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.
-
The Expanded Matrix Map: Leveraging Your Triple Bottom Line for Fundraising
-
What are your nonprofit’s priorities and goals for 2025?
-
Nonprofit Leadership Isn’t Perfect, and That’s the Point
-
Four Ways to Remove a Board Member
-
What are the Biggest Challenges in Getting (and Keeping) Your Nonprofit’s Staff and Volunteers?
-
When Does Interim Nonprofit Leadership Make Sense?
-
Five Internal Controls for the Very Small Nonprofit
-
Upcoming Webinar: What Nonprofits Need to Know About Working with Consultants – Live Q&A (March 20, 2025)
-
2024 Blue Avocado Year in Review
-
What is the Secret to Successful Grant Writing?
-
A Nonprofit Partnership: How One Board Member Connected Two Organizations and Boosted Both
-
A Practical Guide to Getting and Keeping Nonprofit Volunteers
-
Key Qualities and Skills to Look for in Potential Board Members
-
Innovative Leadership — Culture Doesn’t Have to Eat Strategy: Tending to Human Factors During Strategic Planning
-
Treasurers of All-Volunteer Organizations: Eight Key Responsibilities
-
The Ultimate Guide to Nonprofit Fundraising in 2025
-
The Most Successful Nonprofit Fundraising Strategies
-
Insider Newsletters: An Easy Way to Keep Your Board in the Loop and Engaged
-
An Easy-to-Use Accounting Procedures Manual Template
-
A Guide for Private Foundations: Tax Exemption and 990-PF Filing Requirements
-
Nonprofit Leaders: How Does Your Nonprofit Measure Success?
-
Why is it Hard to Give My Money Away? A Donor’s Perspective
-
The Biggest Mistakes New Nonprofits Make
-
Five Years and Growing: How One Nonprofit Built a Sustainable, Collaborative Mission
-
The Best Route to Approaching Donors: Hand-Head-Heart
-
Measure What You Value: Designing a Values-based Performance Appraisal System
-
The One Tool/Strategy Nonprofits Wish They Implemented Sooner
-
Link Arms to Elevate Your Nonprofit’s Impact
-
Your Nonprofit Got its Grant. Now What?
-
Rebuilding Nonprofit Boards: When a New Board Can Be a Fresh Start
-
Nonprofit Rebranding Strategies: Five Steps to Achieving a Successful Nonprofit Rebrand
-
The Realities of Living with Food Insecurity
-
Drive Your Nonprofit’s Mission by Investing in Your People
-
Blue Avocado Presents: What Nonprofits Need to Know About Fiscal Sponsorships – Live Q&A
-
The Critical Role of Cultural Responsiveness in Today’s Nonprofits
-
8 Easy Ways to Grab More Attention for Your Small Nonprofit
-
Supporting Caregiver Employees in the Nonprofit Sector
-
How Curiosity and Creativity Can Foster Self-Aware Nonprofit Leaders
-
Nonprofit Grant Proposal Budget Calculations: A Road Map
-
Increase Safety for Your Nonprofit’s Team
-
Your Nonprofit’s Budget: A Window to Finding Your Priorities
-
How can nonprofit leaders avoid burnout?
-
Using Philanthropy to Address Racial Harm and Inequity
-
Nonprofit Fundraising: Are You Choosing the Right Grants?
-
Preparing Your Nonprofit to Move Beyond the Founder
-
Litigating a Path to Progress: Nonprofit Advocacy through the Courts
-
Can Nonprofits Look to the Past to Build the Future?
-
Blue Avocado Presents: Copyright Concerns for Nonprofits – Live Q&A
-
How Lessons Learned From Fighting Food Insecurity Can Help Your Nonprofit
-
Five Lessons for Creating an Effective (and Accountable) Nonprofit Board
-
Grant Management Series: Involving Your CFO throughout the Grant Application Process
-
Empowering Community Voices: The Strategic Advantage of Nonprofit Advisory Committees
-
Ask Rita in HR: Should Murphy’s Law Be a Consideration in Making HR Decisions?
-
The Big Chill: Why Nonprofits Should Care about Affirmative Action
-
Vision Before Strategy: A Nonprofit’s Guide to Defining Success
-
Beyond the Hype: Why ESG Frameworks Miss the Mark for Small Nonprofits
-
Charting a New Course for Youth Engagement
-
Blue Avocado Presents: Does Your Nonprofit Qualify for the Employee Retention Credit (ERC)? – Live Q&A
-
Is Your Nonprofit’s Mission Obsolete — Or Just Ready for a New Direction?
-
Five Signs Your Nonprofit is Ready to Reach a Bigger Community
-
The MONGO Dilemma: To Collaborate or Not?
-
Unmasking the Silent Impact of Trauma in Nonprofits
-
The Art of Grant Budgeting: A Guide for Nonprofit CFOs
-
5 Ways Nonprofits Can Balance Creativity and Structure
-
How to Persuade a New Generation to Join Your Nonprofit’s Board
-
Nonprofit ROI: How “Measuring the Good” Can Help Nonprofits Justify Investments
-
9 Principles to Make Your Nonprofit Fundraising Effective — and Fun!
-
Blue Avocado Presents: Cyber Incident Response Plans for Nonprofits – Live Q&A
-
Moving Beyond Performance: Making DEI Actionable
-
From Crisis to Clarity: Five Steps to Demystify Succession Planning
-
Is There Anybody Out There? Navigating the Challenges of Managing Hybrid Work Teams
-
Can You Hear Us Now? Using Feedback to Create Community-Centered Services
-
Unlocking Potential: Collective Leadership in Nonprofits
-
From Startup to Success: Guiding Nonprofits with Six Core Principles of Improvement
-
Blue Avocado Presents: IRS Form 990 – What Your Nonprofit Needs to Know (Live Q&A)
-
Rethinking Perpetuity: Resetting Endowment Expectations After the Pandemic
-
Advocacy Amplified: How Nonprofits Can Garner State Legislative Support for Their Causes
-
Volunteering Alone Will Not Save Us
-
The Year of Three Executive Directors: Important Lessons for Board Management
-
We May Be a Motley Crew, But We’ll Adapt to You: 8 Tenets of Holistic Community Engagement for Nonprofits
-
Join the Movement: Activating Nonprofits for Lasting Change
-
Growing the Roots of Consensus in Nonprofit Governance
-
7 Things Nonprofit Leaders Can Say to Funders to Effectively Manage Limited Resources
-
A Beginner’s Guide to Filing a Form 990 for Your Nonprofit Organization
-
How Nonprofits Can Benefit from Embracing ESG Practices
-
How U.S.-based Nonprofits Can Deliver Disaster Relief Abroad: A Tigrayan Case Study
-
Why Executive Directors Need L&D to Execute a Smooth Succession
-
How Nonprofits Can Change Unfair Laws
-
The Power of Collaborative Fundraising
-
Why Nonprofit Organizations Need Chief Diversity Officers
-
7 Key Factors for Building Peer-to-Peer Fundraising at Your Small Nonprofit
-
The Data Is In: Nonprofits Are Getting More Operational Support
-
How to Implement Strategic Inquiry at Your Nonprofit in 5 Steps
-
Performance Appraisals Are Broken — Here’s How Managers Can Fix the Process
-
Re-evaluating the Great Resignation
-
Working Through Grief: How to Build a Supportive Workplace
-
ESG is Everywhere. Should It Matter to Nonprofits?
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.
Nonprofits can lift up volunteers and VEPs. The key to success is visibly appreciating volunteers’ roles in contributing to your mission.
5 ways to maintain a nonprofit culture that will not accept or tolerate any sexual misconduct or activity in the workplace in any form.
With a scarcity mentality, we are competing for a slice of pie. Collaborating with a mentality that there’s enough to go around, can we grow the pie?
There’s a growing movement among foundations toward impact investing: equity investments, loan guarantees, and everything in between.
In-kind solicitation enables you to supplement your budget in meaningful ways, create stronger, lasting mutual relationships, and more.
When bringing on seasonal workers, you need to pay close attention to age and properly classify workers to avoid getting burned.
The nonprofit sector is undercapitalized, and one organization is trying to solve this problem.
Learning from the experience of those who started a nonprofit out of their basement and grew to be nationally recognized leaders.
Equity is ultimately about creating a level playing field and ensuring that everyone has an honest chance at achieving their potential.
The nonprofit community is asking important questions: What is our responsibility to speak out on behalf of our staff, clients, and community?
Millennials know it’s easier to fix something than replace it. They join nonprofits to make a difference, not complain about their managers.
Despite Millennials’ desire for jobs that allow them to do good and feel good, student debt may be keeping them unaffordable to nonprofits.
Collaboration is tough, collaboration might hurt your ego, but its outcomes can be much more satisfying than solely through individual work.
Many nonprofits haven’t adopted policies and systems to attract young professionals, invest in their development, or incentivize them to stay.
Nonprofits must follow low-income children and families if they are displaced by a new population that does not align with the mission.
While many nonprofits focus on impact evaluations, process models can be invaluable for helping organizations make real, lasting impact.