Leadership and Management
Enhance your nonprofit leadership skills with practical advice and expert insights on a wide range of leadership and management topics.
From strategic planning and decision-making to team building and organizational development, discover the resources you need to inspire and empower your team.
Blue Ribbon Nominating Committee for Your Board
A detailed method for your nonprofit’s nominating committee to recruit board members.
Alternatives to Strategic Planning at Nonprofits
By staking too much on strategic planning, nonprofits often neglect other tools for making decisions, moving organizations, or learning.
In Defense of Strategic Planning: A Rebuttal
Consultant Mike Allison provides a defense of strategic planning for the nonprofit sector in rebuttal to a prior Blue Avocado article.
Strategic Planning: Failures and Alternatives
When recessions happen, many nonprofits can’t move forward on strategic plans. Jan Masaoka explores what nonprofits can do instead.
Firing the Executive Director
Sometimes a board needs to fire an executive director. Sometimes it’s clear, more often it’s a little fuzzier. So when and how do you do it?
Where Should the Board Chair, the ED, the Staff Sit?
Where everyone sits reflects organizational philosophy, and is a strong message to all about authority, participation, and the board’s role.
Nonprofit Bookkeeping Test
This 21-question quiz samples from general bookkeeping knowledge as well as nonprofit bookkeeping and compliance matters. Use this assessment test as part of your hiring toolkit as well as for identifying staff training needs.
Meaningful Budget Work by the Board
The board has some important perspectives to bring to the discussion of the budget. Here some questions that take advantage of the board’s diverse community perspectives and the finance staff’s knowledge and skill.
What is Micromanagement and What Isn’t?
As an executive director, what can feel like micromanagement from members of your board can be a symptom of larger problems.
Six Easy, Nearly-Free Ways to Be More Disabled-Accessible
Disabilities activist Mary Lester says there are simple ways to make your office and program sites more accessible without busting the bank.