The Role of School Boards on School Financial Management in Mara Region: A Perspective of the Seventh-day Adventist Church-Owned Schools in Tanzania

School governance in the Adventist world church is well stipulated in their working policy. Even though school boards of governors have been entrusted with the day-to-day welfare of the schools, yet, most of them are currently running at a loss and some of them have been declared closed due to financial mismanagement and lack of vision. It is in this regard, this study sought to investigate the role of school boards on school financial management in the Mara region: a perspective of the Seventh-day Adventist church-owned schools. The study employed a survey design where self-constructed questionnaires were used as a tool for data collection from a sample of 89 respondents who were purposively selected. This study specifically addressed three objectives namely: (i) to examine whether the school board of management knows schools’ financial management (ii) to determine the factors leading to financial stability in schools and (iii) to determine the relationship between board members’ knowledge on financial management, and the financial stability in schools. For research objectives one and two, we employed descriptive statistics to determine the characteristics of the mean score and standard deviation. For research objective three, we employed the Pearson Product Moment Correlation coefficient (rho) to ascertain the relationship existing between variables. The findings revealed that to a large extent, the majority of the board members are less informed with financial knowledge as most of them are engaged in these boards by their positions in the church regardless of whether they are financially literate or not. The study further found that there is a strong and positive correlation between the board members’ knowledge of financial matters and that of schools’ financial stability (Sig =.000, r =.741). This suggests that the more knowledgeable the board members on financial matters are, the better for the welfare of the school’s financial stability. The study recommends that the positive relationship between the role of school board members and financial stability calls for school managers to revisit the composition of school board members whose membership should be determined by their capability rather than the virtue of their positions in the church.