How can a person be certain that the potential trustee he is considering is right for his board? How can that candidate be certain that one's institution and board are right for him? Answers to these questions are vital. Courting a candidate for the board of a private college or university means spending time and money, and with budgets increasingly tight, it is wasteful to invest in a potentially bad situation--or worse, in an ineffective trustee. The author conducted a study in 2006 that asked 51 veteran trustees what they would have liked to have known before they agreed to sign up. An outgrowth of this research led to the design of a 12-step approach to courting potential trustees. This article presents this 12-step approach.