What Game Are You Playing?

So much boardroom discussion is constrainedframed by money.

When your school doesn’t have money, your how-to-play choices are mostly about survival: Covering the lease or debt, meeting payroll, year-to-year stability. It is hard to be strategic, let alone visionary, when constraints are all that you see.

You are necessarily reacting to what circumstances throw at you. A roof problem or a failing boiler becomes an existential threat, not to mention an unhappy family with four children that abruptly withdraws.

But once finances are squared away and you have cash in the bank, schools with resources can start playing the equivalent of an offense game.

Their boards and leaders think about leverage, systems, and the future. They ask, how can we better fulfill our mission? What does growth and impact look like? What can we scale? Vision becomes something achievable.

Feel the difference? Money matters, even in the nonprofit world. Accumulating more is a multi-year project that rarely happens by accident. Where does this rank on your board’s list of imperatives?