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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Nonprofits: How to Have a Board Meeting By Telephone
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Ask Rita in HR: Do we really have to do performance evaluations?
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Getting to 100% Board Giving
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How to Recruit Terrible Nonprofit Board Members
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Charity Rater Reviews: Charting the Bad and the Bad
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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
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.