Third sector governance: a case study in a university support foundation

Purpose – To establish a Governance Index (GOVI) to measure the relationship and influences with economic and financial performance and of volume of operations in a third sector entity. Design/methodology/approach – Exploratory, documentary and bibliographic research and content analysis, in order to achieve a GOVI derived from the use of independence, accountability and transparency variables in the period between 1986 and 2010. Questionnaires, administrative and accounting information are all used to characterize economic and financial performance indexes and determinants of the operations volume of the studied entity. Data was statistically processed through descriptive analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, and logistic regression analysis. Findings – The research came to two conclusions: the proposed data collection instrument presented good adjustment indexes; and the GOVI has a significant relationship with the variables used to measure performance. This may indicate that determining the GOVI is a suitable tool for confrontation and measurement of performance of nonprofit organizations. Moreover, managers’ independence should be largely used in management of third sector entities. Originality/value – The validation of the data collection instrument and the way the GOVI was obtained is one of the contributions of this study, since similar ways of measuring third sector performance were not found in literature. Choosing economic and financial performance and operations volume to study the relationship with the GOVI in nonprofit entities also was not found.