Charity benchmarking compares how a charity or non-profit performs against similar organisations. For support functions such as finance, HR and IT, this usually means comparing costs and staffing levels. NEVIS goes further, also comparing how well each function works for the people who use it, and how ready it is to improve through technology and AI.

NEVIS, the UK Non-profit Operating Benchmark, is a charity and non-profit benchmarking service from Aleron. It gives leaders an independent view of the cost, effectiveness and future readiness of their corporate and support functions, compared with organisations like their own.

NEVIS is open to UK charities, housing associations and social enterprises with an annual income above £20m.

Through NEVIS, you submit cost and staffing data for up to 24 support function areas, and each area is compared with the organisations most relevant to it. Peer groups are chosen for each measure: for example, by scale and workforce for HR, estate size for property, and transaction volume for accounts payable. No figure is ever shown from fewer than five organisations.

NEVIS assesses every support function through three questions: what it costs (efficiency), how well it works (effectiveness), and how ready it is to improve (future readiness). It covers 24 areas across six groups: leadership and governance; quality, impact and assurance; finance; people; technology and data; and property and procurement.

Cost comparisons alone can mislead, because a low-cost function may be efficient or it may be under-resourced and frustrating to use. NEVIS combines cost data with direct feedback from the staff who use each function, plus a leadership assessment and a readiness check.

No. You report only the areas where you have data, and if an activity can't be separated from another area, you can submit a combined figure. NEVIS benchmarks you at the level your data supports, and a gap in one area never affects the rest.