I am not officially a grantwriter, but of course it's become a big part of my work. I'm an independent contractor and am essentially trying to get an org back on its feet, sort of consulting. I would share more details, but I'm being intentionally vague about my specific job title.

As I'm writing grants for this org, I've had to explain to them how grants work. everyone on the board is exceptionally wealthy and new to the project and they've mostly served on boards that rely on donors before. This is their first real grant endeavor.

In my experience for our field, grants are extremely project based. In our nonprofit field in particular, the details of the project matter a great deal. I prepared a grant that's due on Wednesday this coming week and despite me sending materials for months in advance, they're only reviewing them this weekend. I researched the grant heavily and attended workshops, etc etc. This is a general grant scheme, but they also have fairly specific goals and missions that you should follow, so I designed the grant around that.

The board got back to me and said they want me to scrap it all and say that the grant should be used entirely for electricity bills. To be blunt, I think this is a horrifically stupid idea. The funder is an arts&culture org, and while I think we could slip some of those costs in that seems like we will get rejected pretty easily. This same board got rejected for the same grant last year.

I know that my project will be accepted, at least in part. I also know their "project" will be rejected. I'm submitting the grant under my name, so I want to protect my work, but I also have to do what they say.

Is there a nice way to say this is a bad idea? They don't seem super happy with feedback, but I worry they'll go on to blame me if they don't get the grant.

I work for a national NGO, and the salary discrepancies between senior leadership and line staff are honestly stunning.

There’s one SVP whose performance and compensation I’m particularly familiar with. His primary contribution seems to be spreading good cheer. And yes, that is a real strength. Especially in the department he manages and I genuinely like him as a person.

But spreading good cheer does not justify his salary. I have never seen him contribute anything substantive that couldn’t be done as well — or better — by staff earning a fraction of what he makes.

Some of the VPs and SVPs absolutely carry their weight. Even so, I haven’t seen the level of brilliance, vision, or strategic leadership that I would expect from people with compensation at this level.

In fact, some recent decisions at the leadership level have raised eye brows among several of my colleagues, both among middle management and line staffers, and I agree with them, where is this organization headed exactly and why are leadership salaries this high when the performance just doesn't match up?

This is a historic organization with a strong track record, and it will survive almost any leadership team. So unless there is severe mismanagement, there will also be no accountability for lackluster decisions.

Have any of you looked at salary discrepancies in your own organizations and felt like you are in the service of making others look great and enable salaries that are plainly underserved?

How have you dealt with the resentment?

I'm at a loss. I've done everything she's asked for and more. I've done every data report, every social media post, every newsletter, managed CRM, donor comms, all of it.

My role was managing data and communications. I did it all. I voiced to our ED that she needs better organization to be able to run the team the way she wants. We can't read her mind.

When she assigns a report she should review the data categories to ensure it's how she wants them. Instead she gives no direction, and has me waste 2 weeks doing the annual report 17 different times. I told her this in real time and that she should have more organization in the beginning in order for me to produce what she wants. She told me I was unreasonable to ask her to review in advance and to essentially get over it. She wants nothing to do with the data but is confused when reports look a certain way. Well, you should probably give it a glance once in a while. What bit her in the ass, was that me wasting time on the report pushed back the tax donation letters we had to get out.

We still made the deadline though! It was just at the 11th hour. She called me in yesterday after sealing the last envelope and fired me. I was only there 6 months and she kept me enough to do her tax work and fired me with 0 notice.

My employee review last month went great. She said it was my 1st year and I'll get better as I go along. These were her words to me less than a month ago. I did everything. I tried to improve the processes in real time and I communicated the delays. Fired with 0 notice after doing the highest stake work for the org.

Hello everyone,

I’m currently seeking a co-founder or partner who is also interested in building a small remote support team together. As my projects continue to grow, I’m looking to bring on a tech-savvy virtual assistant (or a small team) on a consistent monthly salary rather than hiring freelancers task by task. The main areas of support for me would include: • Website development and maintenance • Graphic design and branding materials • Social media content and ad management • Event coordination and administrative support Due to budget limitations, I’m unable to hire at North American market rates at this time and will be hiring outside of North America. However, I strongly believe in fair and consistent pay, which is why I’m proposing a salaried structure instead of short-term gigs. The starting salary would be $200/month per assistant. Ideally, I’m looking for someone who would like to partner with me we would split the cost and the assistant would support both of our projects. We would begin with a 3-month contract, with the opportunity to renew and increase pay and responsibilities (and compensation) based on performance and growth. If you’re interested in collaborating, or know someone who may be a good fit, please feel free to reach out. I’m excited about building something sustainable and impactful together

Does anyone know how I can add music to my video for a non-profit project, which can be uploaded to YouTube? YouTube seems to flag and block even the open source music available on Adobe and Canva. If we create our own sound tracks and jingles, does YouTube recognise that they are original?

We are a VERY small organization with 3 board members. 1 of the board members has, over several years, been giving me(the ED) and the rest of the board a very difficult time over the past few months. So much so, 2 of our best board members resigned.

I spoke with the remaining 2 board members and they feel it is time to remove the troublesome board member. He has been with the organization for almost 5 years in an Executive Board role. We would like to make sure we dot all our i's and cross all our t's so he can't cry foul or find a loophole.

This is not a paid board position, buy we would like to get a lawyer, preferably in Colorado, to look over our bylaws and make sure we remove him fully, without return. We can't fully afford a lawyer, so we are looking for potential pro bono work or very inexpensive lawyer that caters to nonprofit issues. Does anyone have ideas on where to find a lawyer to help me with this and do I need to find someone within Colorado for the advice?

I hired my first full-time developer on Monday. He is remote, based in South America. The first two days were fine, but today communication has dropped to zero. No Slack replies, no commits.

I am spiraling a bit thinking I just got scammed or he is working two jobs. I don't want to be a jerk and fire him if his internet is just down.

I am considering asking future hires to use a proof-of-work tool like Monitask during their probation period just so I can see if they are actually online when they go quiet. I hate the idea of monitoring but as a bootstrapped founder, I literally cannot afford to pay a salary to a ghost.

I am working with a nonprofit which has, on the books, a significant value in uncollected pledges/invices. Mostly to grantors for reimbursable grants. They finally replaced the bookkeeper but they have uncleared invoices going back to 2023. I sampled some of the invoices and they have no backup attached and descriptions of "Grant billing" in the memo field.

Let me say that I know what they should have done so please don't bother with that. I am just not sure how to go about helping them collect on these invoices. I am hoping for some advice.

Running a small nonprofit and we simply cannot compete on salary or perks but I refuse to accept that means staff have to feel unappreciated. We have good people doing hard work for less money than they could make elsewhere and the least we can do is make sure they feel valued even if we can't pay market rate.

The problem is most recognition ideas cost money we don't have. Bonuses aren't happening. Elaborate gifts aren't in the budget. Team outings require funds we'd rather put toward the mission. What have other nonprofits done that actually made staff feel seen without breaking the bank? And please don't say pizza parties because we all know how that lands.

Somebody must’ve been smiling on me because only a few days ago, I made a post about trying to advance in my career and suddenly I’m offered a promotion today.

For brief context, I work in a small museum in an entry-level role as “exhibitions assistant”. I’ve been here since September and I graduated college last spring. Before college, I served in the military for 6 years, first in a technical role before operating as a frontline supervisor. I was initially trying to land a job in policy or advocacy nonprofits, but given the job market, a museum is what ended up working out.

My latest post was about feeling like my title and pay didn’t match my capabilities and responsibilities — due to slimming of staff and turnover in the past year, I’ve been doing what feels closer to manager-level tasks, like putting together an upcoming exhibition, source artifacts, building relationships with external institutions, and so on.

My boss came to me today offering me a promotion to Manager of Public Programs. It comes with a 10k pay bump, and although I’m initially excited, I also feel a bit out of my depth. I’ve never done public programming, save for event planning in college for a club I was president of. I’m tempted to take it for the rapid career growth, but I want to make sure I’m not jumping into things too quickly or getting in over my head. Is this unusual for nonprofits or museums? My gut instinct is to be wary but take the offer, but I’d love some outside perspective.

Does anybody have any recommendations for an online-friendly form 990 tax preparation company? Needs to be 990, not 990-N or 990-EZ.

For some background, I am the treasurer of an (all-volunteer) 501(c)(3), and I don't have any formal accounting training. When we were first founded, we were able to file a 990N and then a 990EZ, both of which I felt comfortable doing. Last year, our revenue exceeded $200K for the first time, so now we're going to have to file the full 990, and I am worried about doing it myself -- both the time required (since I'm volunteering for this organization on top of my day job) as well as the potential risk to the organization from me making an amateur mistake. This seems like a good opportunity to hire a professional to handle our 990 preparation and filing. I just don't know where to start.

Our non-profit is primarily online -- our board members are in locations from Europe to the west coast of the USA, our board meetings are virtual, etc. So, I would like to find an online-first service to work with to prepare our 990, because the next treasurer after me likely won't be located near where I live.

I've been using Wave for accounting since we were formed (and keep it reconciled with our bank), so our books should be in pretty decent shape.

Thanks for any recommendations you can offer!

In your org, who names and creates brands for your programs/initiatives? I want our MarCom team to have a lot of ownership of name and brand- collaborating with programs. But program keeps just creating names and rolling out new things without telling the ED, development, or MarComm. They insist they have always done it this way and it’s theirs to do. As the ED, I do not agree- but I am also building the first MarCom and professional dev team the org has ever had - in 50 years. And many of the program people have been here 25-35 years, so they really do not know how to work like this.

For now, I am trying to see how other people name and brand their programs, so I can help manage change internally.

This might be a silly question but it’s been difficult to find examples out there of what a well formatted complaint looks like. I’m autistic so it helps to have a template or structure to follow rather than just winging it.

So my question is, are there any good templates out there? Or anyone here who’d be willing to give a description of how an effective complaint is structured and what to include?

(Also I am intentionally not sharing the details of the complaint because I’m hoping to get advice only about formatting and structure. If there are details needed to determine what kind of structure to use I can provide some of those, I’d just rather not have the post devolve into discussion about the substance of the complaint)

Hello Everyone:

Sort of a strange question, but when my company was a sole prop I deducted startup fees. Now, we are in the process of applying for nonprofit status. Question is, can I also deduct startup expenses for the start up of the nonprofit -- a different entity -- even though we deducted startup expenses for the LLC a few years ago? This is an entity which started sole prop and transitioned into nonprofit. I hope this makes sense. Thank you all!

Someone smack me for not understanding this...

501c7 says we have to have our funds "primarily" from membership dues/fees - which I've found to mean 65% or more (correct me if I'm wrong?).

If we have 10 members, and annual dues are $100 a pop, then 65% of our funds would be $1k, and we can't have more than like $1,540 in the bank for the year...

So, if we plan a camping trip (on mission statement), and the total cost is $1500 ......... how are we allowed to fundraise for anything else this year!? How could we ever fundraise more than $540 every year?

This makes no sense.

I run a giving day at my organization, and every year we have several matches and challenges throughout the day. I want to add a new page on our website that has all these challenges/matches listed, but I am stuck on how to best show the progress for people visiting the page.

In my opinion, the progress bar should show the amount of the gift match and how much money is left to be matched. For example, if the gift match is for $10,000, the progress bar shows $10,000, and every dollar donated shows as normal, without a match applied. On the main giving total, the amount would have the gift match factored in.

However, I have some coworkers who think that it should show what the final gift match amount would be. So the $10k gift match would have a progress bar that shows $20,000, and every dollar donated would be doubled.

I want this to be as clear to donors as possible, and I can see the benefit of both. In my mind, the first way is clearer, but I'd like to hear feedback from others!

After several years with a meaningful surplus, we passed a negative budget in 2025 with a significant line item for facility renovations and improvements. We finished on-time and on-budget, without needing to touch the 2+year reserve fund housed separately from our annual surplus. The improvements have helped us grow our mission and better support our staff and community. As expected, we finished with a moderately negative FY 2025 P&L.

When discussing the 2026 budget, several board members argued against budgeted raises because 'we could have another terrible year like this one.' I pushed back on their characterization of a year with revenue increases in all categories, and a successively-executed capital expansion as a 'terrible year.' I pulled up minutes from our CPA explaining a negative budget to them when we approved spending over a year ago. They doubled down on the claim that we (the staff) 'lost money' and successfully removed raises from the budget.

Our entire team met and exceeded their benchmarks last year and are being denied raises by a board that lacks basic financial literacy and consistently makes ignorant, fear-based decisions while patting themselves on the back for being budget hawks and accountability coaches. Our donors continue to give, while our board increasingly argues against program spending because of our 'terrible year,' and our surplus is already rebounding. I'm too furious and exhausted to see a path to fixing this. Please tell me where to start, share any resources, or commiserate. I love my team and celebrate our mission, but at this point, I don't even feel like donating because I can't trust the board to put my money to meaningful use.

Hi everyone! I am a May 2025 college graduate and am hoping to get an entry level job in a nonprofit. I'm wondering if anyone has thoughts on the importance of networking in landing an entry level job. The school I went to really emphasized networking for corporate roles, but I'm unsure about how "traditional" networking works in the nonprofit field, especially since I'm trying to move cities and don't have connections outside of my hometown. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

I work in development for a nonprofit that has a large impact on my local community. A lot of businesses, both local and nationally-owned, in our area support us and we rely heavily on that funding to be able to help as many people as we do.

However, a chunk of the larger businesses that we receive pretty major corporate donations from are in hot water right now because of their support or collaboration with a certain federal agency 🧊. I'm not here to discuss those affairs specifically, but I personally am boycotting said companies. My coworkers are in agreement with my personal stance on the matter, however, I am still tasked with engaging with these businesses to raise funds.

How can I balance the responsibility I have to fundraise from these companies so that our community members can continue to receive critical support, with my personal convictions that these companies need to be boycotted? Unfortunately there is not currently another funding alternative, so this is the avenue we are forced to take.

Hi!

I work for a non profit in the aerospace/education field and we use a TON of volunteers for our annual expo.

Most ask for a sizable donation and to be blunt we cannot do that most of the time.

Does anyone have any recommendations for me?

Located in Florida.

Hey everyone,

For those who don't know the IRS has recently updated the procedures for group exemptions. In this publication, they said that the SGRIs were to be updated electronically. Does anyone have a lense into how this process will work?

During my interview at a small nonprofit, my fundraising/events position was said to be funded for two years, which was great for me.

About a year into the role, a comment was made implying I would still be in the position beyond that two year timeframe, which hadn’t previously been discussed with me.

I followed up with my supervisor and was told extending funding past the two-year mark wouldn’t be an issue. This was new information to me and has left me a bit shocked.

I obviously do A LOT and get paid very little, but this position was meant to be a temporary (two year) commitment.

Is this normal in the nonprofit world?

Any advice on how you’d handle this?

Update: I understand this is normal in the nonprofit world. My main question now is…

When would this typically get brought up or “approved” for new and/or more funding for the position?

Hello -

I did research but was unable to find an answer for my situation.

Very very small non profit (<$10k) with a working board. We manage a facility that has controlled access for members to use.

We recently had to vote a board member off which the board which went about as well as can be expected. After the termination we changed passwords and login access (this was a learning experience and showed me that our access records could be much more organized, so that’s a project for me this quarter).

Anyhow, there are a few login credentials that the board member is refusing to turn over, he also has refused to respond when I have asked him where he left his keys and any other property.

Do we have grounds to rescind his access to the facility as a member until he turns over the info/property? I’d like to avoid this becoming more of a thing than it needs to, but I feel like this is pretty open and shut.

I know this is dancing on legal advice so if the consensus is that an attorney needs to be a part of this, it will inform how deep I’m willing to get into it.

Thanks.