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Alternatives to Strategic Planning
In Part 1 of this two-article series, we discussed some of the ways in which strategic planning processes have served nonprofits poorly. One key reason is that strategic planning is the primary organizational change process that nonprofits know …
How to Hire Your First Development Director
The only thing worse than not having fundraising staff is having bad fundraising staff. To help you avoid the mistakes many others have made in hiring development staff, we’ve stolen a script of a scene with consultant Leyna Bernstein as she talk …
Grantseeker’s Guide to Foundation Affinity Groups
Like the mysterious Freemasons and their Grand Lodges, foundation affinity groups feel open and warm to insiders, but to outsiders they appear to be secretive, cloistered societies with their own coded languages, titles, and hierarchies. Rick Cohen fir …
The Easiest Way to Raise Money: Register with CFC
Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) guru Bill Huddleston tells how nonprofits can raise money from federal employees in just eight great points: 1. Why should I bother to read this article about the Combined Federal Campaign? Because i …
Raise Money in 30 Days
Sometimes you need to raise funds in a hurry. It’s easy to think, “We should have established a fundraising plan earlier!” That may be true, but it doesn’t help now. Here are some ways to raise modest funds in a pinch. Because institutions like …
Eight Strategic Mistakes with Memberships
If you have members (whether those members fit the legal definition of member or not), chances are you’re making at least one of these strategic mistakes identified by Ellis Robinson. With striking clarity she points the way not only to bui …
L3C: Pot of Gold or Space Invader?
For-profit companies continue to seek ways to obtain two benefits that are usually reserved for nonprofits: foundation grants and government tax exemptions. These efforts are led by both well-meaning individuals as well as those that simply want fundin …
An Agreed-Upon-Procedures (AUP) Success Story
An Agreed-Upon-Procedures Engagement is one where an auditor performs tests on only a portion of the organization’s finances, and can therefore be done at much lower cost. CPA Dennis Walsh discusses how this little-used process could be utilized more f …
Should Board Members Be Required to Give?
Are board giving requirements a best practice or a bad idea? We report on trends and explore the real questions: Few debates can rile up board members more than the question, “Should our board have a giving requirement?” Many of …
How I Raised $1,000 on Facebook Without Breaking a Sweat
We at Blue Avocado want to encourage people to make use of Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites as more ways to support our communities. At the same time, there’s so much hype about these sites that we also want to demystify them and te …
