Recent Posts

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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.

Latest Articles

In the Swirling Dust of Change, Life Still Goes On for an ED

Organizational problems can bring out the best in people. Through it all, life goes on. It’s your choice how to embrace everchanging moods.

Conflict of Interest… or Conflict of Loyalty?

Often, conflicts of interest in nonprofits do not involve personal financial gain, but conflict of loyalty.

How to Schedule a Nonprofit Meeting: Point of Vu

Humor columnist Vu Le comments on the joys of meeting scheduling with The Official Rules for Scheduling Nonprofit Meetings.

New Sitcom: Nonprofit Life

Vu Le proposes a new tv show called ED featuring a group of Executive Directors of several nonprofits located in Seattle.

Dress for Nonprofit Success?

Blue Avocado humor columnist Vu Le gives some fashion advice to us nonprofit folk.

Deconstructing Nonprofit Sustainability

Maybe in some mythic past it was possible to think first about strategic impact goals, and then about how to raise the money. But today we know better: you can’t talk about what you’re going to do without talking about how to get the money.

Collective Impact: Resistance is Futile

Collective Impact (CI) has covered lots of ground, but like taking naps at work, it should be done strategically and sometimes not at all.

Stuck Between a Financial Crisis Wrought by the Founder and a Hard Place

A deputy director describes the crisis at an organization where the founding executive director left, and how the organization almost closed.

Twelve Ways to Get a New Executive Director Off on the Right Foot

If you’re on a board, before you turn over the reins, these ideas will help your new executive director get acclimated to their new role.

All Hands on Board: The Board of Directors in All-Volunteer Organizations

This booklet was originally published by the National Center for Nonprofit Boards and the Support Center for Nonprofit Management.

Donor-Advised Funds: Non-Transparent Tax Shelters for Good

Donor-advised funds are believed to incentivize charitable giving. Donors get to pick from a smorgasbord of benefits. Nonprofits struggle.

Ditch Your Board Composition Matrix

Board composition matrices focus our attention on what people are, rather than on what the organization needs board members to do.

Donor-Advised Funds Background

A brief introduction to donor-advised funds (DAFs). A DAF typically affords the advantages of two kinds of anonymity for a donor.

Is Coming to Work Required to Keep My Job?

An employee with a disability requests intermittent leave as an accommodation. But coming to work is an essential function of the job.

High Pay for Nonprofit Execs? Analysis of 100,000 Salaries

Everybody has an opinion about nonprofit executives’ salaries, but almost nobody has any real data outside their own experiences.

And Now for a Different Type of Board Agenda

Board meeting time is precious time, and the fulcrum of board-staff opportunity or disappointment. Let’s be smarter about how we use it.

Stance: The ED’s Role and Attitude in Strategic Planning

An overlooked but crucial element in strategic planning is the attitude or stance that the executive director takes to the process.

Coming Out as a Christian

Kim Klein declares the that she is a Christian, calling for all who are religious to stand against the war on women and people of color.

What’s the Right Size for the Board?

The single most common question asked of experts on nonprofit boards: What’s the right number of people to have on the board?

Take A Fresh Look at Scrip Fundraising

Increasingly, nonprofits are finding scrip to be a comparatively easy way to raise funds. How does scrip fundraising work, anyway?