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We bring you news and insight every two weeks via our Blue Avocado email newsletter. Don't miss a thing by coming to the website between issues.What is Blue Avocado?
Blue Avocado is a nonprofit online magazine for community nonprofits. We
publish every third Tuesday through an HTML newsletter delivered to more than 50,000 subscribers. Thanks to its sponsors and members, Blue Avocado subscriptions are free.
Blue Avocado is guided by a Steering Committee of its founding sponsors and leadership:
Jan Masaoka, Director & Editor in Chief
Jeanne Bell, CEO, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services
Susan Bradshaw, VP Marketing/Member & Broker Svcs, Nonprofits Insurance Alliance Group
Pamela Davis, President and CEO, Nonprofits Insurance Alliance Group
Nelson Layag, Project Director, Silicon Valley, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services
Blue Avocado operates under the auspices of CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Donations are tax-deductible.
Blue Avocado aspires to be a new kind of online magazine. Here's how:
Blue Avocado speaks for and from the people in community-based nonprofits.
And "community-based" isn't the same as "small." While many community nonprofits are small, some have budgets in the tens of millions and thousands of staff and volunteers. Some small nonprofits aren't community-based; they may be the vehicles for individual expression, or have been set up for technical reasons. Community organizations come out of constituencies and hold themselves accountable to those constituencies. Nurturing the community organizations movement is Blue Avocado's purpose.
Blue Avocado aspires to high quality journalism, OpEds and analysis.
At Blue Avocado we promise every effort not to talk in the abstract jargon that dominates our sector and deadens our senses.
After the soft-pedaling and nonprofit-ese we've all gotten used to, Blue Avocado might sound overly blunt or direct. We're trying to say what's on our minds. Our aim is to be completely practical, completely usable.
We know that you are not the same as your organization.
When nonprofit literature says, "you," it usually means the organization. For example, "you should have a conflict-of-interest policy," really means, "your organization should have a conflict-of-interest policy." We know you are committed to your organization's mission, but you have interests and concerns beyond it. We mean you the individual: a person with a complex heart and a multifaceted mind.
Writing articles about racial, ethnic and other important kinds of diversity is less important to us than integrating our viewpoint on social justice into everything we do.
A belief in recognizing multiple cultures is intrinsic to what we do and who we are, and this belief is embedded in everything Blue Avocado, not just talked about.
We hear America's nonprofit staff, volunteers, leaders, and constituents singing.
To mix metaphors, we want Blue Avocado to be filled with this song.
Let us know what you think and have to say by clicking here.
Birthday Wishes from Readers
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We're grateful for the support we've gotten during our 12 months, and now that our very first birthday is here, we're pleased to share the birthday wishes sent our way by a few of our friends and readers. Please consider "signing" our birthday guest book by adding your own Comment!
Happy birthday to the most clever and refreshing nonprofit newsletter on the block! Congratulations on completing the first of many laps around the sun. -- Alana Conner, Stanford Social Innovation Review
Congratulations to Blue Avocado on an inaugural year filled with penetrating insights and timely ideas always accompanied by a healthy dose of fun.” -- Kathleen Enright, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO OUR FAVORITE AVOCADO! In only one year you have grown from just a little sprout to a lovely tree that supplies all of us with wisdom and nourishment with just the right amount of spice! We are so proud to be a small part of your important work. On behalf of our nearly 9,000 NIAC and ANI-RRG members, we thank you for your practical, interesting, and provocative articles. Keep them coming! -- Pamela Davis, Nonprofit Insurance Alliance Group
Happy Birthday, Blue Avocado! Awfully precocious for a one-year-old, and wise beyond your year. -- Rick Moyers, Meyer Foundation, Washington, D.C.
I've meant to tell you how much/why I like Blue Avocado...the layout is engaging, the scope is manageable, it provides fresh takes on issues, and you can tell there are live, thinking, caring humans producing it. I've looked at other things for nonprofits from time to time...and come away feeling overwhelmed... and never engaged on a personal level. Reading those is more like taking care of a chore on a "to-do" list... rather than having the feeling, "oh, goody, a new Blue Avocado's out today." --Karen Aitchison
What a year! I've had the great privilege of working with the Blue Avocado team to help launch this baby, and as we mark our first anniversary, I'm signing off as senior editor. I've met so many dedicated souls - both virtually and in the flesh and blood - who've done a ton to shore up this occasionally jaded 'I'm over it with nonprofits' editor. That's what makes Blue Avocado great - it's so nourishing! Happy Birthday! - Lynora Williams, Senior Editor
Join and Support Blue Avocado!
If only Blue Avocados grew on trees! But to get them to your in-box, it takes many staff hours to develop ideas from seeds to stories, and coax them along ‘til they’re ripe for the market and your reading enjoyment.
As you know, every issue of Blue Avocado includes at least one practical article, one thought-provoking article, and one fun article. The originality and quality of our content is why we have 50,000 subscribers, nearly 1,000 visitors to the site everyday, 200 blog mentions per month, and dozens of articles reprinted in nonprofit newsletters across the United States and in many other countires.
We're like public television: free for everyone to read, but we ask our readers to support us with modest membership contributions. Your donations help support our work strengthening our nonprofit sector and celebrating our sector's power, achievements, and promise.
By joining Blue Avocado, you'll receive special Members-Only updates, inside scoops, and invitations to occasional Blue Avocado events. And, with every membership of $45.00 or more, you'll receive your very own Blue Avocado green flash drive, ready to plug into your USB port for backing up data, transfering documents, or making into jewelry. :)
- Basic membership: like public television, Blue Avocado relies on members like you to keep it free for everyone to read. Just $20.00!
- Supporting member: support Blue Avocado and get an environmentally friendly Blue Avocado logo flash drive! $45.00 per year
- Blue Avocado Farm Hand: $100 per year, includes 2 Blue Avocado logo flash drives.
- Blue Avocado Rancher: $700 per year, includes 2 Blue Avocado logo flash drives, Best of the Board Café Second Edition, and six month Resource Directory listing
- Blue Avocado Sponsor: $1,000 per year, includes 2 Blue Avocado logo flash drives, Best of the Board Café Second Edition, one-year Resource Directory listing, and listing in the Sponsors page. Especially recommended for foundations, helping keep Blue Avocado resources available to their grantees and constituents.
So many ways to donate:
> Click to donate to Blue Avocado via credit card using a secure PayPal transaction.> Fax in check or credit card: click here to download faxable form
Thank you to Blue Avocado sponsors
Blue Avocado is free to its 50,000+ subscribers because of the confidence that our sponsors have shown in the community of nonprofits we are building. Please join us in thanking:
Nonprofits' Insurance Alliance of California (NIAC)
Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund
Alliance for Nonprofit Insurance, Risk Retention Group (ANI-RRG)
CompassPoint Nonprofit Services
We especially want to thank our newest sponsor:
Matheny Sears Linkert & Jaime of Sacramento, California
Get Involved
Well, now that you've seen our first issue, would you like to join us in shaping future issues? See more at About Blue Avocado (button on the right), but here's a fast look:
* Register so you can post comments. Registering is free, as is subscribing. Let your praise, tongue-lashings and creative comments fly on any of the articles and columns.
* Join. We are able to launch thanks to some early supporters, but to continue we'll need a little support from a lot of people. We're trying out a public television model: free to watch/read, but by joining you enable us to continue to have high quality and journalistic independence. And at higher levels support you can get mugs and other cool stuff. We're going to have a donation/join page up soon, but it's not quite ready yet. And remember: subscribing and registering is free, but only because of the support we know we'll get from you as a member.
* Become a stringer. Blue Avocado Stringers are volunteer writers and story-spotters. We might ask you to do an interview or photo in your area, to suggest interviewees for stories, and more. Come on! It'll be fun. Send an email to our editor Jan Masaoka saying you'd like to join the crew.
* Write to us with your reactions, ideas for articles you'd like to write, thoughts. Send a note to editor Jan Masaoka.
We look forward to hearing from you!
Blue Avocado Leadership Council
We are grateful for the perspectives, time, energy, and thoughtfulness of our Leadership Council:
Kathleen Adamson, board member, Nonprofits’ Insurance Alliance of California
Putnam Barber, Action Without Borders/Idealist.org and the Nancy Bell Evans Center on Philanthropy at the University of Washington
Daniel Ben Horin, Compumentor
Rick Carter, Lincoln/Lancaster County Human Services Federation
Sandy Close, New America Media
Alana Conner, Stanford Social Innovation Review
Karen Delaney, Volunteer Centers of Santa Cruz County and board member, Points of Light Foundation/Hands On Network
Rob Emrich, Road of Life and board member, Alliance of Nonprofits for Insurance, Risk Retention Group
Kathleen Enright, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations
Joan Garner, Historic District Development Corporation, Atlanta
Cuong Hong, Philanthropic Advisors
Irv Katz, National Human Services Assembly
Fran Kunreuther, Building Movement in the Nonprofit Sector
Janis Lane-Ewart, KFAI Radio Without Borders
Bill Levis, National Center for Charitable Statistics, Urban Institute
Rick Moyers, Meyer Foundation
Darian Rodriguez Heyman, Craigslist Foundation
Stephanie Roth, GIFT/Grassroots Fundraising Journal
Paul Shoemaker, Social Venture Partners
Tom Silk, SILK NONPROFIT LAW
Kelvin Taketa, Hawai'i Community Foundation
Blue Avocado Reprint Policy
Thank you for your interest in reprinting an article from Blue Avocado or Board Cafe! Here are our simple guidelines:
Blue Avocado and Board Cafe articles are copyright CompassPoint Nonprofit Services, all rights reserved.
With permission, articles can be reprinted at no charge by nonprofit organizations that agree to the following:
- Send us your request in writing. We will try to respond within 24 hours. Email your request to editor@blueavocado.org.
- At the top (or near) the reprinted article, use the following or similar wording: This article is reprinted with permission from Blue Avocado, a practical and readable online magazine for nonprofits. Subscribe free by sending an email to editor@blueavocado.org or at www.blueavocado.org."
- If you are reprinting an article in a print newsletter, please mail two copies of the newsletter to: Editor, Blue Avocado, 731 Market Street, Suite 200, San Francisco, CA 94103
- If you are including an article in your own e-newsletter or posting an article to a blog or listserv, please "copy" the link or post to us at editor@blueavocado.org.
That's it! We're proud to be a "wire service" for so many nonprofits, and to be passed out at so many board meetings and conferences. Thanks, all! -- Jan Masaoka & Lynora Williams
Why "Blue Avocado"?
A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, blue avocados grew wild and with abandon. Unicorns fed on them. Dragons sometimes mistook them for pterodactyl eggs. A few managed to hitch a ride on a meteor and ended up in Central America, where the ancient Maya cultivated them and loved them. Their priests broke open the seeds to foretell the future. One summer equinox the priests opened an avocado seed and gasped in horror. It foretold the destruction of the Mayan world, and a thousand years of suffering under drought and foreign conquest.
The priests ordered all blue avocados destroyed, in a desperate effort to forestall the prophecy.
But the spirit of the blue avocado lived on, and it waited for many centuries for Al Gore to invent the World Wide Web. There it finally found the fertile soil it had long awaited, and grew strong again as BlueAvocado.org. Today it thrives wherever there are people who have hope in their hearts, and guacamole on their chips.
Blue Avocado Steering Committee & Staff
Blue Avocado is guided by a Steering Committee of its founding sponsors and leadership:
Jan Masaoka, Director & Editor in Chief
Lynora Williams, Senior Editor
Jeanne Bell, CEO, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services
Susan Bradshaw, VP Marketing/Member & Broker Svcs, Nonprofits Insurance Alliance Group
Pamela Davis, President and CEO, Nonprofits Insurance Alliance Group
Nelson Layag, Project Director, Silicon Valley, CompassPoint Nonprofit Services
Karen Aitchison, copy editing
Keiko Rosenstiel, Program Associate
Early Sponsors of Blue Avocado
Blue Avocado's parents are Pamela Davis of Nonprofits' Insurance Alliance of California and Tom Layton of the Gerbode Foundation. They encouraged the development of a magazine to support people in community-based nonprofits, and funded the development and testing of concepts that have led to what you see here. We developed and tested many concepts that you don't see here, because they failed in testing. As early funders, they funded those concepts as well, and we are grateful to them for funding both.
Pre-launch funding has come from some very good friends:
Alliance of Nonprofits for Insurance, Risk Retention Group (ANI-RRG)
CompassPoint Nonprofit Services
Evelyn & Walter Haas, Jr. Fund
Nonprofits' Insurance Alliance of California (NIAC)
If you find Blue Avocado valuable, please let these early supporters know. And please consider becoming a sponsor yourself.
