Wow! Thank you for joining us at Blue Avocado magazine . . . we've had just a terrific first year. We haven't exactly finished our mission of cohering community nonprofits into a strong, self-aware movement for social change 🙂 but we are proud of how many of you have found Blue Avocado to be practical, thought-provoking, and fun.
Today, around the world, community nonprofits are more important than ever, and we are even more inspired by how our organizations are building communities and driving social change. We're pleased that Blue Avocado (including our popular column Board Cafe) now has 50,000 subscribers, 1,000 unique visits to the site each day, and our articles are mentioned in hundreds of blogs every month (pat on back here).
Two questions we keep getting are: "Where did the name come from?" and "Is Blue Avocado a blog or a newsletter?" Here's our effort at answering. The name Blue Avocado is meant to be fun and memorable in the same way the magazine is. The name has turned out just as we had hoped — making people smile, differentiating us from other magazines, and reminding people that whatever our differences, we all like guacamole.
In this era when nonprofits are an increasing presence on the web, we think of ourselves as an online magazine. In contrast to a blog, we have an established publication schedule: the 1st and the 15th of each month (although the newsletters go out over three days to keep our server happy). Our content is highly mediated: selected and edited with a great deal of care. Although the core vision was developed by Jan Masaoka and the Blue Avocado Steering Committee, many other writers and editors contribute to its thinking. And in contrast to a newsletter, we emphasize graphics, visual appeal, and have only original content rather than mostly links to elsewhere.
Blue Avocado is also like public television: free for everyone, but we ask our readers and supporters to help us keep it free. And to celebrate our first anniversary, we have environmentally friendly flash drives (with the Blue Avocado logo!) for people who make donations above the basic level. Please click here to become a member!
And please consider writing a First Person Nonprofit OpEd for us . . . see Queries at the bottom for more information. Thanks for making our first year a smash! –Jan Masaoka
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