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.
-
Social Enterprise & Earned Income: A Key To Revenue or a Distraction?
-
You Can’t Fire Me, I’m a Volunteer!
-
Empowering Next Generation Leaders through Crowdfunding
-
Nonprofit Leadership Tips from the Basketball Court
-
Some Say Fundraising Is Just Sales: They’re Wrong!
-
Fundraising for “Friends of” Organizations
-
Ask Rita: Employees Who Cross Jurisdictions: Which Law Applies?
-
Why You May Need to Delete Half of Your Nonprofit’s Email List
-
Volunteer Management: How to Get it Right
-
Ask Rita: How Do I Prevent Sexual Harassment at My Nonprofit?
-
Scarcity or Abundance? An Experiment in Collaborative Fundraising
-
The New Fundraising Frontier: Impact Investing
-
In-Kind Fundraising: A Great Way to Expand Your Budget
-
Ask Rita: Are Summer Helpers Employees, Contractors, or Interns?
-
Show Me The Money! A Step Toward Solving the Problem of Operating Support
-
Succeeding When You’re Small: Lessons Learned from DonorsChoose.org
-
Achieving Equity: We Need a New Approach to Funding
-
Finding Your Voice As a Nonprofit
-
What Millennials Really Want: Professional Development
-
The Nonprofit Student Debt Conundrum
-
Ego Checks, Spaghetti Sauce, and Other Suggestions for Nonprofit Collaboration
-
4 Things Your Nonprofit Can Do to Recruit & Retain Millennial Leadership
-
The Gentrification Phenomenon: A Nonprofit Dilemma
-
Process, Process, Process: The evaluation model you shouldn’t ignore
-
Connection is Key: How Knowledge Sharing Helps Organizations Grow and Prevents Isolation
-
Lide Haiti: Helping women and girls help Haiti
-
Branching out: Raising more dollars by understanding donors’ differences
-
Financial Focus: You Told Us
-
In the Boardroom: Asked to Join that Board?
-
Data Visualization: User-Centered Design
-
Whose Nonprofit Is It Anyway: When a Nonprofit Leader Moves On
-
Ask Rita: Is it Legal to Require Nonprofit Employees to Donate Gifts?
-
Nonprofit Spotlight: Michigan Nonprofit Association
-
Yes, You Really Need One: Why Strategic Planning Matters and How to do it Better
-
Point-Counterpoint: Should Nonprofits Be Allowed to Support Political Candidates?
-
In the Board Room: Staying In the Loop And Out Of the Weeds
-
Building a More Diverse Board with Intention
-
Nonprofit Spotlight: The Trenton Community A-Team
-
Is Diversity as Good for Business as it is for Communities? New Study Says Yes
-
In These Turbulent Times for Nonprofits
-
How To Be a Community-Powered Nonprofit
-
First-Person Nonprofit: Making the Case (Statement!)
-
How Nonprofits Can Work With Their Bankers Amidst Change
-
The Financial Outlook for Nonprofits
-
First Person: I Am A Young Social Entrepreneur
-
Nonprofit Mergers Are Like Falling In Love
-
Divorce and the Nonprofit Board Member
-
Robert Egger: “Our Sector Is About To Be Hit, And Hit Hard” A Blue Avocado Interview
-
Ask Rita in HR: What About Marijuana Decriminalization?
-
Gearing Up and (Teaming Up) for a Leadership Transition
-
Is Your Nonprofit Ready for a Capital Project?
-
Rewrite the Script When These Characters Show Up in Workplace Politics
-
Ask Rita in HR: How Do I Stay ADA Compliant When an Employee Has a Disability?
-
If Your Board Looked Like Your Community
-
Ask Rita: Can I Just Hire Independent Contractors?
-
Gifts from the Board Chair
-
Promoting a Worthy Cause? Don’t Miss These Six Ideas for Getting Exposure for Your Nonprofit
-
Nine Nonprofit Trends that Need to Die
-
Everything We’ve Been Taught About Major Gifts is Wrong
-
A Tiger Escaped Today, and I’m on the Zoo Board
-
Why Don’t Foundations Build Capacity in Fundraising?
-
Can We Fire Someone for What They Said in Personal Email?
-
A Fork in the Yellow Brick Road to Oz
-
From Black Panther to Nonprofit CFO
-
Mediocrity Starts with ME (Humor)
-
Outdated Job Description May be Getting Us in Trouble
-
If You Give a Board Treasurer A Cookie…
-
Sample Disclosure of Amount Deductible in Ticket Purchase
-
Sample Tax Deductibility Handout for Auction Participants
-
Sample Acknowledgement of Non-Cash Donation
-
Sample Silent Auction Bid Sheet
-
Sample Auction Reporting Checklist for Nonprofits
-
A Board Member’s Guide to Nonprofit Overhead
-
Crawling Out of the Psychological Depths
-
Who’s the Boss? The Board or the Executive?
-
How Do You Count Employees… to Determine Which Laws Apply?
-
The Very Good but Seriously Flawed Executive Director
-
Downward-Facing Budget and Other Nonprofit Yoga Poses
-
Following a Founder or Long-Timer Requires a Hard Head
-
Nonprofit Auctions: Compliance Guide and Sample Forms
-
Surprise! Most Legacy Gifts DON’T Come from Major Donors
-
I Followed A Founder: A First-Person Nonprofit Tale
-
A Funder’s Message to Other Funders About Overhead
-
Transgender Employees: A Respectful & Legal Workplace Approach
-
Fundraising in Nonprofits of Color
-
Ten Things Boards Do Right (Without Even Realizing It)
-
Cow Board Members Give of Their Time, Not Milk
-
DIY: Make a Bylaws Cheat Sheet
-
First Person Nonprofit: A Day in the Life of a Major Gifts Officer
-
Bring Unicorns Back to Our World: The Problem with Outcomes
-
How to Staff and Support a Committee
-
Mental Health Counselor May Have a Mental Health Problem – What Can We Do?
-
Funny and Awkward Nonprofit Board Tales
-
Adding It All Up: Nonprofit CFO Study
-
The Sustainability Question: Why Is It So Annoying?
-
Ask Rita: Do Nonprofits Need Insurance for Volunteers?
-
How to Deal with an Office Bully
-
Managing Your Nonprofit’s Rating
-
Nonprofit Executive Director Gives Advice on Love, Marriage, and Other Stuff
-
Extreme Board Makeover
Dozens of nonprofits contemplate many aspects of your beautiful turkey long before it lands on your table for Thanksgiving.
If you are a part of a nonprofit organization, consider directors and officers (D&O) coverage as a “must have.”
Discussing restrictions on nonprofit 501c3 organizations that prohibit them from supporting or opposing candidates running for office.
Three instant ways to improve meetings simply by what you put on the piece of paper titled “Board Agenda:”
Where are the best nonprofit job sites, both to post and look for nonprofit jobs? A review and rating of 31 sites across several criteria.
Individuals can be personally liable for unpaid wages and other remedies under the FLSA and possibly also under state law.
Analyze salaries by charting salary ranges, adding benchmark salaries, and two ways to review individual salaries.
A detailed method for your nonprofit’s nominating committee to recruit board members.
Is it worth going all-in on casino philanthropy? Only if you know when to lay the odds and when to take the odds.
By staking too much on strategic planning, nonprofits often neglect other tools for making decisions, moving organizations, or learning.
Consultant Mike Allison provides a defense of strategic planning for the nonprofit sector in rebuttal to a prior Blue Avocado article.
Ask Rita’s HR experts review Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and ADA rules.
Court-ordered volunteers perform a wide variety of roles in nonprofits. Susan Ellis discusses when to accept them, and how to do it right.
When recessions happen, many nonprofits can’t move forward on strategic plans. Jan Masaoka explores what nonprofits can do instead.
Sometimes a board needs to fire an executive director. Sometimes it’s clear, more often it’s a little fuzzier. So when and how do you do it?
The same things that motivate nonprofit workers can also create unnecessary personal and psychic suffering. For some, therapy may help.
Where everyone sits reflects organizational philosophy, and is a strong message to all about authority, participation, and the board’s role.
Many sample handbooks have policies which ban employees from dating with co-workers. Is it legally required to prohibit office relationships?
The only thing worse than not having fundraising staff is having bad fundraising staff.
Foundation affinity groups can appear to be secretive at first. Let Rick Cohen show you how to navigate them to help your nonprofit.
Questions to ask yourself before seeking a board, and then how to find the right next opportunity for making a difference.
In the age of social media, Holly Minch dares to defy the Twitter evangelists and make the case for the power of traditional print and radio.
This 21-question quiz samples from general bookkeeping knowledge as well as nonprofit bookkeeping and compliance matters. Use this assessment test as part of your hiring toolkit as well as for identifying staff training needs.
The board has some important perspectives to bring to the discussion of the budget. Here some questions that take advantage of the board’s diverse community perspectives and the finance staff’s knowledge and skill.