Orient your board members to their key roles and responsibilities with this concise coverage of their duties and the role they should play in advancing your organization's mission. This booklet, written by Nancy Axelrod, governance consultant and founding president of BoardSource, who herself has served on many governing and advisory boards, provides an overview of legal duties of the board and board members 4 key overlapping roles 3 characteristics that distinguish great boards a fresh look at a 4-sighted board 10 tips for board members Developed for the harried board member, this booklet will maximize both their training time and the time they serve on the board by helping them focus on strategic rather than operational matters.

In their highly regarded 1991 book, The Effective Board of Trustees, Chait, Holland, and Taylor identified six skill sets or competencies that differentiate strong governing boards from weak ones. Now they have taken their research to the next level by conducting an in-depth study of how the boards of colleges, universities, and other nonprofit organizations can raise their level of competence. In Improving the Performance of Governing Boards, the authors detail the findings of this multiyear study, and address the topics of effective trusteeship, board development, board cohesion, trustee education, and the improvement of board processes. They also discuss effective ways of responding to the resistance some trustees and institutional leaders exhibit toward board development efforts. All of the recommendations offered in the book have been field tested in real-life environments. The text is enhanced with charts and exhibits, and many revealing quotes from board members who participated in the study appear throughout. Readers will find that this book addresses the questions most frequently raised by institutional leaders and trustees about how to improve the performance of governing boards.

A new framework for helping nonprofit organizations maximize the effectiveness of their boards. Written by noted consultants and researchers attuned to the needs of practitioners, Governance as Leadership redefines nonprofit governance. It provides a powerful framework for a new covenant between trustees and executives: more macrogovernance in exchange for less micromanagement. Informed by theories that have transformed the practice of organizational leadership, this book sheds new light on the traditional fiduciary and strategic work of the board and introduces a critical third dimension of effective trusteeship: generative governance. It serves boards as both a resource of fresh approaches to familiar territory and a lucid guide to important new territory, and provides a road map that leads nonprofit trustees and executives to governance as leadership. Governance as Leadership was developed in collaboration with BoardSource, the premier resource for practical information, tools and best practices, training, and leadership development for board members of nonprofit organizations. Through its highly acclaimed programs and services, BoardSource enables organizations to fulfill their missions by helping build effective nonprofit boards and offering credible support in solving tough problems. For the latest in nonprofit governance, visit www.boardsource.org, or call us at 1-800-883-6262.

This study was designed to address the conceptions of accountability of the 13 board of trustees that govern the comprehensive, public, state universities in Ohio. The Case Study approach served as the research strategy designed to focus on one system of higher education that allows for autonomy in decision making by the individual boards of trustees. This was a multi-year study involving the use of mixed-method research which combined the use of survey research and archival record review. Data was collected from multiple sources in three phases. The first phase involved the use of a questionnaire mailed to key internal and external constituents of the 13 state universities. The second phase, which focused on archival record review, investigated materials from the institutions themselves and state documents such as the Ohio Revised Code. The third phase involved completing phone interviews with the chairs of the boards of trustees of the state universities. The study was guided by an overall research question: what are the conceptions of governing board accountability? Three additional research questions guided the research in both phases: 1. How does the Ohio Revised Code frame accountability? 2. What are perceptions of governing board accountability held by key stakeholders? 3. How does each institutional governing board perceive the boards accountability? The literature review, for the duration of the study, continued to show a lack of empirical investigation of the concept of accountability as it relates to the board itself. The review of the Ohio Revised Code did not provide a sufficient sense of how the governing boards of the state universities address the accountability issue. The completed questionnaires from the key constituents found that external constituents feel differently about board accountability than internal constituents. Focusing further on the direction of the differences, external constituents were more positive about boards than internal constituents. Finally, information from the phone interviews, which included structured and closed-ended questions, resulted in identifying four main themes that described the feelings of the boards regarding their own accountability. These themes focused on compliance, the administration, transparency, and role ambiguity. The issue of governing board accountability remains ripe for further investigation.

What role have governing boards played in tuition and fee escalation at four-year public colleges and universities? In the United States, college costs, especially tuition and fees, have increased much more rapidly than either the overall Consumer Price Index or median household income. This cost inflation has effectively closed the doors of higher education to many qualified students and contributed to a staggering $1.5 trillion in student debt. Additionally, the number of college enrollments in the United States actually declined for eight straight years between 2011 and 2019, as college student bodies became increasingly stratified on the basis of family incomes. Virtually every public college cost increase, however, requires a positive vote from each university's governing board—and the record shows that these votes are nearly always unanimous. In Runaway College Costs, James V. Koch and Richard J. Cebula argue that many trustees have forgotten that they should act as fiduciaries who represent the best interests of students, parents, and taxpayers. Instead, Koch and Cebula explain, too often many trustees prize size and more prestigious rankings over access and affordability. These misplaced priorities make them vote in favor of ever more plush facilities, expensive intercollegiate athletic programs, administrative bloat, and outdated models of instruction and research. Koch and Cebula supply groundbreaking empirical evidence on the impact of governing board membership, size, and operations on tuition and fees. They show, for example, that the existence of a powerful statewide governing board exercises significant downward pressure on tuition and fees and that state funding cuts cannot explain more than one-half of the cost increases at the typical four-year public institution. The authors propose an action agenda for governing boards, including changing the incentives placed in front of campus presidents and senior administrators. Finally, they conclude that, although public university governing boards deserve blame for accelerating college cost inflation, they also are ideally situated to improve the situation. Runaway College Costs ends hopefully, suggesting that governing boards and their member trustees actually have the greatest potential to improve the situation. Providing the first rigorous empirical evidence of the impact that various modes of governance have had not only on tuition and fees but also on a half-dozen measures of institutional performance, this book will be of serious interest to governors, legislators, public university board members and their staffs, those interested in supporting the traditional goals of public higher education, and of course students and their parents, as well as taxpayers.