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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Social Enterprise & Earned Income: A Key To Revenue or a Distraction?
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You Can’t Fire Me, I’m a Volunteer!
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Empowering Next Generation Leaders through Crowdfunding
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Nonprofit Leadership Tips from the Basketball Court
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Some Say Fundraising Is Just Sales: They’re Wrong!
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Fundraising for “Friends of” Organizations
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Ask Rita: Employees Who Cross Jurisdictions: Which Law Applies?
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Why You May Need to Delete Half of Your Nonprofit’s Email List
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Volunteer Management: How to Get it Right
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Ask Rita: How Do I Prevent Sexual Harassment at My Nonprofit?
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Scarcity or Abundance? An Experiment in Collaborative Fundraising
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The New Fundraising Frontier: Impact Investing
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In-Kind Fundraising: A Great Way to Expand Your Budget
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Ask Rita: Are Summer Helpers Employees, Contractors, or Interns?
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Show Me The Money! A Step Toward Solving the Problem of Operating Support
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Succeeding When You’re Small: Lessons Learned from DonorsChoose.org
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Achieving Equity: We Need a New Approach to Funding
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Finding Your Voice As a Nonprofit
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What Millennials Really Want: Professional Development
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The Nonprofit Student Debt Conundrum
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Ego Checks, Spaghetti Sauce, and Other Suggestions for Nonprofit Collaboration
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4 Things Your Nonprofit Can Do to Recruit & Retain Millennial Leadership
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The Gentrification Phenomenon: A Nonprofit Dilemma
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Process, Process, Process: The evaluation model you shouldn’t ignore
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Connection is Key: How Knowledge Sharing Helps Organizations Grow and Prevents Isolation
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Lide Haiti: Helping women and girls help Haiti
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Branching out: Raising more dollars by understanding donors’ differences
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Financial Focus: You Told Us
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In the Boardroom: Asked to Join that Board?
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Data Visualization: User-Centered Design
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Whose Nonprofit Is It Anyway: When a Nonprofit Leader Moves On
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Ask Rita: Is it Legal to Require Nonprofit Employees to Donate Gifts?
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Nonprofit Spotlight: Michigan Nonprofit Association
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Yes, You Really Need One: Why Strategic Planning Matters and How to do it Better
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Point-Counterpoint: Should Nonprofits Be Allowed to Support Political Candidates?
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In the Board Room: Staying In the Loop And Out Of the Weeds
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Building a More Diverse Board with Intention
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Nonprofit Spotlight: The Trenton Community A-Team
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Is Diversity as Good for Business as it is for Communities? New Study Says Yes
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In These Turbulent Times for Nonprofits
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How To Be a Community-Powered Nonprofit
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First-Person Nonprofit: Making the Case (Statement!)
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How Nonprofits Can Work With Their Bankers Amidst Change
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The Financial Outlook for Nonprofits
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First Person: I Am A Young Social Entrepreneur
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Nonprofit Mergers Are Like Falling In Love
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Divorce and the Nonprofit Board Member
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Robert Egger: “Our Sector Is About To Be Hit, And Hit Hard” A Blue Avocado Interview
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Ask Rita in HR: What About Marijuana Decriminalization?
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Gearing Up and (Teaming Up) for a Leadership Transition
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Is Your Nonprofit Ready for a Capital Project?
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Rewrite the Script When These Characters Show Up in Workplace Politics
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Ask Rita in HR: How Do I Stay ADA Compliant When an Employee Has a Disability?
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If Your Board Looked Like Your Community
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Ask Rita: Can I Just Hire Independent Contractors?
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Gifts from the Board Chair
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Promoting a Worthy Cause? Don’t Miss These Six Ideas for Getting Exposure for Your Nonprofit
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Nine Nonprofit Trends that Need to Die
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Everything We’ve Been Taught About Major Gifts is Wrong
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A Tiger Escaped Today, and I’m on the Zoo Board
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Why Don’t Foundations Build Capacity in Fundraising?
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Can We Fire Someone for What They Said in Personal Email?
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A Fork in the Yellow Brick Road to Oz
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From Black Panther to Nonprofit CFO
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Mediocrity Starts with ME (Humor)
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Outdated Job Description May be Getting Us in Trouble
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If You Give a Board Treasurer A Cookie…
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Sample Disclosure of Amount Deductible in Ticket Purchase
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Sample Tax Deductibility Handout for Auction Participants
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Sample Acknowledgement of Non-Cash Donation
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Sample Silent Auction Bid Sheet
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Sample Auction Reporting Checklist for Nonprofits
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A Board Member’s Guide to Nonprofit Overhead
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Crawling Out of the Psychological Depths
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Who’s the Boss? The Board or the Executive?
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How Do You Count Employees… to Determine Which Laws Apply?
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The Very Good but Seriously Flawed Executive Director
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Downward-Facing Budget and Other Nonprofit Yoga Poses
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Following a Founder or Long-Timer Requires a Hard Head
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Nonprofit Auctions: Compliance Guide and Sample Forms
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Surprise! Most Legacy Gifts DON’T Come from Major Donors
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I Followed A Founder: A First-Person Nonprofit Tale
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A Funder’s Message to Other Funders About Overhead
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Transgender Employees: A Respectful & Legal Workplace Approach
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Fundraising in Nonprofits of Color
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Ten Things Boards Do Right (Without Even Realizing It)
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Cow Board Members Give of Their Time, Not Milk
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DIY: Make a Bylaws Cheat Sheet
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First Person Nonprofit: A Day in the Life of a Major Gifts Officer
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Bring Unicorns Back to Our World: The Problem with Outcomes
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How to Staff and Support a Committee
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Mental Health Counselor May Have a Mental Health Problem – What Can We Do?
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Funny and Awkward Nonprofit Board Tales
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Adding It All Up: Nonprofit CFO Study
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The Sustainability Question: Why Is It So Annoying?
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Ask Rita: Do Nonprofits Need Insurance for Volunteers?
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How to Deal with an Office Bully
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Managing Your Nonprofit’s Rating
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Nonprofit Executive Director Gives Advice on Love, Marriage, and Other Stuff
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Extreme Board Makeover
We asked about your experiences with romance in the nonprofit workplace, and the common thread was passion — for your work and each other.
As an executive director, what can feel like micromanagement from members of your board can be a symptom of larger problems.
Disabilities activist Mary Lester says there are simple ways to make your office and program sites more accessible without busting the bank.
Should telemarketers really be despised? Blue Avocado readers share their experiences making telemarketing calls for their nonprofits.
Combined Federal Campaign (CFC) guru Bill Huddleston tells how nonprofits can raise money from federal employees in just eight great points.
Consult a labor law professional to check federal and state laws before firing an employee for excessive absences or with a known disability.
Packets can give more than information, if done right, they can improve board confidence in the staff and in the board-staff relationship.
Use this helpful template, and a discussion on the finance committee with the ED and the finance staff to clarify roles around accountability.
Blue Avocado concludes an exploration of how it was possible for Vanguard Public Foundation to have come to such an inglorious end.
FAQs on hiring accountants for nonprofits, including what to do if you’re having an impossible time of it.
Koreatown Youth and Community Center and Program Director Sam Joo defy assumptions about nonprofits serving people and communities of color.
Blue Avocado shares strategies to reduce the amount of unnecessary emails showing up in your nonprofit’s inboxes.
Just Awards “honor” the New York Times and the Rockefeller Foundation for poor coverage and narcissism related to the nonprofit sector.
Men share their thoughts on being male in the majority-female nonprofit world.
A staff member faces a domestic violence situation and her boyfriend threatened to come to our office to harm her. What can our nonprofit do?
Here are some guidelines for advisory committees, as well as a sample letter inviting an individual to join such a group.
Nonprofit board members are often puzzled when it comes to setting the salary of the executive director. Some legal and practical guidelines.
Once acclaimed as a pioneer in philanthropy, the Vanguard Foundation is no more. This is Part I on some of the clues to its sorry demise.
Wondered how to break into the traditional civic leadership networks? Joan Dixon explains why the Rotary may be the unexpected solution.
Cate Steane shares her experience guiding her nonprofit through a harrowing organizational crisis and living to tell about it.
Sometimes you need to raise funds in a hurry. Here are some ways to raise modest funds in a pinch.
Pam David, Executive Director of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, shares lessons learned about philanthropy since coming to it from government.
Conventional approaches to classic conflicts of interest. Model policies that address these concerns. Non-financial conflicts of interest common to many nonprofits. Steps an organization can take to handle conflicts of interest and more detailed sample policies.
Meet two married couple co-executive directors of nonprofits. What organization wouldn’t want two for the price of one?