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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Nonprofit Retirement: Calculating retirement Needs & Exploring Choices
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Ask Rita: Zero Cell Phone Use While Driving Policy
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A Family and Medical Leave Act Checklist
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Ask Rita: Can an Employee Come and Go Using Family or Medical Leave?
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Is It Time for an Audit?
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Gas Rates, Volunteers, and Justice
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Should the Board Hold Executive Sessions?
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More Than the Olympics: Sports, Nonprofits & Community
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Boards of All-Volunteer Organizations
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Three-Step Immigration (IRCA) Compliance for Employers
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Obama: the Nonprofit Sector’s Favorite Son?
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Overtime Pay for Nonprofit Preschool Teacher?
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The Best Way to Raise Money? Choose a Revenue Strategy
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What Should Nonprofit Boards Know About Insurance Brokers?
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In Search of Unicorns: Finding & Hiring Outside Grantwriters Part 2
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Unicorns Found: Meet Two Grantwriters
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Word on the Street from the Council on Foundations Conference
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The Unrecognized Value of Community Nonprofits, Hiring Grantwriters, Extended Warranties, MTV
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In Search of Unicorns: Finding & Hiring Grantwriters, Part 1
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Nonprofit Budgets Have to Balance: False!
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Don’t Drive, Chew Gum and Use the Phone at the Same Time
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Meaningful Acts of Appreciation for Nonprofit Boards and Staff
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Nonprofits and the Media
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Pay Off My Student Loan or Pay Into a 401K?
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Why is it called Blue Avocado?
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Abolish Board Committees?
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Reasons to Have (& Not to Have) an Attorney on a Nonprofit Board
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Can We Require An Employee To Take Her Meds?
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Promises, Promises: Rural Advocates vs. Big Philanthropy
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Five Ways to Let Government Money Run You Over
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Good Management vs. Good Leadership
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What Do I Say to a Donor or Funder?
The challenges of writing a grant proposal and getting funded evidently go back to colonial times.
“To err is human,” and as we all ruefully know, nonprofit board members and executive directors are typically human.
Organizational problems can bring out the best in people. Through it all, life goes on. It’s your choice how to embrace everchanging moods.
Often, conflicts of interest in nonprofits do not involve personal financial gain, but conflict of loyalty.
Humor columnist Vu Le comments on the joys of meeting scheduling with The Official Rules for Scheduling Nonprofit Meetings.
What you need to create a more nuanced and fair hiring policy regarding criminal background checks and convictions.
Vu Le proposes a new tv show called ED featuring a group of Executive Directors of several nonprofits located in Seattle.
Blue Avocado humor columnist Vu Le gives some fashion advice to us nonprofit folk.
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.
How can nonprofits properly handle a board member when they cross the line?
Collective Impact (CI) has covered lots of ground, but like taking naps at work, it should be done strategically and sometimes not at all.
A deputy director describes the crisis at an organization where the founding executive director left, and how the organization almost closed.
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.
This booklet was originally published by the National Center for Nonprofit Boards and the Support Center for Nonprofit Management.
Donor-advised funds are believed to incentivize charitable giving. Donors get to pick from a smorgasbord of benefits. Nonprofits struggle.
Board composition matrices focus our attention on what people are, rather than on what the organization needs board members to do.
A brief introduction to donor-advised funds (DAFs). A DAF typically affords the advantages of two kinds of anonymity for a donor.
An employee with a disability requests intermittent leave as an accommodation. But coming to work is an essential function of the job.
Everybody has an opinion about nonprofit executives’ salaries, but almost nobody has any real data outside their own experiences.
Board meeting time is precious time, and the fulcrum of board-staff opportunity or disappointment. Let’s be smarter about how we use it.
An overlooked but crucial element in strategic planning is the attitude or stance that the executive director takes to the process.
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.
A sample job description you may consider using or modifying to fit your nonprofit’s open board support positions.
The single most common question asked of experts on nonprofit boards: What’s the right number of people to have on the board?