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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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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Nonprofit Photo Contest
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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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The Expanded Matrix Map: Leveraging Your Triple Bottom Line for Fundraising
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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?
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Fundraising and Public Speaking
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Blue Avocado Presents: Why ESG is Important to Your Nonprofit – Live Q&A
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Ask Rita: I’ve Never Fired Anyone Before — and Now I Have To!
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Using the Sensory Funnel to Improve Nonprofit Efficacy and Productivity
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Nonprofit Mergers & Collaboration
Nonprofit rebrands are tricky. Nonprofit rebranding strategies to help provide you with a roadmap to your own successful transition.
Food insecurity is not an abstract: Our friends, neighbors, and communities are struggling to thrive. The challenges of food insecurity.
Nonprofits must advance their mission by valuing their employees’ worth by providing benefits and fair compensation for nonprofit employees.
While culturally responsive leadership has usually been centered in education, its practices have value to the nonprofit sector as well.
Getting what your nonprofit needs — funding, staff, and more — means showing how working with you can be a win-win.
With more workers than ever doubling as caregivers, nonprofits must find new, caring ways to support them in the workplace.
Tap into curiosity and creativity in nonprofit leadership and enhance your ability to be a clear and confident leader.
Nonprofit grant proposal budgeting tips: Five common challenges and strategies for calculating grant proposal numbers.
Take action to protect nonprofit employee safety and contribute to a community of acceptance and support where violence is not tolerated.
By careful examination of your nonprofit’s budget, you can gain insights into your organization’s true priorities.
Leading a nonprofit can be an isolating and exhausting experience, so preventing burnout is key to an organization’s long-term success.
Learn how the United Way of Greater Los Angeles (UWGLA) is using racial justice to inform their grantmaking efforts, and how other philanthropic organizations can help work to undo the legacies of harm inflicted upon communities of color.
Grants are an important source of funds for nonprofits, but some may come with strings attached that can create more headaches than positives for your organization. A strategic approach can help you be sure you’re applying for the grants that best meet your needs.
Sometimes, the continued growth and success of a nonprofit means the founder must recognize when the time is right to step aside and trust others to guide the organization and its mission.
Nonprofits may be surprised to find that their communities have already implemented the kind of innovative, collaborative programming that their leadership — and funders — are looking for.
Simple acts can have a big impact on the community. Learn how one nonprofit discovered the tools to fight systemic issues were at their disposal all along — they just needed to learn how to use them.
Help your board members avoid dysfunction and clearly understand their roles in supporting your nonprofit’s success.
Learn how your CFO can contribute to a successful grant application — and the administrative processes that follow.
An inclusive and engaged advisory committee has the potential to increase the quality, reach, and overall impact of your nonprofit’s work on a consistent basis.
Some factors to keep in mind when you’re planning to discipline or terminate a nonprofit employee.
Adopting solid organizational policies can help your nonprofit set expectations and avoid a laundry list of problems.
Exploring how nonprofits can remain committed to supporting the health, economic security, and well-being of historically marginalized communities — even after the end of affirmative action.
Defining the desired outcome and what constitutes success in measurable terms helps stakeholders align their actions and priorities, ensuring that every effort is geared toward achieving this shared vision.
When we take a closer look at what Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks actually entail, it is often not worth the time and resources for most small nonprofits to go through such a process.