How to Bring a New Hire Onboard in Your Nonprofit
Much hard work is behind you after you’ve actually made a hiring decision for the job opening in your nonprofit organization. But keep in mind that any employee’s first days and months are challenging, [more…]
How to Evaluate the Progress of New Hires at a Nonprofit Organization
Most nonprofit organizations establish a period, usually three to six months, when new employees are “on probation.” During this time, new employees learn their jobs, and managers can observe them at their [more…]
How to Communicate with Your Nonprofit Staff
It is impossible to overstate the importance of good communication. If your nonprofit has only 1 or 2 staff members, your job is easier than if you need to communicate with 50 or more employees. Either [more…]
How to Let a Nonprofit Staff Member Go
Some people enjoy barking, “You’re fired!” Others spend sleepless nights before and after terminating an employee who wasn’t right for a nonprofit job. Although you may not lose sleep over letting an employee [more…]
How to Differentiate an Independent Contractor from an Employee of Your Nonprofit
Technical differences between employees and independent contractors are reflected in how your nonprofit hires, pays, and manages them. Independent contractors almost always are paid a flat fee or hourly [more…]
How to Contract with an Independent Consultant for Your Nonprofit
Your nonprofit needs to have a signed contract with every consultant with whom you work. These points should be clearly stated in the contract: [more…]
How to Construct the First Nonprofit Budget
In many businesses and nonprofit organizations, the annual budget is made by looking at what happened in the previous year and adjusting numbers up or down based on the work that lies ahead. When you're [more…]
How to Document Goods and Services Donated to Your Nonprofit
Some nonprofit organizations benefit from donated goods and services rather than, or in addition to, contributed and earned cash. Suppose, for example, that a local business provides office space for your [more…]
How to Create Budgets for Nonprofit Programs or Departments
If your nonprofit organization focuses on a single service, you can skip ahead to read about projecting cash flow, but if you’re like many nonprofit organizations, you manage several programs or departments [more…]
How to Work with Your Nonprofit Budget
Your nonprofit budget isn’t capable of getting up and walking out of the room, but it needs to be an “active document.” If you simply create it once a year to keep in a file folder and submit with grant [more…]
How to Project Cash Flow for Your Nonprofit
A cash flow projection is a subdocument of your nonprofit budget that estimates not just how much money you will receive and spend over the course of a year, but [more…]
What to Do if Your Nonprofit Doesn’t Have Enough Cash
Your nonprofit probably won’t have more income than expenses in every single one-month period throughout the year. During some periods, you get ahead, and at other times, you fall behind. Your goal is [more…]
How to Borrow Money for Your Nonprofit
One route to managing cash shortfalls in your nonprofit is to borrow the money you need to cover your bills. Your cash flow statement can help you plan the size and duration of the loan you need. Here [more…]
How to Keep Your Nonprofit’s Books Organized and Current
After you’ve created a budget, you need to set up a system for keeping consistent, organized records of your nonprofit’s financial information. You may choose to do your bookkeeping by hand or with accounting [more…]
How to Prepare Your Nonprofit’s Financial Statements and Conduct an Audit
If a budget is a document about the future, a financial statement tells the story of your nonprofit organization’s past. Nonprofit organizations keep and review their financial records throughout the year [more…]
How to Read Your Nonprofit’s Financial Statements
Audited or not, prepared by you or by a bookkeeper or accountant, your nonprofit organization needs to produce financial statements, and it’s critically important for you to understand how to interpret [more…]
How to Get a Full Understanding of Your Nonprofit’s Financial Health
At the year’s end, when you’ve completed the financial statement for your nonprofit, you should review the following points, either as a board or within the board’s finance committee. The answers to these [more…]
How to Broadly Solicit Donations for Your Nonprofit’s Capital Campaign
Early on, when you’re conducting the capital campaign among trustees, close friends of the nonprofit, past donors, and foundations, the campaign is in what’s called the “quiet phase.” [more…]
How to Create a Grant Proposal for a Capital Project at a Nonprofit
Grant proposals for capital projects follow the general outline of a standard grant proposal for a nonprofit project with some variations and additions. The grant writer needs to describe the organization’s [more…]
How to Use E-Tools to Build and Maintain Relationships for Your Nonprofit
Nonprofit fundraising is about building relationships with people. Individual donors want to feel that they’re appreciated. E-mail and other web-based tools can help. [more…]
How to Collect Money Online for Your Nonprofit
Key first steps to raising money through the Internet are to add a “donate now” button to your nonprofit organization’s website and to have volunteers reach out to their friends via their e-mails. [more…]
How to Preplan a Nonprofit Capital Campaign
After your nonprofit organization begins thinking that it may want to raise funds for a capital project, you seek outside assistance in the form of workshops, classes, or consulting. Convincing yourself [more…]
How to Develop a Rough Budget for Your Nonprofit’s Capital Campaign
Before you test your nonprofit’s project to find out whether it’s feasible, you need assistance figuring out what it will cost. A common mistake organizations make is forgetting that raising money costs [more…]
How to Test the Feasibility of Your Nonprofit’s Capital Campaign
A nonprofit organization’s capital campaign starts a feasibility study, research testing the hypothesis that you can raise the amount of money you need. Four feasibility study test points are [more…]
How to Find Top Gifts for Your Nonprofit’s Capital Campaign
You’ve sketched out your nonprofit’s fundraising budget. You’ve set your sights on a reasonable goal. Your next most important need is to identify campaign leadership [more…]
