Sometimes financial reports can be twenty pages long and staff activity reports can go on and on. In general, the board should decide what reports it wants to receive and what level of detail the reports will contain. Reports to the board should not be staff driven. In practice they often are because the staff is operating in a vacuum. Most boards don’t take the time to specify what reports they want to receive. For governing boards, too much reporting is about what is happening in the black box. While the board should be aware of how the organization is doing, it would be better for them to ask for reports about resources going into the box and results coming out the other side. Managing boards need more detail about what is happening inside the box, but they will want more high-level reporting and avoid asking too many questions about operational details. The board can ask for exception reporting from the organizational leader, so they are only informed about any irregularities occurring in operations.