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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A Case Study on Building a Nonprofit Donor Campaign
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Turning NIMBY into YIMBY! (YES in my Backyard!)
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Perfect Together: How to Access Community Television for Your Nonprofit
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Bridging the Generation Gap: Why Your Organization Should have an Associate Board (and How to Start One)
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Welcoming Change, Not Just Dollars: What Every Grant Professional Wants Nonprofit Executives to Know
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Identifying and Mitigating Nonprofit Risk with a Six-Step Crisis Communication Plan
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The Regenerative Principle in Practice for Nonprofit Management
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Egg, Omelet, or Frying Pan: Exploring the Relationship between Business & Altruism in the Independent Sector
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Nonprofits Have Been Right All Along: Community Benefit Models Can Solve Our Toughest Environmental Challenges
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A Beginner’s Guide to Lobbying for Nonprofits
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Cyber Security 101 for Nonprofits – Live Q&A
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It’s Not as Scary as You Think: 10 Easy Steps to Launch a Planned Giving Program for Your Nonprofit
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Grantmaking in the 2020s: Giving Collectively, with Trust
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From Transition to Transformation: Key Lessons from the Pandemic for Nonprofits
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Ask Rita: What to Do When the FMLA Replacement Is A Better Performer
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The Secret to Continuous Innovation
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7 Ideas for Pushing Your Board Forward in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging
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None of Us is Getting Out Alive: A Guide to Executive Succession Planning
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You Got the Grant! Now What?
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How to Run a Successful Nonprofit Without Grant Writing
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Reproducing Reproducers: Creating a Legacy of Leadership Succession
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Smart Growth: How to Expand Your Nonprofit’s Programs While Resisting Temptations
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How Nonprofits Can Use Private Capital for Public Good
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7 Ideas to Build a Healthy Board Nominating Process
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Ten Ways to Improve Equity & Increase the Effectiveness of Your Hiring Process
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The Importance of Self-Care as Self-Defense to Nonprofits
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5 Best Practices for Building a Nonprofit Annual Operating Budget (with Template!)
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Navigating the Nonprofit Workforce Crisis – Live Q&A
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Setting Organizational Goals: Does your team know what to do?
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Ensuring Dogs and Cats Get Equal Scratch in Decision-making
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Disrupting the Space of Disaster Philanthropy: A View from the Front Lines
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Up Your Game with Skills-based Volunteering
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7 Guiding Principles for a JDEI Policy That Isn’t Just Hot Air. Plus, a Free Sample Policy!
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Passion Meets Professionalism: Transitioning from Volunteer Leaders to Paid Staff
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The Growth Paradox for Nonprofit Organizations
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Does Your Nonprofit Receive Donations of Services, Supplies or Equipment? Changes are Coming!
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Blue Avocado: What it Takes to Run a Nonprofit
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Ask Rita: An Employee Isn’t Holding Up Their End of the ADA Interactive Process—What Do I Do?
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Transition Tips for Chief Executives and Boards of Directors
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How to Improve Nonprofit Culture Through Mission and Values Realignment
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Role of the Nonprofit CFO in Executive Management: The Watchdog Responsibility
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Role of the Nonprofit CFO in Executive Management: The CFO-ED Relationship
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Why Social Movements Require Entrepreneurial Values
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Ask Rita: When Do I Initiate the ADA Interactive Process with a (Possibly) Disabled Employee?
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How to Unite Your Nonprofit Workforce — and Keep It United Through Misperceptions
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Ethical Storytelling for Nonprofits
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Ask Rita: Religious Exemptions from Regular Work Duties—What Am I to Do?
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Practical Tips for Nonprofit Budgeting
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Forecasting Nonprofit Finances & Pivoting Programs in a Crisis: Download Spreadsheet
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How to Be a Great Supervisor: Insights Learned from 20 Years of Managing
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Can’t Raise Cash Through No VAULT of Your Own?
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Demystifying the Insurance Buying Process – Live Q&A
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Ask Rita: My Employee Has Been “No Call, No Show” for Three Days—Why Isn’t This a Resignation?
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Discussion Corner: Accounting Rules for Silent Auctions from Donated Articles?
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Do Nonprofits Pay Taxes? Do Nonprofit Employees Pay Taxes?
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Ask Rita: How Do We Handle a Supervisor Whose Way of Treating Employees Is Causing Them to Quit?
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Social Transformation for Your Nonprofit – Live Q&A
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The Power of Shared Power: Co-Directing Nonprofits Through Compassion
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A Discussion of The Four Principles of Purpose-Driven Board Leadership– Live Q&A
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Ask Rita: An Employee Took Our Confidential Information for Their Own Personal Use and Won’t Give it Back—What Can We Do?
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To Solve the Problem, Focus on the Desired Outcome: A Formula for Nonprofits
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What a Finance Committee Can Do for Your Board of Directors
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Board Assessments with Sample Management Questions
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Ask Rita: How Do I Navigate Requests for Religious Exemptions from a Requirement to Receive the Covid-19 Vaccine?
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Risk Management for Nonprofits: Copyright
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Don’t Let Internal Controls Slip at Your Nonprofit Organization!
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How to Found and Run a Nonprofit Remotely: Free Template
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Functional Expenses Decreased During Covid-19? How to Prepare for Conversations with Funders
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Ask Rita: We Have Decided on an In-House Investigation—Now, How Do We Do It?
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The Worst Way to Share an Idea is to Say, “I Have an Idea”
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Still Publishing Donor Names? Ditch the List
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Practical Guide to How Nonprofits Can Create Equity in Organizations and Community
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Workplace Discrimination Investigations: Do We Need to Hire an External Professional?
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BEYOND JDEI: Advancing Racial Equity in Organizations – Live Q&A
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Ask Rita: FFCRA Paid Leaves 2021—Help!
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Alleviate Accounting Systems & Staff Training Chokepoints to Power Nonprofit Missions: Part 2
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How to Plan and Execute an Emergency Succession
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How Nonprofits Can Return to In-Person Board Meetings and Retreats
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The Employee Retention Credit: What Nonprofits Need to Know
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Ask Rita: Recording Conversations in the Workplace — Do I Have to Put Up with This?
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Alleviate Accounting Systems & Staff Training Chokepoints to Power Nonprofit Missions: Part 1
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Running Your Nonprofit’s Accounting Department During COVID-19 and After
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Making Nonprofit Strategic Planning (Relatively) Painless
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Re-Opening After Covid-19: What Nonprofits Need to Know about Reasonable Accommodation of Employees with Disabilities
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Creating a More Robust Volunteer Development Program
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Ask Rita: We Can Require Employees to Receive the Covid-19 Vaccine—But Should We?
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New York Nonprofit Employees Get Additional Paid Sick and Safe Leave Rights, Part 2
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New York Nonprofit Employees Get Additional Paid Sick and Safe Leave Rights, Part 1
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How to Use Asset-Framing to Strengthen Nonprofit Work
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How Partnerships Help Nonprofits Stand Out in the Race for Funding
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Ask Rita: Can Our Paid Employees Also Do Volunteer Work for Us?
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How to Build a Compassionate Workplace
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Emotional Labor and Othering: Understanding Terms to Create Equity and Inclusion in the Nonprofit Workplace
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A Primer on Nonprofit Contributions and Revenue from Contracts with Customers
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Ask Rita: What Is a Hostile Work Environment?
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Five Examples of Gen Z Innovators Tackling Social Isolation
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Against the Current: Rudy Espinoza’s Request to President-elect Biden
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Strategic Planning 101 for Nonprofits: Strengthen a Nonprofit’s Board-Executive Director Relationship
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Ask Rita: How Can We Help Our Employee Care for Family During COVID-19?
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Ask Rita: I’m Confused Over EXEMPT vs. NONEXEMPT and SALARIED vs. HOURLY Employees
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.