This simple 1-page survey can be used to assess the extent to which members of your board are ready to shift from customary custodial governance patterns to policy-centered, strategic leadership.

This chart–adapted by Ralph Enlow based on Chait, Ryan, and Taylor’s highly instructive conceptual framework–illustrates and summarizes three key aspects of governance: fiduciary, strategic, and generative.

Governance is governance. That’s more than a title—it’s a deeply held conviction. It’s a conviction first of all that governance is not management and, second, that governance in the not-for-profit sector is absolutely identical to governance in the for-profit sector—with that one added dimension that I will come back to. I want now to discuss what governance or trusteeship (I use the two terms completely interchangeably) is and what it is not. First, what it is not. Governance is not management. In my opinion, one of the worst sins of charitable organizations is that too often they do not distinguish between the two. Rather, they confuse the two responsibilities and in the process hamper the mission of the institution.