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Everything We’ve Been Taught About Major Gifts is Wrong
Of course, by “everything” for purposes of this article I mean “three big things.” But conventional wisdom can lead us astray when devising effective fundraising strategies. Like leprechauns, these mythical truisms can mislead us into thinking we shoul …
If You Give a Board Treasurer A Cookie . . .
Blue Avocado columnist Vu Le inspires us again with his ideas for nonprofit-themed children’s books. We should all be writing some! Today, I want to talk about children’s books. I am so sick of these children’s books that my one-year-old …
A Board Member’s Guide to Nonprofit Overhead
Calculating overhead rates and managing overhead expense are important staff roles. Board members are not required to know how do staff accounting work, but we do need to bring an informed perspective to our oversight: Harvard’s indirect cost ra …
A Funder’s Message to Other Funders About Overhead
This article is adapted from a presentation made to Grantmakers for Effective Organizations (GEO). Our deepest thanks to Unmi Song for speaking these truths: Good afternoon; I am Unmi Song, President of the Lloyd A. Fry Foundation. The overhead …
First Person Nonprofit: A Day in the Life of a Major Gifts Officer
So exactly how do you lead someone up to a $1 million ask? The director of major gifts at a large regional environmental organization agreed to tell us everything . . . as long as we didn’t reveal her name or organization. And best of all: post …
Adding It All Up: Nonprofit CFO Study
This survey of 906 nonprofit finance professionals reveals some surprises about these crucial-but-often-overlooked staff, looking at questions ranging from educational backgrounds, workload, board and CEO understanding of finance, and CEO compensation: …
Charity Raters Part II: Managing Your Rating
In Part I of this two-part article, we summarized the features and criteria of six of the best known “charity raters” including Charity Navigator, Better Business Bureau, and others. Many readers added thoughtful comments and noted lesser-known raters …
Charity Raters Part I: Charting the Bad and the Bad
Wouldn’t it be great if there were an objective rating system so that donors could choose the best nonprofits to donate to just as investors use rating agencies to pick the best companies to invest in? Don’t answer; it’s a rhetorical question. Here’s w …
Matrix Map Part II: The Strategic Imperatives
In this article, Steve Zimmerman continues presentation of the Matrix Map model from the book Nonprofit Sustainability: Making Strategic Decisions for Financial Viability: In our last Blue Avocado column, we introduced the Matrix Map, which you …
The Matrix Map Approach Part One: How to Create the Matrix Map
You may have heard of the Dual Bottom Line: the idea that strategic choices must serve both mission impact and financial viability. But how do you turn this idea into a quantitative decision-making tool? Blue Avocado columnist Steve Zimmerman sum …
