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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How to Give Feedback to Your Funders—Especially When It’s Hard
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A Primer on Financial Audits for Nonprofits – Live Q&A
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Best Tactics for Finding Government Grants Suitable for Your Nonprofit
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Against the Current: Matt Jorgensen
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Against the Current: Mitch Gruber
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Ask Rita: How Does the Americans with Disabilities Act Impact Our Efforts to Keep Employees Safe During the Covid-19 Pandemic?
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Are Your Nonprofit Organization’s Stories Dishonoring the Families You Serve?
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Hiring People with Disabilities Is Not a Charity: Here’s Why and How to Stop Paying Subminimum Wage
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Against the Current: Regina Anderson
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Ask Rita: U.S. Supreme Court Granted New Protection for LGBTQ+ Employees—What Do We Need to Know?
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Resiliency in the New Normal: Nonprofit Colleagues Share Their Experiences
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Creating a Roadmap to Synchronize the Board to Your Nonprofit Mission
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Assessing Financial Health in the Time of COVID-19
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Aligning Nonprofit Management Teams and Boards During a Crisis Live Q&A
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Investing in Relationships with Donors: 5 Phases of Securing a Major Gift
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Against the Current: Nihal Satyadev
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Seeking Sustainability: How Can Nonprofits Survive the Pandemic?
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Ask Rita: For What Work-Related Expenses Must I Reimburse Remote Employees?
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The Truth, Even When Unpleasant, Can Always Be Explained: Nonprofit Pointers for Conduct in Court
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Against the Current: Jose “Che” Ramirez
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How Can We Help the Board Address Problematic Behavior from the President?
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In the Shadow of the Pandemic, Nonprofits Form Partnerships to Expand the Meaning of Healthcare
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IRS Tax Form 990 [Deadline Extended]: How to File It, When to File It, and Why It’s So Important
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Against the Current: Eunice Lin Nichols
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Ask Rita: During Covid-19, Do We Furlough or Layoff Staff?
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How to Do Legislative Advocacy—and WIN
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Nonprofits on Families First Coronavirus Response Act, Workers’ Comp, Property & Casualty Insurance – Live Q&A
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Communicating with Donors During a Maelstrom: Practical Wisdom on When, What, Who, How, and How Often
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2020 California Employment Law Update #2: Compensation
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2020 California Employment Law Update #3: Fair Employment
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2020 California Employment Law Update #4: Time Off
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2020 California Employment Law Update #1: Arbitration in the Workplace
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What Nonprofits Need to Know About Audits
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Navigating the New Families First Coronavirus Response Act
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Against the Current: Mando Rayo
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Make the Move! Tips for Migrating Your In-Person Event Online
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Ask Rita: Interns Who Lose Their Academic Connections with Your Nonprofit—Are They Really Interns?
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4 Tips for Sustaining and Managing Donors
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Ask Rita: How Do We Stop Bullying Behavior?
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Donor-Centric Budgeting & Reporting: Top 6 Tips
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The Pitfalls of Running a Mentoring Program
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Developing a Successful Intern Program
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Moving Beyond Awareness
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Embracing Unlikely Allies: Sleeping with the Enemy
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Is Your Fundraising in Compliance with State Laws?
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No Budget, No Mission: A Guide to Basic Nonprofit Budgeting
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Against the Current: Rachel Sumekh
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The Effect of the 2018 Tax Overall on Nonprofit Donations and the Rise of DAFs
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Election Year Messages Nonprofits Can Use
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Time to Fold: Keys to Gracefully Winding Down a Nonprofit
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Nonprofit Tales From the US-Mexico Border
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Ask Rita: Are My Independent Contractors Actually Employees?
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Are We Heading Towards Another Nonprofit Insurance Crisis?
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Marketing Automation for Nonprofits and Churches
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Why Earned Income Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up To Be
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3 Tips & Tools for Better Peer-to-Peer Fundraising
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How to Cure Founder’s Syndrome
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Successfully Navigating an Executive Director Transition
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Reducing Unconscious Bias in Recruiting
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Ask Rita: What Are My Obligations to an Employee Receiving Infertility Treatments?
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Funder’s Corner: The Grateful Donor
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A Peek Inside the Millennial Mind
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Lobbying & Advocacy: Five Reasons to Get Off the Sidelines
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How to Hire Great Nonprofit Leaders
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Engaging Board Members: AAA Then and Now
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Creating A Board That Works
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A Nonprofit Leader’s Path to Becoming a Diversity and Inclusion Champion
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Ask Rita: How Do We Handle A Whistleblower?
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Sample Whistleblower Policy
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How to Cultivate Big Donors with a Small Staff
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Readers’ Thoughts: Secrets to Successful Succession
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Top 10 Nonprofit Board “Worst” Practices
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Ask Rita: How Do We Handle Harassment by an Outsider?
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Political Polarization & Nonprofits: How Can You Bridge the Divide?
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Win Back Your Lapsed Donors: 3 Effective Strategies
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NextGen Nexus: The New Face of Philanthropy, Courtesy of Young America
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Ask Rita: Health Benefits for Employees on FMLA Leave?
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Remote Team Environments: A How-To Primer
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Managing Big Change: Top Tips for New Executive Directors & CEOs
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Your IRS Form 990 Questions Answered
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3 Online Fundraising Tips for Small Nonprofits
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Community Development: Strategies That Serve
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Funding Innovation: Top Tips
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Ask Rita: Is Terminating an At-Will Employee Risk-Free?
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Finding Your Data Path to Success, Part 2: What We Learned Along the Way
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3 Keys to Mission-Based Workplace Design
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What I Learned as a Funder: Frank Tips for Nonprofits
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How We Built a Nonprofit from Our College Bedroom and What We Wish We Knew
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Ask Rita: The 2016 Federal Exempt Minimum Salary Rule—Gone, or on Pause?
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Funder’s Corner: Finding Your Data Path to Success
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Tips for Nonprofits: Surviving Government Shutdowns
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Sample eWorkplace HR Policy
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The Best Way To Put Clients First Is To Let Them Lead!
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3 Things We Know About Engaging Millennials in Your Nonprofit’s Cause
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Want Equity? Then It’s Time to Break the Rules!
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Ask Rita: When Is Work Time Too Small To Count?
Specialized volunteers can come from organizations that recruit those seeking opportunities for organizations in need of specialized help.
Guiding principles for organizations that want to create a binding, board-approved JDEI policy with values, action plans, and accountability.
To be successful, transitions from volunteer leaders to paid staff must be planned, deliberate, and done in an orderly fashion.
Often nonprofits can have unchecked appetites for growth, which combine with structural factors that make such growth haphazard.
A new accounting standard will bring clarity and consistency to how in-kind contributions of nonfinancial assets are reported for nonprofits.
Leann Malone, Executive Director of Lancaster County First Steps, on strong business acumen, retaining qualified staff, and the bottom line.
The ADA interactive process is a two-way street. What should employers do when employees aren’t interacting in good faith?
The stronger the relationship between the board and chief executive, the better they work together for a planned transition.
We hire new staff, we hold team-building events, we might even bring in a consultant to determine the causes. But there is one area that is often overlooked when trying to fix problems: the culture of the organization and its connection to mission and values.
The board expects the Executive Director (ED) and CFO to work in partnership to further the mission, but most boards also expect the CFO to perform a “watchdog” function. If the ED is the engine of the bus, the CFO is the insurance, the maintenance, and yes, sometimes the brakes.
The efforts you make to meet the ED’s needs and assert your needs will pay off for both the ED, the CFO and the community.
While more and more in our sector push for real systems change, here are three practices that could advance nonprofit justice work.
When to engage in an interactive process with employees to determine if a disability limits their ability to perform essential job functions.
Is your nonprofit’s team unbalanced? To correct the balance, there’s some unbiased actions that need to happen.
When we embark upon what’s known in the nonprofit world as “donation season,” chances are that your organization thinks about putting together a fundraising video or other media that demonstrates the impact of your work.
How to evaluate an employee’s request for a religious accommodation and when to appropriately provide such accommodations.
Every nonprofit needs a budget, but some are more effective than others. Consider these tips for making a budget that works well for everyone.
Forecasting is financial prototyping, and it’s a tool that will remain as part of our finance strategy. Download the budget forecast template.
How can supervisors help their employees perform at their most productive level and maintain consistency in their approach to managing their employees?
Seven results-based ideas and three relationship-based ideas on how to build your nonprofit’s capital structure.
Terminating an employee because they haven’t shown up or reported in should be pursued only after proactive efforts to reach out have failed.
Blue Avocado explores procedures concerning who is permitted to catalog and inventory donated items received by a nonprofit.
Tax law concerning nonprofit organizations can be complex. Blue Avocado explores where tax laws do and don’t apply.
No one is too important, too indispensable, or too essential to escape discipline for zero-tolerance policy violations.