 2017).
- Taken on Trust 2017: CCE summary of report (2017)
- Taken on Trust 2017: full report (2017)
- Taken on Trust: the provider perspective on advice and support for charity trustees (2017)
- Charity Commission response to Taken on Trust (2017)
In this document you may still see us referred to as Cass Business School or The Business School (formerly Cass). Find out more about our name change.
Trustee Exchange April 2019: Building the Top Team - Reaching new heights together
Notes summarising the results of a session hosted at the 2019 Trustee Exchange by Caroline Copeman, from the Centre for Charity Effectiveness, to launch CCE’s Building Better Governance guide on Top Teams. Over 100 participants explored how to build effective board and senior leadership teams, and these notes summarise the group’s ideas about the characteristics of an effective top team, improving top team effectiveness and balancing power dynamics.
In this document you may still see us referred to as Cass Business School or The Business School (formerly Cass). Find out more about our name change.
Voluntary action – a way forward: a report by Sir Stuart Etherington, Visiting Professor and Chair of the CCE Advisory Board
'Voluntary action: a way forward' by Sir Stuart Etherington was described by Professor Paul Palmer as “a bold vision for the role that voluntary action can play in tackling many of the problems facing UK society, sustaining civil society organisations and ensuring that we remain an open society”. (Published 2017).
In this document you may still see us referred to as Cass Business School or The Business School (formerly Cass). Find out more about our name change.