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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What Nonprofits are Saying About the Bailout: A Fast Roundup
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Closing Down the Right Way
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Nonprofit Retirement Part 2: How and Where to Save
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Thinking the Unthinkable: Maybe We Should Shut Down
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Community Nonprofits: Katrina’s Unsung Heroes Still on the Job
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How to Take a Public Policy Stand, with Sample Criteria
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Nonprofit Retirement: Calculating retirement Needs & Exploring Choices
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Ask Rita: Zero Cell Phone Use While Driving Policy
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A Family and Medical Leave Act Checklist
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Ask Rita: Can an Employee Come and Go Using Family or Medical Leave?
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Is It Time for an Audit?
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Gas Rates, Volunteers, and Justice
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Should the Board Hold Executive Sessions?
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More Than the Olympics: Sports, Nonprofits & Community
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Boards of All-Volunteer Organizations
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Three-Step Immigration (IRCA) Compliance for Employers
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Obama: the Nonprofit Sector’s Favorite Son?
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Overtime Pay for Nonprofit Preschool Teacher?
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The Best Way to Raise Money? Choose a Revenue Strategy
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What Should Nonprofit Boards Know About Insurance Brokers?
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In Search of Unicorns: Finding & Hiring Outside Grantwriters Part 2
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Unicorns Found: Meet Two Grantwriters
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Word on the Street from the Council on Foundations Conference
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The Unrecognized Value of Community Nonprofits, Hiring Grantwriters, Extended Warranties, MTV
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In Search of Unicorns: Finding & Hiring Grantwriters, Part 1
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Nonprofit Budgets Have to Balance: False!
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Don’t Drive, Chew Gum and Use the Phone at the Same Time
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Meaningful Acts of Appreciation for Nonprofit Boards and Staff
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Nonprofits and the Media
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Pay Off My Student Loan or Pay Into a 401K?
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Why is it called Blue Avocado?
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Abolish Board Committees?
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Reasons to Have (& Not to Have) an Attorney on a Nonprofit Board
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Can We Require An Employee To Take Her Meds?
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Promises, Promises: Rural Advocates vs. Big Philanthropy
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Five Ways to Let Government Money Run You Over
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Good Management vs. Good Leadership
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What Do I Say to a Donor or Funder?
Blue Avocado shares steps for how a nonprofit organization can shut down its operations and ride into the sunset gracefully.
Exploring different ways nonprofit employees can plan and save for retirement — and which ways are better suited than others.
For nonprofits, it’s hard not to think that closing down is the ultimate disaster. But sometimes a lack of money or energy forces the issue.
After Hurricane Katrina, Mississippi community nonprofits used the region’s recovery as a stepping stone to lasting social change.
Would it support your cause if your organization took a stand on a public policy issue? Is it legal to do so? And how would you go about it?
Part one in this three-part series on nonprofit retirement looks at calculating retirement needs and using that information to explore choices
Ask Rita provides policies nonprofit organizations should consider when adding a policy forbidding cell phone use while driving.
A quick checklist for Family and Medical Leave Act requests as a way of making sure you’ve remembered all the key points.
Ask Rita explores whether or not a nonprofit organization’s employee can come and go using Family or Medical Leave?
Many people don’t realize that on their personal tax returns volunteers can deduct mileage expenses incurred as part of volunteering.
Is an audit worth the expense for a nonprofit’s board of directors in these tough economic times?
Executive sessions can help nonprofits have frank discussions about staff performance, and help the board develop a sense of itself.
Don’t forget how nonprofits have helped create America’s awe-inspiring performers and communities at the Olympics.
All-volunteer organizations (AVOs) are a major social and economic force, but are seldom given credit for their work.
The best protection for employers seeking to comply with immigration laws is to keep accurate records showing your efforts at compliance.
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?