Congress, the news media, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) continue to cast a wary eye on the compensation of nonprofit leaders. Hence, any college or university board that falls short of IRS expectations in its procedures for setting the president's compensation is putting the president, other senior officials, and board members at unnecessary risk. To be precise, the Internal Revenue Code's Section 4958 imposes excise taxes on nonprofit executives who receive excess compensation, as well as on trustees who approve such arrangements knowing them to be excessive. These penalties are called "intermediate sanctions" because the IRS may impose them in lieu of the more drastic step of revoking a nonprofit's tax exemption. Compensation oversight is legally a part of a board's fiduciary duty, breaches of which are actionable under state law. Violations may be enforced by state attorneys general who have the authority, in extreme cases, to fine trustees and seek removal of boards for failure to protect against compensation excesses. The good news is that strategies and best practices for avoiding sanctions exist for any college and university board willing to take advantage of them. This article presents ten steps for getting compensation right and ten pitfalls that should be avoided.