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Can We Discriminate in Favor of People with Disabilities?
Dear Rita: Our agency serves clients with mental health needs, and we like to provide employment opportunities to individuals with mental illness. Can we say in the job advertisement for peer counselor that the applicant should have a mental illness? W …
Court-Ordered Community Service: Volunteers or Prison Labor?
Each year, hundreds of thousands of court-ordered community service workers are placed in nonprofits to fulfill their sentences. Although the image is typically one of a teenager sentenced to picking up litter, court-ordered volunteers perform a …
Where Should the Board Chair, the ED, the Staff Sit?
Sounds like a trivial question, but where everyone sits not only reflects organizational philosophy, it sends a strong, visual message to everyone about authority, participation, and the role of the board. How is a board meeting affected by where …
The HR of Nonprofit Romance
Dear Rita: At our organization, two members of the executive team are married to one another. I’ve been tasked with updating our Employee Handbook. Many of the sample handbooks seem to have anti-nepotism or conflict of interest policies which pr …
How to Hire a Great Accountant for Your Nonprofit
For many executive directors, hiring an accountant is fraught with anxiety. How will we find the right person? How can I tell if someone really knows accounting? Will an accountant fit in with the rest of us? As difficult as it is to hire a good accoun …
A Few Good Men: Being Male in a Female-Majority Sector
We asked Blue Avocado’s male readers to let us know their thoughts on being men in the majority-female nonprofit world. What we learned surprised us — and raised new questions: The facts are that women comprise 70-75% of nonprof …
Protecting Staff from Co-worker’s Violent Boyfriend
Q: Help, we have a wonderful staff member who is involved in a domestic violence situation and her boyfriend has threatened to come to our office to harm her . . . what should our nonprofit do to protect her and the other staff? With one in …
Nonprofit Conflict of Interest: A 3-Dimensional View
Most nonprofit discussions about conflicts of interest are similar to those in the for-profit sector: they focus on financial benefit to board members or staff to the detriment of the nonprofit organization. The classic examples: the nonprofit buys som …
Can Employees Smoke Medical Marijuana at Work?
Dear Rita: We recently offered a management job to a terrific candidate, with the condition that he pass both a background check and a drug test. When he tested positive for marijuana, he told us not to worry and produced a doctor’s prescrip …
Telecommuting and Flexible Work Arrangements: Do Them Right
Flexible hours and working from home are benefits that many nonprofits want to implement, but are not sure how to do it fairly and in a way that acknowledges the value of having people in the office together. Robin Erickson, Director of Finance a …
