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
Tell stories that honor the dignity of our families and embrace our donors to create a more equitable and just world for all.
While receiving services in the community does not always prevent people from being referred to subminimum wage jobs, it does make it difficult.
Interview with Regina Anderson of Food Recovery Network. Challenging students to provide healthy meals and fresh ideas to their communities.
Employers should update their EEO policies to include sexual orientation and gender identity/expression as protected classes.
When it comes to COVID-19, what is that new normal and exactly how are our colleagues adapting? Nonprofit leaders share their experiences.
How roadmaps can help nonprofits launch new ventures, break free from the status quo, and improve conditions for clients, staff, and donors.
COVID-19 created significant economic challenges to nonprofits. Explore the unique characteristics of nonprofits’ financial structure.
Ask Rita explores how nonprofit leaders can act when dealing with an employee making an offensive post on social media.
Here are five phases of a major gift process to help you build relationships with donors.
Explore the role of social capital and discover key attributes and assets of social capital that nonprofits can use to their advantage.
Interview with Nihal Satyadev of The Youth Movement Against Alzheimer’s, addressing Alzheimer’s issues through innovation and advocacy.
A nonprofit is sustainable when it has built long-standing relationships with supporters that are fully committed to the mission.
When reimbursing remote employees, check state laws, whether the expenses are reasonable, and maintain good communication and flexibility.
A lie cannot be taken back. Offering a lie in place of the truth will always make things worse, rendering the claim or the case more costly.
Activist Jose “Che” Ramirez shares some of his ideas about ending homelessness in America and taking on a system bent on holding folks down.
Nonprofits in healthcare are expanding services to their beneficiaries through partnerships and collaborations.
For nonprofits, filing tax form 990 is key to retaining tax-exempt status. Here are the key features of tax form 990 and how to file it.
Interview with Eunice Lin Nichols, Vice President at Encore.org and campaign director for Generation to Generation, delves into bridging generational divides.
What’s the difference between a furlough and layoff? Learn what benefits to offer your employees when closing non-essential facilities during Covid-19.
Tips to consider as you seek to engage your organization in advocacy from someone who’s walked the walk.
Concerned about whether and how to communicate with donors? Use this checklist to ensure your donors stay connected to your nonprofit.
California’s new rules and regulations impact compensation for employees and contractors — find out how in this 2nd part of our series on CA employment law.
How does the CA Fair Employment and Housing Act address issues of race and harassment? Find out in this 3rd part of our series on CA employment law.
How do California’s new rules and regulations impact time off? Find out how in this 4th part of our series on CA employment law.