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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Matrix Map Part Two: The Strategic Imperatives
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How to Keep the Board Under Your Thumb
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The Matrix Map Approach Part One: How to Create the Matrix Map
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What Are My Nonprofit’s Obligations Under the Affordable Healthcare Act?
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Nonprofit Funding: Buying a Cake and Restricting it Too
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The Founding Fathers Write a Grant Proposal
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Ten Biggest Mistakes Boards and Executives Make
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Kirk Kramer: An Uncomplicated Path for Developing Leaders
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In the Swirling Dust of Change, Life Still Goes On for an ED
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Conflict of Interest… or Conflict of Loyalty?
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How to Schedule a Nonprofit Meeting: Point of Vu
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Hiring Job Candidates with Criminal Convictions: Unlock the Possibilities
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New Sitcom: Nonprofit Life
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Dress for Nonprofit Success?
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Deconstructing Nonprofit Sustainability
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A Board Member Crosses the Line
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A Gay Activist is Conflicted about the Marriage Equality Campaign
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Collective Impact: Resistance is Futile
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Citizens United Unfair to One Million Corporations
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Stuck Between a Financial Crisis Wrought by the Founder and a Hard Place
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Twelve Ways to Get a New Executive Director Off on the Right Foot
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All Hands on Board: The Board of Directors in All-Volunteer Organizations
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Donor-Advised Funds: Non-Transparent Tax Shelters for Good
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Ditch Your Board Composition Matrix
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Donor-Advised Funds Background
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Is Coming to Work Required to Keep My Job?
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High Pay for Nonprofit Execs? Analysis of 100,000 Salaries
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And Now for a Different Type of Board Agenda
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Stance: The ED’s Role and Attitude in Strategic Planning
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Coming Out as a Christian
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Board Support Position: Sample Job Description
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What’s the Right Size for the Board?
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Getting Real About Real-Time Evaluation
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Take A Fresh Look at Scrip Fundraising
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Organizing the Board to Support Nonprofit Revenue Strategy
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How To Use Text Messaging for Nonprofit Outreach
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Questions to Ask Prospective Board Members
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Vanguard Foundation Update: With Leader Pleading Guilty, “Truth and Reconciliation”?
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Nonprofits: How to Survive an IRS Audit
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The Automatic Nonprofit Salary Calculator
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Executive Director Evaluation Survey Form
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Vanguard Foundation Update
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The Philanthropic-Consultant Industrial Complex
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Evaluating the Executive Director
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Contract Wizardry: Conjuring Impact from Government Contracts
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Nonprofit Staff Don’t Vote in Elections? False!
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Only Bad Restaurants Go to Scale
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Social Media for Nonprofits: 6 Do’s and Don’ts
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Are Social Workers Exempt or Nonexempt? Help!
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The Governance/Support Model for Nonprofit Boards
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Get the Most Value from Your Audit
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When Kids Volunteer: Liability Basics
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Nonprofit Tax Quiz
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How to Get a Job at a Foundation
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Nonprofit Personnel Files — A Guide from Ask Rita
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Foundation-Nonprofit “Partnerships” — Fact or Fiction?
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Should Staff Contact with the Board Be Restricted?
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12 Ways for New Nonprofit Executive Directors to Succeed
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Firing My Friend, the Founder
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Sample Drug-Free Nonprofit Workplace Policy
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Can We Fire Someone Who Comes to Work Drunk?
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Nonprofit Lessons from Star Wars
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Regrets of a Former Arts Funder
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Ten Myths About Nonprofit Boards
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Outsource Your Bookkeeping!
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The 7 x 7 Board Member Briefing
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The Board Just Fired Me …and I’m the Founder!
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Four Ways to Remove a Board Member
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Standing on the Shoulders of Movements
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Should You Be Considering a Nonprofit Merger?
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The Trouble with Turkey
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Board Insurance: Do You Really Need It?
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Endorsing Candidates. Illegal. How to Do It.
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Three Instant Improvements for Board Agendas and Accountability
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Nonprofit Job Sites Reviewed and Rated
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Can I Be Held Personally Liable for Misclassifying an Employee as Exempt?
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Benchmarking and Analyzing Salaries: A Fast How-To
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Blue Ribbon Nominating Committee for Your Board
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Lucky 7: The Casino Industry and Philanthropy
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Alternatives to Strategic Planning at Nonprofits
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In Defense of Strategic Planning: A Rebuttal
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Ask Rita: Can We Discriminate in Favor of People with Disabilities?
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Court-Ordered Community Service: Volunteers or Prison Labor?
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Strategic Planning: Failures and Alternatives
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Firing the Executive Director
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Get Thy Nonprofit Self Into Therapy!
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Where Should the Board Chair, the ED, the Staff Sit?
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Ask Rita: The HR of Nonprofit Romance
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How to Hire Your First Development Director
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Grantseeker’s Guide to Foundation Affinity Groups
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Finding the Right Nonprofit Board to Join
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Nonprofit Bookkeeping Test
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Meaningful Budget Work by the Board
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Nonprofit Love
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What is Micromanagement and What Isn’t?
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Six Easy, Nearly-Free Ways to Be More Disabled-Accessible
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America’s Dirtiest Job: Nonprofit Telemarketer?
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The Easiest Way to Raise Money: Register with CFC
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.
Calculating overhead rates and managing expenses are important roles. Board members need to bring an informed perspective to oversight.
Most of us have had moments of despair. Marilyn Neece very generously shares her story with us.
There is an abundance of advice for nonprofit boards and EDs that speaks to the advantages of “partnership” and “open communications.” But sometimes that advice just doesn’t feel like enough.
If your nonprofit’s employee count is anywhere near 50, you’re going to want get familiar with enforcement agency regulations.
No executive director has all gifts, and many are brilliant. But what about the nonprofit CEO who is terrific in some ways but whose strengths are matched with some troubling flaws as well?
Nonprofits employees work a lot and often neglect their health. Humorist Vu Le describes yoga poses designed specifically for nonprofits.
Blue Avocado asked for potential interviewees who had followed a founder or a long-time executive. We didn’t expect 58 people to respond.
Blue Avocado contributor and CPA Dennis Walsh provides a handy compliance guide, and five sample forms to make sure your wording is right.