An independent school Advancement director walks out of a Board committee meeting with six new action items … none of which were on her agenda when she walked in. Her actual work is sitting back at her desk, untouched. The trustees who generated those items? They left feeling engaged and productive. She left feeling buried.
Nobody did anything wrong. That’s what makes this situation so challenging.
I’ve sat on both sides of this table — first as an advancement professional, then as a trustee and committee chair. And my experience is that when the Board-Advancement relationship gets rocky, it’s almost never because anyone is acting in bad faith. It’s usually just because the habits and structures around that relationship are on autopilot.
Meeting too Much, Saying Too Little
There’s a common thought in governance that more meetings equal more engagement. But when Advancement committees meet too frequently — say, monthly when quarterly would do — a few things reliably go wrong.
First, there simply isn’t enough runway between meetings for staff to execute anything. You’re barely out of one meeting before you’re prepping for the next. And what do you talk about when there’s nothing new to report? You get into the weeds. You dig into details that don’t belong in a boardroom. Suddenly, your Advancement committee is spending an hour debating the design of the Annual Giving mailer instead of asking the big, strategic questions they were recruited for.
Second, that constant meeting prep carries a real cost. When your team is perpetually pulling data, creating reports, and building slide decks, momentum stalls. The actual work becomes the victim of the reporting.
Chasing Rabbit Holes of Well-Meaning Ideas
Board members bring so much rich, varied experience to the table. They’ve built businesses. They’ve raised families. They’ve served on other boards. And naturally, they bring those experiences into the room in the form of ideas.
“I heard about this school in Connecticut that does a really cool alumni event — you should look into that.”
“My company just hired a marketing firm that does this specific thing. Have you considered that?”
The instinct is good. These are people who deeply love the school and want to help. The challenge is that schools are a specific ecosystem, and what works in the corporate world — or at an independent school in a completely different market — doesn’t always translate.
The bigger challenge? Staff often feel like they can’t say “no” to a trustee. So instead of saying “That’s interesting, but it’s not the right fit for our goals right now,” they go down the rabbit hole. Hours are spent researching suggestions and drafting “report backs” … valuable time that could have gone into closing a gift or recruiting a family.
Data for Data’s Sake
Board members should absolutely be asking for numbers. That’s a sign of a serious, engaged board. But there’s a difference between data that helps you lead and data that just keeps you busy.
When a trustee asks for a report on how many Instagram followers the school gained in 90 days, they may believe they’re seeking an indicator of brand awareness or engagement. But the unintended effect is pulling a staff member away from meaningful work to compile a report that doesn’t truly connect to a board-level decision.
Follower counts belong on a staff dashboard. The data that drives board-level decisions looks like demographic trends, retention rates, or major gift pipeline movement. That’s the type of information that allows a board member to fulfill their role as a fiduciary.
Turning the Tide to a True Partnership
Lead with the plan. The single most effective thing you can do to protect your Advancement team’s time is to show up with a clear, written plan already in hand. When the strategy is documented — when goals and priorities are visible — the plan becomes your anchor. It makes it much easier to say, “That’s an interesting idea. Let’s see how it fits with the three priorities we already agreed on.”
Share the right data. Don’t wait for the board to ask for metrics. It’s easy to understand a Buildings and Grounds report … you spend money on a roof, you get a roof. Advancement can feel more abstract, and tracking the return on investment (ROI) can be trickier, but it shouldn’t be a mystery. The key is to develop a curated set of indicators that inform a board-level decisions and investments.
Governance Data vs. Staff Data:
- Marketing
- Board Data: Cost per enrolled student (the ROI on your marketing spend).
- Staff Data: The cost per click on a specific Meta ad campaign.
- Enrollment:
- Board Data: Inquiry-to-Enrollment conversion rates tracked over a 3-year period.
- Staff Data: Open rates on the “Request a Tour” follow-up email sequence.
- Development:
- Board Data: Giving trends by constituency, year-over-year.
- Staff Data: The click-through rate on the “Donate Now” button in your last email solicitation.
When you provide the big-picture context — what the numbers mean and how they affect the school’s long-term health — trustees are able to elevate and focus on strategic issues over operational ones.
Prioritize governance training. Most trustees get a one-time orientation and a binder that gathers dust on a bookshelf. They arrive with plenty of heart, but without a clear map for how to be genuinely helpful in an Advancement context. This shouldn’t be a one-and-done event. Schools that treat this as an ongoing conversation … think deep-dive onboarding for new members, regular check-ins on the board’s specific role in Advancement, and annual board evaluations and self-reflection … see a massive shift in how they operate. When everyone knows their lane and understands their roles (strategy for the board, execution for the staff), the relationship moves from tug-of-war to partnership.
The Board-Advancement relationship doesn’t fix itself. But it also doesn’t require a personnel change or a governance overhaul to get better. It usually just requires someone on one side of the table to name what isn’t working, and someone on the other side willing to hear it. Start there.
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