In scoping
Corporate & Institutional Boards
Public-company boards. Nonprofit boards. Pension trustees. University trustees. Foundation boards. The private-sector and institutional governance bodies whose decisions produce public consequences — and whose published codes often exceed their actual practice.
Common accountability gaps in this area
- Published codes of ethics do not always match observed conduct.
- Director independence can be defined narrowly through technical interpretations of SEC standards.
- Audit committees sometimes approve what management presents without the staff to test it independently.
- ESG disclosures sometimes report on policies that exist on paper more than in practice.
- Pension trustees may approve fee structures that are difficult to explain, to managers whose performance is hard to verify.
- Nonprofit and university boards sometimes tolerate related-party transactions that a public-company audit committee would reject.
What TASFGA will track
- Code-vs-conduct audits — published policies tested against observable behavior
- Director-independence ledger — real independence, not technical compliance
- Related-party transaction tracking — especially in nonprofit and pension contexts
- Disclosure quality index — 10-K, proxy, 990, and equivalent filings rated against actual decision records
- Compensation-outcome pairing — pay vs. the metric the pay was supposedly tied to
Why this matters
Corporate and institutional boards make decisions that move markets, fund universities, pay pensions, and deliver (or deny) services. Existing oversight — SEC filings, audit opinions, accreditation reviews — can be insufficient for the leverage these bodies hold. TASFGA aims to apply the same planned accountability loop here as everywhere else: find the gap between code and practice, propose a fix, and track implementation.