Recent Posts
Navigating the nonprofit world can be challenging. Blue Avocado offers expert guidance on a range of topics — from building strong boards to maximizing your fundraising impact. Explore our latest posts for practical tips, strategies, and solutions to common issues facing nonprofit organizations today.
Recent Nonprofit Articles
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Key Qualities and Skills to Look for in Potential Board Members
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Innovative Leadership — Culture Doesn’t Have to Eat Strategy: Tending to Human Factors During Strategic Planning
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Treasurers of All-Volunteer Organizations: Eight Key Responsibilities
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The Ultimate Guide to Nonprofit Fundraising in 2025
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Nonprofit Photo Contest
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The Most Successful Nonprofit Fundraising Strategies
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Insider Newsletters: An Easy Way to Keep Your Board in the Loop and Engaged
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An Easy-to-Use Accounting Procedures Manual Template
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A Guide for Private Foundations: Tax Exemption and 990-PF Filing Requirements
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Nonprofit Leaders: How Does Your Nonprofit Measure Success?
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Why is it Hard to Give My Money Away? A Donor’s Perspective
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The Biggest Mistakes New Nonprofits Make
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Five Years and Growing: How One Nonprofit Built a Sustainable, Collaborative Mission
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The Best Route to Approaching Donors: Hand-Head-Heart
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Measure What You Value: Designing a Values-based Performance Appraisal System
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The One Tool/Strategy Nonprofits Wish They Implemented Sooner
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Link Arms to Elevate Your Nonprofit’s Impact
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Your Nonprofit Got its Grant. Now What?
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Rebuilding Nonprofit Boards: When a New Board Can Be a Fresh Start
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Nonprofit Rebranding Strategies: Five Steps to Achieving a Successful Nonprofit Rebrand
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The Realities of Living with Food Insecurity
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Drive Your Nonprofit’s Mission by Investing in Your People
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Blue Avocado Presents: What Nonprofits Need to Know About Fiscal Sponsorships – Live Q&A
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The Critical Role of Cultural Responsiveness in Today’s Nonprofits
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8 Easy Ways to Grab More Attention for Your Small Nonprofit
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Supporting Caregiver Employees in the Nonprofit Sector
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How Curiosity and Creativity Can Foster Self-Aware Nonprofit Leaders
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Nonprofit Grant Proposal Budget Calculations: A Road Map
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Increase Safety for Your Nonprofit’s Team
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Your Nonprofit’s Budget: A Window to Finding Your Priorities
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How can nonprofit leaders avoid burnout?
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Using Philanthropy to Address Racial Harm and Inequity
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Nonprofit Fundraising: Are You Choosing the Right Grants?
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Preparing Your Nonprofit to Move Beyond the Founder
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Litigating a Path to Progress: Nonprofit Advocacy through the Courts
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Can Nonprofits Look to the Past to Build the Future?
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Blue Avocado Presents: Copyright Concerns for Nonprofits – Live Q&A
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How Lessons Learned From Fighting Food Insecurity Can Help Your Nonprofit
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Five Lessons for Creating an Effective (and Accountable) Nonprofit Board
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Grant Management Series: Involving Your CFO throughout the Grant Application Process
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Empowering Community Voices: The Strategic Advantage of Nonprofit Advisory Committees
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Ask Rita in HR: Should Murphy’s Law Be a Consideration in Making HR Decisions?
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The Big Chill: Why Nonprofits Should Care about Affirmative Action
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Vision Before Strategy: A Nonprofit’s Guide to Defining Success
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Beyond the Hype: Why ESG Frameworks Miss the Mark for Small Nonprofits
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Charting a New Course for Youth Engagement
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Blue Avocado Presents: Does Your Nonprofit Qualify for the Employee Retention Credit (ERC)? – Live Q&A
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Is Your Nonprofit’s Mission Obsolete — Or Just Ready for a New Direction?
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Five Signs Your Nonprofit is Ready to Reach a Bigger Community
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The MONGO Dilemma: To Collaborate or Not?
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Unmasking the Silent Impact of Trauma in Nonprofits
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The Art of Grant Budgeting: A Guide for Nonprofit CFOs
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5 Ways Nonprofits Can Balance Creativity and Structure
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How to Persuade a New Generation to Join Your Nonprofit’s Board
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Nonprofit ROI: How “Measuring the Good” Can Help Nonprofits Justify Investments
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9 Principles to Make Your Nonprofit Fundraising Effective — and Fun!
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Blue Avocado Presents: Cyber Incident Response Plans for Nonprofits – Live Q&A
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A Practical Process Guide to Getting and Keeping Your Volunteers
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Moving Beyond Performance: Making DEI Actionable
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From Crisis to Clarity: Five Steps to Demystify Succession Planning
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The Expanded Matrix Map: Leveraging Your Triple Bottom Line for Fundraising
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Is There Anybody Out There? Navigating the Challenges of Managing Hybrid Work Teams
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Can You Hear Us Now? Using Feedback to Create Community-Centered Services
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Unlocking Potential: Collective Leadership in Nonprofits
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From Startup to Success: Guiding Nonprofits with Six Core Principles of Improvement
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Blue Avocado Presents: IRS Form 990 – What Your Nonprofit Needs to Know (Live Q&A)
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Rethinking Perpetuity: Resetting Endowment Expectations After the Pandemic
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Advocacy Amplified: How Nonprofits Can Garner State Legislative Support for Their Causes
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Volunteering Alone Will Not Save Us
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The Year of Three Executive Directors: Important Lessons for Board Management
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We May Be a Motley Crew, But We’ll Adapt to You: 8 Tenets of Holistic Community Engagement for Nonprofits
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Join the Movement: Activating Nonprofits for Lasting Change
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Growing the Roots of Consensus in Nonprofit Governance
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7 Things Nonprofit Leaders Can Say to Funders to Effectively Manage Limited Resources
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A Beginner’s Guide to Filing a Form 990 for Your Nonprofit Organization
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How Nonprofits Can Benefit from Embracing ESG Practices
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How U.S.-based Nonprofits Can Deliver Disaster Relief Abroad: A Tigrayan Case Study
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Why Executive Directors Need L&D to Execute a Smooth Succession
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How Nonprofits Can Change Unfair Laws
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The Power of Collaborative Fundraising
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Why Nonprofit Organizations Need Chief Diversity Officers
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7 Key Factors for Building Peer-to-Peer Fundraising at Your Small Nonprofit
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The Data Is In: Nonprofits Are Getting More Operational Support
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How to Implement Strategic Inquiry at Your Nonprofit in 5 Steps
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Performance Appraisals Are Broken — Here’s How Managers Can Fix the Process
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Re-evaluating the Great Resignation
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Working Through Grief: How to Build a Supportive Workplace
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ESG is Everywhere. Should It Matter to Nonprofits?
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Fundraising and Public Speaking
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Blue Avocado Presents: Why ESG is Important to Your Nonprofit – Live Q&A
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Ask Rita: I’ve Never Fired Anyone Before — and Now I Have To!
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Using the Sensory Funnel to Improve Nonprofit Efficacy and Productivity
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Nonprofit Mergers & Collaboration
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A Case Study on Building a Nonprofit Donor Campaign
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Turning NIMBY into YIMBY! (YES in my Backyard!)
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Perfect Together: How to Access Community Television for Your Nonprofit
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Bridging the Generation Gap: Why Your Organization Should have an Associate Board (and How to Start One)
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Welcoming Change, Not Just Dollars: What Every Grant Professional Wants Nonprofit Executives to Know
How to use digital fundraising tools to ease your nonprofit’s workload and raise more money in the process.
Ask the community you serve what they want and need. Remember that your work should happen through, not to, the communities you serve.
How can you fund innovation when your nonprofit continues to struggle to keep the lights on? Here are some ideas.
Reliance on at-will employment to support a termination without proper preparation and risk assessment can lead to serious consequences.
Mapping where data is stored, along with creating a logic model that shows important outcomes to track, helps your nonprofit focus resources.
Efficient layouts can drive cost savings & support collaborative work environments. Branded spaces inspire employees to live out your mission
Funders and nonprofits should keep sight of the fact that human beings are on the other side of the table. Social sector work is about people.
Simple advice that can help guide you more quickly to the best practices without learning the hard way when starting a nonprofit.
The 2016 rule is gone. The DOL is working on a new one. Employers still need to conscientiously remain in compliance with any State laws.
Interview with Ken Doane of SH Cowell Foundation, one of the remaining funders committed to supporting capacity building.
All nonprofits should draw up contingency plans to cushion the impact of these cuts and survive future shutdowns.
A sample eWorkplace HR Policy. Intended for use by nonprofit organizations.
Internal tension and disagreements began to dissipate when the voices of those we serve were engaged in dialogue and decision-making.
Millennials trust people like themselves more than nonprofits, government, and business. They want to improve the world.
Do not buy into the idea that things will never change. The work is too important, the consequences too severe, for us to let fear stop us.
Employers may not arbitrarily fail to count time worked, however small, of the employee’s regular schedule or any period of time.
It sounds like a great idea to start a social enterprise that provides both income and impact, but it’s a bit more complicated than that.
If you’re too busy to deal with a disgruntled volunteer, she might quit, take all of her friends, and besmirch the organization’s good name.
Launching a crowdfunding campaign is the easy part. The real work is building a community of supporters, a movement of change-makers.
“If you play life as a game, you’ll always win.” While the work of nonprofits is no game, there are many lessons we can learn from them.
You need belief in your organization’s ability to make an impact; belief in those your organization serves; and belief in the funder and their desire to create change in partnership with your organization.
Work your advantages as a “Friend of,” and your fundraising efforts will have you feeling like the cat’s pajamas!
For nonprofits challenged by operating in different regions, compliance requirements need to be weighed against potential for impact.
When you first do an email engagement analysis, it’s not unusual to find 30%-50% of your list is unengaged.