Governance Maturity Rating: Full Methodology
What the rating measures
The Governance Maturity Rating answers a simple question: is your safeguarding system actually working?
Not whether you have policies, procedures, or training. But whether the system behind those things is being monitored, adapted, and governed over time.
The rating measures behavior, not intentions. It tracks what your organization actually does — and produces evidence you can show to boards, insurers, regulators, and families.
Four dimensions
The rating is built from four dimensions. Each measures a different aspect of governance behavior:
Rhythm
Are meetings and board reports happening at the pace you committed to?
When you set up Jigsaw, your team commits to a meeting schedule and a board-report frequency. Rhythm measures whether you’re keeping both promises. Over the last 12 months, how many meetings and board reports should have happened — and how many actually did? Both count in one measure, weighted by how often you committed to each. Young organizations are measured only against the window since they joined — never against meetings or reports they could not yet have held — and the board-report side starts counting three months after its frequency is first committed.
Monitoring Coverage
Are controls being checked on schedule?
Every element in your system has a monitoring date — when someone needs to verify it’s working as intended. Monitoring Coverage is the percentage of elements where that date hasn’t passed. If the date is in the future, it’s current. If it’s in the past, it’s overdue.
Review Coverage
Are controls being evaluated for ongoing fit?
Monitoring asks: is this control working? Review asks: is this still the right control? Review cycles are longer — annual or multi-year — and ensure your system evolves as your organization changes.
Responsiveness
When concerns surface, do they progress toward resolution?
When someone flags a concern, what happens? Does it get discussed, addressed, resolved — or does it sit indefinitely? Responsiveness measures whether issues move forward within an appropriate timeframe. New organizations get a settling-in period: this dimension only joins the grade three months after the later of joining Jigsaw or identifying a first risk zone — an empty flag record during setup is expected, not penalized.
How the grade is calculated
Your grade reflects your lowest dimension. A safeguarding system is only as strong as its weakest part.
All four dimensions must reach a threshold for a grade to be awarded:
| Grade | All dimensions must reach | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| A+ | 90%+ | Exceptional governance across all dimensions |
| A | 80%+ | Very well-maintained system |
| A- | 70%+ | Strong, with minor gaps |
| B+ | 60%+ | Good, but some areas need attention |
| B | 50%+ | Reasonable, with noticeable gaps |
| B- | 40%+ | Below expectations — several areas overdue |
| C | 30%+ | Minimum viable governance — significant work needed |
| NR | Below 30% | Not Rated — not enough to assign a grade |
These thresholds may look modest compared to school grades. But achieving even a C in Jigsaw requires sustained governance effort across every dimension — something that goes far beyond what typical compliance frameworks demand.
The Emergence modifier
One additional factor can adjust your grade: Emergence.
Emergence measures whether your team is actively spotting and surfacing new concerns — or whether vigilance has gone quiet.
The system compares how many new items were flagged in the last 90 days versus the previous 90 days:
- ↑ New concerns are being flagged more frequently — the team is actively looking. This nudges the grade up one notch.
- → Steady rate of flagging — a well-functioning system.
- ↓ Flagging has dropped off — which could signal complacency. This pushes the grade down one notch.
A system that stops seeing new risks isn’t getting safer. It just feels that way.
Scaled to organization size
Response expectations scale with size: larger organizations serving more people are expected to move flagged items to resolution faster.
| Tier | People served (annual MVAs) | Response Window |
|---|---|---|
| Small | 250 or fewer | 120 days |
| Medium | 251 – 2,500 | 90 days |
| Large | More than 2,500 | 60 days |
MVA = Minor or Vulnerable Adult
Rhythm, Monitoring, and Review Coverage are not tier-scaled: teams commit their own meeting cadence, board-report frequency, and check schedules, and are held to those commitments regardless of size. Until an organization enters its size, the strictest response window (60 days) applies.
Fully auditable
Every rating is traceable to source data:
- Meeting records (date, attendees, agenda items, decisions)
- Element status (monitoring and review history, status changes)
- Flagged items (complete lifecycle with timestamps)
- Calculation logs (percentages and thresholds applied)
This isn’t a self-assessment. It’s evidence — independently derived from how your system actually behaves.
What the rating doesn't measure
The rating measures governance behavior, not whether every decision was correct.
It doesn’t certify regulatory compliance.
It doesn’t guarantee outcomes.
It measures whether your organization is consistently managing uncertainty — over time and visibly.
That’s what boards, insurers, and regulators increasingly want to see. Not perfection. But evidence that your system is alive.
What a strong rating communicates
To boards: Independent verification that safeguarding governance is functioning — not a report that says “we have policies,” but evidence that those policies are being monitored, reviewed, discussed, and kept current.
To insurers: Quantifiable risk management data that goes beyond self-attestation. A strong grade signals that the organization is actively managing its safeguarding obligations across every dimension.
To families: Transparent, understandable assurance that an organization takes safety seriously — and can prove it with evidence, not just promises.
Visibility across your network
For umbrella organizations — National Governing Bodies, dioceses, school districts, franchise networks — the challenge isn’t just managing your own safeguarding. It’s knowing whether your affiliates are managing theirs.
Today, that visibility barely exists. You collect attestations. You hope for the best. And when something goes wrong at an affiliate, you discover how little you actually knew. With all the consequences that come with that.
Jigsaw changes that.
Umbrella organizations can access a dashboard showing the Governance Maturity Rating of every affiliate in their network. Not self-reported surveys. Not annual attestations. Live, evidence-based ratings derived from how each organization is actually behaving.
At a glance, you can see:
- Which affiliates have strong, active governance
- Which are losing momentum
- Which need support before gaps become problems
- How the network is performing overall
This isn’t surveillance. Affiliates own their systems and do their own work. But the rating — because it’s built from auditable governance behavior — gives umbrella organizations something they’ve never had: a credible, consistent way to see whether safeguarding is actually happening across their network.
For umbrella organizations facing increasing scrutiny from regulators, insurers, and the public, this is the difference between hoping your affiliates are managing sexual abuse risk and knowing they are.
Talk to us about how the rating could work for your organization.