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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Blue Avocado Presents: Cyber Incident Response Plans for Nonprofits – Live Q&A
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Is There Anybody Out There? Navigating the Challenges of Managing Hybrid Work Teams
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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
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A Case Study on Building a Nonprofit Donor Campaign
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Turning NIMBY into YIMBY! (YES in my Backyard!)
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Perfect Together: How to Access Community Television for Your Nonprofit
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Bridging the Generation Gap: Why Your Organization Should have an Associate Board (and How to Start One)
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Welcoming Change, Not Just Dollars: What Every Grant Professional Wants Nonprofit Executives to Know
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Identifying and Mitigating Nonprofit Risk with a Six-Step Crisis Communication Plan
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The Regenerative Principle in Practice for Nonprofit Management
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Egg, Omelet, or Frying Pan: Exploring the Relationship between Business & Altruism in the Independent Sector
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Nonprofits Have Been Right All Along: Community Benefit Models Can Solve Our Toughest Environmental Challenges
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A Beginner’s Guide to Lobbying for Nonprofits
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Cyber Security 101 for Nonprofits – Live Q&A
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It’s Not as Scary as You Think: 10 Easy Steps to Launch a Planned Giving Program for Your Nonprofit
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Grantmaking in the 2020s: Giving Collectively, with Trust
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From Transition to Transformation: Key Lessons from the Pandemic for Nonprofits
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Ask Rita: What to Do When the FMLA Replacement Is A Better Performer
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The Secret to Continuous Innovation
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7 Ideas for Pushing Your Board Forward in Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging
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None of Us is Getting Out Alive: A Guide to Executive Succession Planning
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You Got the Grant! Now What?
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How to Run a Successful Nonprofit Without Grant Writing
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Reproducing Reproducers: Creating a Legacy of Leadership Succession
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Smart Growth: How to Expand Your Nonprofit’s Programs While Resisting Temptations
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How Nonprofits Can Use Private Capital for Public Good
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7 Ideas to Build a Healthy Board Nominating Process
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Ten Ways to Improve Equity & Increase the Effectiveness of Your Hiring Process
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The Importance of Self-Care as Self-Defense to Nonprofits
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5 Best Practices for Building a Nonprofit Annual Operating Budget (with Template!)
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Navigating the Nonprofit Workforce Crisis – Live Q&A
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Setting Organizational Goals: Does your team know what to do?
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Ensuring Dogs and Cats Get Equal Scratch in Decision-making
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Disrupting the Space of Disaster Philanthropy: A View from the Front Lines
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Up Your Game with Skills-based Volunteering
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7 Guiding Principles for a JDEI Policy That Isn’t Just Hot Air. Plus, a Free Sample Policy!
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Passion Meets Professionalism: Transitioning from Volunteer Leaders to Paid Staff
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The Growth Paradox for Nonprofit Organizations
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Does Your Nonprofit Receive Donations of Services, Supplies or Equipment? Changes are Coming!
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Blue Avocado: What it Takes to Run a Nonprofit
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Ask Rita: An Employee Isn’t Holding Up Their End of the ADA Interactive Process—What Do I Do?
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Transition Tips for Chief Executives and Boards of Directors
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How to Improve Nonprofit Culture Through Mission and Values Realignment
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Role of the Nonprofit CFO in Executive Management: The Watchdog Responsibility
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Role of the Nonprofit CFO in Executive Management: The CFO-ED Relationship
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Why Social Movements Require Entrepreneurial Values
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Ask Rita: When Do I Initiate the ADA Interactive Process with a (Possibly) Disabled Employee?
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How to Unite Your Nonprofit Workforce — and Keep It United Through Misperceptions
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Ethical Storytelling for Nonprofits
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Ask Rita: Religious Exemptions from Regular Work Duties—What Am I to Do?
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Practical Tips for Nonprofit Budgeting
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Forecasting Nonprofit Finances & Pivoting Programs in a Crisis: Download Spreadsheet
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How to Be a Great Supervisor: Insights Learned from 20 Years of Managing
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Can’t Raise Cash Through No VAULT of Your Own?
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Demystifying the Insurance Buying Process – Live Q&A
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Ask Rita: My Employee Has Been “No Call, No Show” for Three Days—Why Isn’t This a Resignation?
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Discussion Corner: Accounting Rules for Silent Auctions from Donated Articles?
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Do Nonprofits Pay Taxes? Do Nonprofit Employees Pay Taxes?
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Ask Rita: How Do We Handle a Supervisor Whose Way of Treating Employees Is Causing Them to Quit?
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Social Transformation for Your Nonprofit – Live Q&A
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The Power of Shared Power: Co-Directing Nonprofits Through Compassion
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A Discussion of The Four Principles of Purpose-Driven Board Leadership– Live Q&A
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Ask Rita: An Employee Took Our Confidential Information for Their Own Personal Use and Won’t Give it Back—What Can We Do?
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To Solve the Problem, Focus on the Desired Outcome: A Formula for Nonprofits
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What a Finance Committee Can Do for Your Board of Directors
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Board Assessments with Sample Management Questions
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Ask Rita: How Do I Navigate Requests for Religious Exemptions from a Requirement to Receive the Covid-19 Vaccine?
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Risk Management for Nonprofits: Copyright
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Don’t Let Internal Controls Slip at Your Nonprofit Organization!
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How to Found and Run a Nonprofit Remotely: Free Template
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Functional Expenses Decreased During Covid-19? How to Prepare for Conversations with Funders
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Ask Rita: We Have Decided on an In-House Investigation—Now, How Do We Do It?
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.
Health care is a society-wide crisis as well as a personal, individual one, and there aren’t ready solutions on either level.
We asked Blue Avocado readers to tell us how you found out you had gotten laid off. Too often grace and consideration aren’t part of it.
While the need for nonprofit services continues even in bad economic times, workers are just as vulnerable to layoffs as any other industry.