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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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
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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
In this Board Cafe column, look at short-term and long-term strategies for the board members known as deadwood or worse.
Rick Cohen explores the faith-based federal funds initiative launched by President Bush and revamped by President Obama.
Edie Boatman reflects on a year spent working in nonprofits — during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Ask Rita shares sample language for your human resources staff to use when creating your organization’s dress code.
Jeanne Bell argues it’s time to stop looking at budgets and pay attention instead to projections and financial goals.
Board members invest a lot of time and energy at board meetings. A few small changes can often make that investment pay off in important ways.
Ask Rita explores whether or not it’s legal for a nonprofit organization to ban visible body art for its employees and staffers.
Martin Gorfinkel compares AA to other nonprofits, and how many of their practices run counter to commonly accepted nonprofit “best practices.”
Rick Cohen takes on the much-publicized, little-analyzed new federal Social Innovation Fund.
Nelson Layag shares how he was able to utilize social media features to raise money to support organizations in his community.
Search consultant and volunteer leader Sally Carlson shares something different about how to find a nonprofit job right now.
A powerful approach to determining your board’s agenda and work for the year.
A nonprofit dashboard gives important information to decision-makers such as executives and boards in a quick-read way.
How to involve board members in decision-making, staff mentoring of staff, and fundraising — even when they’re in unexpected circumstances.
The 990 Online software issue and a modest investment that would ease the implementation burden for nonprofits nationwide
Urban myths and legends gain a measure of credibility just by their frequent telling and longevity — and nonprofits aren’t immune.
Ask Rita responds to two reader questions about what nonprofit employees can do when a difficult boss is beginning to become a real problem.
Blue Avocado takes a quick look at the mostly inaccurate way nonprofit organizations are depicted on the big and small screens.
Consultant David La Piana discusses how boards tend to be frustrated with their committees when they don’t know how to organize them.
A board of directors proactively supporting volunteer involvement can dramatically increases its potential achievement level.
Martin Gorfinkel explores the difficulties and roadblocks that seniors and retirees can encounter when seeking volunteering opportunities.
John Killacky explores how the arts can survive and thrive — even as civil society changes, and health and human service needs rise.
How a Make-A-Wish Executive Director took an unusual approach to raising funds for her organization.
In most nonprofits, board members need to fundraise to provide for the financial sustainability of their organizations. But how?