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.
Recent Nonprofit Articles
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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
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Nonprofit Love
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What is Micromanagement and What Isn’t?
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Six Easy, Nearly-Free Ways to Be More Disabled-Accessible
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America’s Dirtiest Job: Nonprofit Telemarketer?
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The Easiest Way to Raise Money: Register with CFC
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?
A fast look at just four critical areas facing American society today: Poverty, race, environment, and democracy.
Pablo Eisenberg shares some reforms that speak to democracy in the United States, and that would be pretty easy for foundations to do.
The Golden Rule of Board Resignations: When you resign, do it the way you would like others to resign. Whatever your reason, resign right.