I've been fortunate to have had a great board at RTMS right from the beginning in 1989 until the harvest in 2000. Over the years, they were invaluable in both strategic matters and in helping company leadership over its, well, lack of experience in certain critical aspects of the business (that's me.)
I've reviewed the following material from the Kauffman Foundation's eVenturing website and it's thorough and compelling. There are a couple of stories, three or four articles about tools to use in building and using boards, and even a couple of lists of board related templates.
If you're in growth mode, a board can be a critical success factor for you. Using Boards of Directors (Kauffman)
Stories, how-to's, tools and templates.