Free · 21 questions · About five minutes

How effective is your shareholder communication process?

Assess how your private company communicates with shareholders, provides access to important information, manages key ownership and governance events, and follows up on shareholder activity.

  • No account, no login, no sales call required
  • Your score appears immediately — email is optional
  • Scored across seven areas of shareholder communication
The short version

How prepared is your company to communicate with shareholders?

Shareholder communication can be relatively straightforward when a company has only a handful of owners. But as the shareholder base grows, so can the operational demands behind keeping everyone appropriately informed.

Contact information needs to stay current. The right shareholders need to receive the right information. Documents need to be delivered securely. Governance actions may need to be tracked. Ownership information needs to remain accessible. And historical communications need to be available when someone needs them.

Over time, processes built around individual inboxes, spreadsheets, shared drives, and institutional knowledge can become increasingly difficult to manage.

The Shareholder Communication Readiness Assessment helps private companies evaluate how well their current processes support these responsibilities.

What it measures

What does the assessment evaluate?

Three questions in each of seven areas of shareholder communication. Shareholder Access is also reported on its own.

Communication Foundation

Whether responsibility, shareholder information, and communication requirements are clearly established.

Regular Company Updates

How consistently important company information and developments are communicated and retained.

Ownership Information

Whether shareholders can access appropriate ownership information and documents, and whether records remain consistent when ownership changes.

Governance Events

How meeting notices, voting materials, consents, deadlines, responses, and results are communicated and tracked.

Financial Events

How communications surrounding distributions, tax documents, payment information, and liquidity events are handled.

Shareholder Access

Whether shareholders have secure, appropriate access to common information without relying on an administrator for every request. Reported as its own score.

Follow-Up & Recordkeeping

Whether delivery, required actions, shareholder questions, and resulting record changes can be tracked.

Your results

What will you receive?

Each question is scored on a three-point scale: yes — consistently, partially or sometimes, or no and mostly manual. Each area is converted to a score out of 100, and the seven area scores are averaged to produce your overall readiness score.

Shareholder Access is calculated separately, from the three questions covering centralized access, self-service, and permissions. It shows how effectively shareholders can retrieve information without relying on an administrator.

The assessment is a practical diagnostic rather than a certification or compliance rating. It takes approximately five minutes to complete.

After completing the assessment
  • An overall Shareholder Communication Readiness Score from 0–100
  • Your current communication maturity level
  • Individual scores across seven communication areas
  • A dedicated Shareholder Access Score
  • Your biggest identified area of opportunity
  • Three priority recommendations based on your results
The four maturity levels
80–100Connected. Communication is structured, accessible, and supported by strong operational practices.
60–79Established. The fundamentals are in place, with opportunities to improve access, automation, and scalability.
40–59Developing. Core processes exist, but manual work and fragmented records remain significant.
0–39Reactive. Communication is largely request-driven or manually administered.
Why it matters

From communication to infrastructure

Good shareholder communication isn't only about what your company sends.

It's also about whether the right information reaches the right people, whether shareholders can securely access what they need, whether important actions can be tracked, and whether the company maintains a reliable record of those interactions.

As a shareholder base becomes larger or more complex, communication challenges can sometimes point to a broader issue: the infrastructure supporting the communication process.

Understanding where those gaps exist is the first step toward improving them.

The platform

How Nth Round helps

Nth Round provides private companies with infrastructure for managing shareholder information and interactions — communications, ownership records, documents, permissions, and governance workflows in one secure environment.

Rather than treating communication as a separate activity from the record it depends on, the platform connects the two: what shareholders receive, what they can access on their own, and what the company retains afterward.

Organizations use Nth Round to
  • Send shareholder communications from the ownership record
  • Give shareholders a secure self-service portal
  • Maintain complete shareholder records
  • Distribute documents with controlled permissions
  • Run proxy votes and consent workflows
  • Deliver tax and financial documents
  • Manage distributions and liquidity events
  • Automate signature workflows
  • Maintain complete audit trails
  • Retain a searchable history of shareholder interactions
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What is shareholder communication?

Shareholder communication refers to the processes a company uses to provide shareholders with relevant information and manage interactions related to their ownership. Depending on the company and circumstances, this may include company updates, ownership information, governance materials, distributions, tax documents, liquidity events, notices, and responses to shareholder requests.

Who is this assessment designed for?

The assessment is designed primarily for private companies and family-owned businesses responsible for communicating with shareholders and maintaining shareholder information. It may be particularly useful for executives, finance teams, legal and governance teams, family-office professionals, and employees responsible for shareholder administration.

How is the Shareholder Communication Readiness Score calculated?

The assessment contains 21 questions across seven categories. Each response receives a score: yes — consistently, 2 points; partially or sometimes, 1 point; no or mostly manual, 0 points.

Each category is converted to a score out of 100, and the seven category scores are averaged to calculate the overall Shareholder Communication Readiness Score.

What does my readiness score mean?

Scores correspond to four communication maturity levels.

80–100: Connected — Communication processes are structured, accessible, and supported by strong operational practices.

60–79: Established — Core processes are in place, although opportunities may remain to improve access and scalability.

40–59: Developing — Communication is functioning, but meaningful parts of the process may still rely on manual work or fragmented records.

0–39: Reactive — Communication tends to be request-driven or heavily dependent on manual administration.

The score is intended as a practical diagnostic rather than a certification or compliance rating.

What is the Shareholder Access Score?

The Shareholder Access Score focuses specifically on whether shareholders can securely access appropriate information without depending on an administrator for routine requests.

It considers centralized access to information, shareholder self-service, and appropriate access permissions.

How long does the assessment take?

The assessment contains 21 questions and should take approximately five minutes to complete.

Do I need to provide my email address to see my results?

No. The assessment displays your results immediately after completion. Providing an email address to receive or retain a copy of the results remains optional.

Why does shareholder self-service matter?

Giving shareholders appropriate self-service access can reduce repetitive administrative requests while making information easier to retrieve when shareholders need it. The key is ensuring that access remains secure and that permissions reflect what each shareholder should be able to see.

Is email a bad way to communicate with shareholders?

Not necessarily. Email can remain an important communication channel. Problems tend to arise when email also becomes the company's document repository, historical record, action-tracking system, and primary method for fulfilling routine shareholder requests.

The assessment is designed to help identify where communication processes may be becoming overly dependent on manual email workflows.

What is a shareholder portal?

A shareholder portal is a secure digital environment where shareholders can access appropriate company, ownership, governance, financial, or other shareholder information. Depending on the platform, it may also support communications, document distribution, permissions, voting, ownership records, and other shareholder workflows.

How can a private company improve shareholder communication?

Improvements may include clearly assigning responsibility for shareholder communication, maintaining accurate shareholder information, establishing consistent communication processes, centralizing historical records, improving document security, tracking required actions, and providing appropriate self-service access.

The right approach depends on the company's shareholder base, governance requirements, ownership structure, and existing processes.

Can Nth Round help improve shareholder communication?

Yes. Nth Round provides private companies with infrastructure for managing shareholder information and interactions, including shareholder access, communications, ownership records, documents, permissions, and governance workflows.

Next step

Know where your shareholder communication actually stands.