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.
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The Expanded Matrix Map: Leveraging Your Triple Bottom Line for Fundraising
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What are your nonprofit’s priorities and goals for 2025?
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Nonprofit Leadership Isn’t Perfect, and That’s the Point
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Four Ways to Remove a Board Member
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What are the Biggest Challenges in Getting (and Keeping) Your Nonprofit’s Staff and Volunteers?
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When Does Interim Nonprofit Leadership Make Sense?
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Five Internal Controls for the Very Small Nonprofit
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Upcoming Webinar: What Nonprofits Need to Know About Working with Consultants – Live Q&A (March 20, 2025)
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2024 Blue Avocado Year in Review
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What is the Secret to Successful Grant Writing?
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A Nonprofit Partnership: How One Board Member Connected Two Organizations and Boosted Both
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A Practical Guide to Getting and Keeping Nonprofit Volunteers
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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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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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Moving Beyond Performance: Making DEI Actionable
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From Crisis to Clarity: Five Steps to Demystify Succession Planning
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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?
A drug-free workplace policy can specify that the term “drugs” includes marijuana (and its derivatives and all related cannabinoids).
Some of the hardest moments we face happen during nonprofit leadership transitions. Nothing is ever as neat as it looks on the surface.
Is your nonprofit considering raising funds and investing in building or renovating a piece of property? Save time, money, and headaches.
How can a group of talented people, grouped together for a positive purpose, create an environment of discord, frustration or inefficiency?
How does an employer document ADA compliance? Let’s go through each element of the ADA analysis and identify helpful documentation.
Moving board diversity from a ‘problem to solve’ to ‘something to practice.’ Staff and board talk common hurdles and how to overcome them.
Misclassifying a contractor can cost big dollars for your nonprofit, so march forward, but make sure you proceed with care.
Your nonprofit should have a written Conflict of Interest policy that Board members review and acknowledge annually.
Ready to boost exposure for your work? Here’s six promotion ideas that should help get exposure for your nonprofit.
Nine nonprofit trends that need to go. Some are nonprofit sacred cows that we need to release into the wilderness.
Different nonprofits have different trajectories that result in different assets at a given stage of development.
A tiger escaped and attacked three visitors and killed one of them at the San Francisco Zoo. How did the zoo board react?
Why do so few grantmakers invest in building the capacity for nonprofits to raise independent money?
This is a complicated question, and this is a new and evolving area of the law. All nonprofits should have an e-workplace policy.
The CEO of the Foodbank of Santa Barbara County describes an approach to strategic choices that has us singing, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”
Interview with Norma Mtume, former Black Panther and co-founder of SHIELDS for Families in Los Angeles.
The causes of burnout at nonprofits . We have unconscious beliefs that are undermining our very health and sanity.
Framing job descriptions properly as related to disabilities will help you recruit a suitable applicant pool, be fair to people with disabilities, and protect your organization from charges of disability discrimination.
Blue Avocado columnist Vu Le inspires us again with his ideas for nonprofit-themed children’s books. We should all be writing some!
Use this sample disclosure form for the amount of a ticket contribution that is deductible for your nonprofit’s federal income tax purposes.
Some common questions and sample materials covering income tax and how they may relate to your nonprofit’s auction participants.
Sample document for an acknowledgement of non-cash donation to a nonprofit organization and/or charity.
A sample silent auction bid sheet — available as an Excel spreadsheet download for your nonprofit to modify.
Charitable auctions trigger a variety of compliance and reporting requirements. Use this sample checklist to help prepare your nonprofit.