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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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
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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
Barack Obama began his career as an organizer and antipoverty advocate for a nonprofit. Michelle is a former nonprofit executive director.
Some employers think that paying an employee a salary or designating an employee a “teacher” exempts that employee from the overtime rules.
What’s the best way to raise money for a nonprofit? Start by figuring out who are the best potential supporters of our work and why.
With nonprofit insurance, a key part to getting the lowest costs and the best coverage is getting the right insurance broker.
How to find grantwriters, select them, how much to pay them and what kinds of payment arrangements to choose.
Grantwriters are elusive, seldom-seen miraculous creatures, possibly mythical. Here you have a chance to meet two of them.
There is a difference between community nonprofits on one hand, and universities and hospitals on the other, and it isn’t just size.
A long-time grant seeker and nonprofit staff person offers his impressions of a Council on Foundations conference.
Almost everyone in community nonprofits thinks it would be great to have a grantwriter. It’s rare to find and work with this rare creature. Why?
There are some good reasons why nonprofits sometimes have deficit budgets, that should be left that way. Find out why.
Some nonprofit employees are expected to be available for mobile calls. Can they refuse to take work-related calls while driving?
It often seems that efforts between board and staff of appreciation feel trivial at best, and even hypocritical or enraging at worst.
Examining the intertwined relationship between nonprofits and the media.
At student working for a nonprofit has $2,000 saved up and wonders if she should pay off her student loan, or pay into a 401K at work.
An employee posts unflattering comments about your nonprofit workplace. What can you do? Here are some ideas.
You may find that task forces with a specific purpose may provide better results than ongoing low-performing board committees.
It’s an unusual title! Where did it come from? Find out here where this well-known nonprofit publication got its name.
Because a nonprofit board’s success depends upon its gestalt as much as the traits of its individual members, boards should think a bit about the contributions an attorney might make.
Can a nonprofit require an employee/former client to take her psychiatric medications as a condition of continued employment?
Community advocates are still picking up the pieces after a disastrous encounter that led to a unique lawsuit. How did it all come about?
Strategic ways nonprofits can benefit from government funding but not become overly reliant on it.
In this economic climate, the old adage is even more relevant: Management is doing things right, while leadership is doing the right things.
What to say to if you run into someone who has made a donation or a grant to the organization on whose board you serve.