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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Upcoming Webinar: What Nonprofits Need to Know About Working with Consultants – Live Q&A (March 20, 2025)
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2024 Blue Avocado Year in Review
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What is the Secret to Successful Grant Writing?
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A Nonprofit Partnership: How One Board Member Connected Two Organizations and Boosted Both
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A Practical Guide to Getting and Keeping Nonprofit Volunteers
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Key Qualities and Skills to Look for in Potential Board Members
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Innovative Leadership — Culture Doesn’t Have to Eat Strategy: Tending to Human Factors During Strategic Planning
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Treasurers of All-Volunteer Organizations: Eight Key Responsibilities
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The Ultimate Guide to Nonprofit Fundraising in 2025
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Nonprofit Photo Contest
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The Most Successful Nonprofit Fundraising Strategies
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Insider Newsletters: An Easy Way to Keep Your Board in the Loop and Engaged
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An Easy-to-Use Accounting Procedures Manual Template
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A Guide for Private Foundations: Tax Exemption and 990-PF Filing Requirements
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Nonprofit Leaders: How Does Your Nonprofit Measure Success?
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Why is it Hard to Give My Money Away? A Donor’s Perspective
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The Biggest Mistakes New Nonprofits Make
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Five Years and Growing: How One Nonprofit Built a Sustainable, Collaborative Mission
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The Best Route to Approaching Donors: Hand-Head-Heart
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Measure What You Value: Designing a Values-based Performance Appraisal System
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The One Tool/Strategy Nonprofits Wish They Implemented Sooner
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Link Arms to Elevate Your Nonprofit’s Impact
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Your Nonprofit Got its Grant. Now What?
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Rebuilding Nonprofit Boards: When a New Board Can Be a Fresh Start
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Nonprofit Rebranding Strategies: Five Steps to Achieving a Successful Nonprofit Rebrand
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The Realities of Living with Food Insecurity
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Drive Your Nonprofit’s Mission by Investing in Your People
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Blue Avocado Presents: What Nonprofits Need to Know About Fiscal Sponsorships – Live Q&A
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The Critical Role of Cultural Responsiveness in Today’s Nonprofits
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8 Easy Ways to Grab More Attention for Your Small Nonprofit
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Supporting Caregiver Employees in the Nonprofit Sector
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How Curiosity and Creativity Can Foster Self-Aware Nonprofit Leaders
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Nonprofit Grant Proposal Budget Calculations: A Road Map
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Increase Safety for Your Nonprofit’s Team
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Your Nonprofit’s Budget: A Window to Finding Your Priorities
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How can nonprofit leaders avoid burnout?
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Using Philanthropy to Address Racial Harm and Inequity
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Nonprofit Fundraising: Are You Choosing the Right Grants?
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Preparing Your Nonprofit to Move Beyond the Founder
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Litigating a Path to Progress: Nonprofit Advocacy through the Courts
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Can Nonprofits Look to the Past to Build the Future?
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Blue Avocado Presents: Copyright Concerns for Nonprofits – Live Q&A
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How Lessons Learned From Fighting Food Insecurity Can Help Your Nonprofit
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Five Lessons for Creating an Effective (and Accountable) Nonprofit Board
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Grant Management Series: Involving Your CFO throughout the Grant Application Process
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Empowering Community Voices: The Strategic Advantage of Nonprofit Advisory Committees
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Ask Rita in HR: Should Murphy’s Law Be a Consideration in Making HR Decisions?
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The Big Chill: Why Nonprofits Should Care about Affirmative Action
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Vision Before Strategy: A Nonprofit’s Guide to Defining Success
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Beyond the Hype: Why ESG Frameworks Miss the Mark for Small Nonprofits
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Charting a New Course for Youth Engagement
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Blue Avocado Presents: Does Your Nonprofit Qualify for the Employee Retention Credit (ERC)? – Live Q&A
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Is Your Nonprofit’s Mission Obsolete — Or Just Ready for a New Direction?
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Five Signs Your Nonprofit is Ready to Reach a Bigger Community
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The MONGO Dilemma: To Collaborate or Not?
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Unmasking the Silent Impact of Trauma in Nonprofits
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The Art of Grant Budgeting: A Guide for Nonprofit CFOs
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5 Ways Nonprofits Can Balance Creativity and Structure
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How to Persuade a New Generation to Join Your Nonprofit’s Board
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Nonprofit ROI: How “Measuring the Good” Can Help Nonprofits Justify Investments
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9 Principles to Make Your Nonprofit Fundraising Effective — and Fun!
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Blue Avocado Presents: Cyber Incident Response Plans for Nonprofits – Live Q&A
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Moving Beyond Performance: Making DEI Actionable
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From Crisis to Clarity: Five Steps to Demystify Succession Planning
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The Expanded Matrix Map: Leveraging Your Triple Bottom Line for Fundraising
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Is There Anybody Out There? Navigating the Challenges of Managing Hybrid Work Teams
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Can You Hear Us Now? Using Feedback to Create Community-Centered Services
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Unlocking Potential: Collective Leadership in Nonprofits
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From Startup to Success: Guiding Nonprofits with Six Core Principles of Improvement
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Blue Avocado Presents: IRS Form 990 – What Your Nonprofit Needs to Know (Live Q&A)
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Rethinking Perpetuity: Resetting Endowment Expectations After the Pandemic
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Advocacy Amplified: How Nonprofits Can Garner State Legislative Support for Their Causes
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Volunteering Alone Will Not Save Us
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The Year of Three Executive Directors: Important Lessons for Board Management
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We May Be a Motley Crew, But We’ll Adapt to You: 8 Tenets of Holistic Community Engagement for Nonprofits
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Join the Movement: Activating Nonprofits for Lasting Change
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Growing the Roots of Consensus in Nonprofit Governance
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7 Things Nonprofit Leaders Can Say to Funders to Effectively Manage Limited Resources
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A Beginner’s Guide to Filing a Form 990 for Your Nonprofit Organization
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How Nonprofits Can Benefit from Embracing ESG Practices
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How U.S.-based Nonprofits Can Deliver Disaster Relief Abroad: A Tigrayan Case Study
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Why Executive Directors Need L&D to Execute a Smooth Succession
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How Nonprofits Can Change Unfair Laws
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The Power of Collaborative Fundraising
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Why Nonprofit Organizations Need Chief Diversity Officers
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7 Key Factors for Building Peer-to-Peer Fundraising at Your Small Nonprofit
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The Data Is In: Nonprofits Are Getting More Operational Support
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How to Implement Strategic Inquiry at Your Nonprofit in 5 Steps
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Performance Appraisals Are Broken — Here’s How Managers Can Fix the Process
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Re-evaluating the Great Resignation
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Working Through Grief: How to Build a Supportive Workplace
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ESG is Everywhere. Should It Matter to Nonprofits?
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Fundraising and Public Speaking
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Blue Avocado Presents: Why ESG is Important to Your Nonprofit – Live Q&A
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Ask Rita: I’ve Never Fired Anyone Before — and Now I Have To!
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Using the Sensory Funnel to Improve Nonprofit Efficacy and Productivity
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Nonprofit Mergers & Collaboration
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?
To mark one year exploring nonprofit life, we asked readers to enter our competition for the a wacky nonprofit moment. Here are the winners!
Here we take an unconventional look at three dimensions of why boards exist: Legal reasons, mission reasons, and political reasons.
Here are the basics for how a nonprofit should handle an employee’s request to take Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) leave.
Administering the FMLA can be challenging. Ask Rita offers some guidance on the technicalities of recent changes to the law.
Watching indicators of financial health like performance-to-budget or reserve size are important, but may not say if you need to worry now.
Mark Ishaug, CEO of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, expresses concern about reduced support for the HIV/AIDS community.
Personal finance guru Steve Zimmerman brings us some welcome good news that may help you keep health insurance if you’re laid off.
Elizabeth Heath shares her thinking about the impact of the economic challenges of today on the nonprofit sector.
Financial notes for the article, “Tracking Volunteer Time to Improve Your Bottom Line: A Complete Accounting Guide,” by Dennis Walsh, CPA.
CPA Dennis Walsh of North Carolina explains why and how to include volunteer time in your nonprofit’s budgets and financials.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if nonprofit boards could foresee the obstacles ahead — in time to make the right decisions?
Should a nonprofit organization accept a personal loans from a board member? A starting point for a discussion with your board or financial advisor.
We are considering changing some of our employees into independent contractors as a cost-saving measure. What is the potential downside?
Let’s review the rules around car donations, with some tips on how to donate, and how to get great mileage from a few donations a year.
Planning for executive director transition is called succession planning: Thinking in advance about setting the stage for strong transitions.
A car donation program is a great way for a nonprofit to expand its donor base and provide new ways to involve existing donors and volunteers.
Keira Havens makes a case for nonprofits to servicemembers and veterans thinking about going to work in nonprofits.
With volunteers of all ages coming, it’s even more urgent that we change the way we talk — and think — about volunteers.
A board chair shares how their organization found itself on the precipice of bankruptcy and then was able to walk away.
Keira Havens reflects on her career change from the armed services to working in fundraising for the nonprofit sector.
Advice for nonprofit HR departments that need to correctly perform layoffs, furloughs, and temporary shutdowns.