A charity board will usually monitor finances. But measuring just finances is a bit like measuring just the heart rate of an athlete; it’s important, but it’s just one of a range of ways of knowing whether an athlete is healthy. A great heart rate in an athlete certainly doesn’t tell if they will win any races.

So in charities, what else should trustees (or senior managers) measure apart from money? And how should they measure the money stuff? Here are some ideas about things that every charity can measure based on my experience on different boards. I have yet to see an organisation that measures all of these areas perfectly.

Much has been written about how charities should communicate impact. How to communicate with donors, how to thank them and, perhaps most importantly, how to explain what you did with their money are undoubtedly tough nuts to crack.

Between February 2011 and February 2013, we had a PAYE audit at nfpSynergy. If I live to be 100, I think it will still rank as one of the most painful, expensive, exasperating and protracted audits I experience. When we began the process, I could find virtually nothing in writing that prepared us for the compliance check that was randomly foisted on us by HMRC. Writing this is my attempt to help others be better prepared than we were.

I'm a big fan of nfpSynergy. They provide the strongest opinion pieces in our sector.

Adrian Sargeant - Robert F. Hartsook Professor of Fundraising, Indiana University

It is fair to say that the deregulation of charity lotteries has been an issue for decades. Though improvements were made in the 2005 Act, lotteries are arguably the most regulated area of fundraising. We passionately believe that their growth is being hindered by unnecessary, disproportionate regulation and this is deeply affecting the amount of money being raised for good causes. So we decided to write a report to look at the whole lottery landscape and consider how the situation could be improved, creating a win/win for the government, charities and, most importantly, people in need.

In the next few weeks, many people are going to get a bill through their letterbox. This will be, for many, a usual process that happens at the start of each financial year. But for others, it’ll come as a shock and could have some severe consequences.

I grew up in a household of avid readers and since buying books regularly wasn’t affordable, weekly visits to the local library were commonplace in my childhood. Even now when I need information, the library is my first port of call. So I was both surprised and disappointed to hear news of the closure or reduction in services of libraries over the last couple of years. As library cuts continue, the role of volunteers comes to the forefront and I can see a future where volunteers reduce or even replace state provision of library management.

Anyone reading the charity news this month will have seen the furore caused by Giles Pegram’s comments about women in fundraising. They were made in response to concerns raised about The Summit, a conference to discuss the future of fundraising that included just one female speaker alongside nine male counterparts.

As a result, The Summit was cancelled and he issued an immediate apology, while almost everyone else spoke in equal measure of their respect for him and disdain for his opinion. This got me thinking, as nfpSynergy’s Twitterer-in-Chief, about the dangers we face using this powerful tool. What is best practice and how can charities tread carefully in this digital minefield?

It is unsurprising that altruism is the most common reason people volunteer. In 2005, nfpSynergy’s The 21st Century Volunteer report found the motivations most often cited by volunteers are a belief in the cause and a desire to make a difference. But in today’s world, motives for volunteering go beyond altruism.

The most recent data from our Charity Awareness Monitor (CAM) has yielded some interesting results on public perceptions of charity staff pay. While the majority think that Chief Executives are paid (80%) and volunteer tin collectors are not (69%), there's a fair bit of uncertainty about whether or not salaries are drawn in other roles, such as trustees and on-street fundraisers.