Haverford College Board of Managers records

The Board of Managers is one of Haverford’s oldest organizations, predating the physical school and even the name “Haverford”. On 30 December 1830, the Friends Central School Association elected twenty-six of their number to serve as the Association’s managers. These men were prominent philanthropists in the Philadelphia Quakers drawn from the area’s influential Gurneyite minority; many were also managers at other local charitable organizations like Friends’ Asylum in Frankford. The Association charged its first board with buying a suitable land and building a school on it, raising money for the enterprise through the sale of stock, and developing the curriculum. After the Haverford School opened in 1833 (the Association was now known as the Haverford School Association), the board continued in these last two roles. The managers made decisions about the character of the school, handling the institution’s finances, making hiring decisions, and determining what the curriculum would cover and what rules were appropriate for the students. The board also administered the school on a more day-to-day level, overseeing the running of the institution’s farm, approving purchases for books, scientific instruments, and furniture, and even giving exams. In addition, the managers worked to promote the school in the hopes of attracting more students and stock subscribers.

Financial difficulties led the managers to suspend the school’s operation in 1845; it reopened in 1847.

Composition The Board of Managers was elected from a larger body. Before 1833 this was the Friends Central School Association; between 1833 and 1856, the Haverford School Association; and after 1856, the Corporation of Haverford College. The composition of the board changed little in the nineteenth century. The original board consisted of twenty-six managers, all Quakers, elected to three-year terms, and this was still the case in 1900. The only difference was the growing number of alumni on the board; a handful in 1860 had become a majority by the turn of the century. Change came more quickly after World War II, when the number of managers rose to the present count of thirty-two. Managers who were not Quakers served on the board by the 1960s.

The early board was headed by the treasurer and secretary of the Association or Corporation; in the twentieth century these positions were replaced by a chair and vice-chair. Presidents of the college have served on the board since the creation of the office in 1886.

Activities The Board of Managers has always seen to Haverford’s finances and investments as well as handling strategic planning. Some of the board’s nineteenth- and twentieth-century functions have since passed out of practice. The school was founded as a stock company, and the managers were in charge of overseeing the stock until all shares were forfeited in 1878. In the 1850s and 1860s, the Board took charge of matters now the realm of the administration, such as authorizing the purchase of individual teaching items and pieces of furniture, setting the curriculum and rules of student conduct, and even disciplining students in some cases. While the managers relinquished these quotidian administrative tasks by the 1870s, they remained involved in approving alterations to the buildings and grounds and in the hiring of faculty through the First World War.