Rebekah Burch Basinger says that a dashboard is a visual indicator of specific aspects of the institution's performance at a particular point in time -- a snapshot of how the school is doing. When creating a dashboard, the board should go to the strategic plan. The board should not ask the president or staff to create the dashboard -- the dashboard needs to come from the board itself. Usually the dashboard is color-coded. Green means everything is OK. Yellow means that the board should stop and look. Red means the school is in big trouble. A board doesn't want to see red -- the board should address problems before they get to the red stage.