My org laid off 50% of their employees today, myself included, with no severance because they don’t have any money. I’m in shock. Scared. Overwhelmed at the thought of not having an income. I was 100% remote and having very real anxiety about the prospect of returning to in person work. I got really lucky with this position, my first in non profit and I’m unsure how to proceed. I feel like I was promoted within the org into positions that now, looking at other orgs, I’m not technically “qualified” to have. I don’t know what to do or even where to look. Any suggestions or help are appreciated. Im feeling frozen not knowing what to even do.

My friend works for a charity in Albania.

Their organization was given a grant by a 5013c (obviously a usa based charity). But the donation was not donated directly to them. It was donated via a different 5013C (also USA based).

That second 5013C has deducted 20% administration costs from the grant.

She is trying to find out if this is allowed.

She’s wondering why the organization would not have just donated directly to them to avoid the loss of administration fees. Any thoughts? She tried looking on the IRS website which is a minefield!

I’m a recent graduate who just secured my first real job out of college and have been working here for almost two months now. I like my job so far, but one thing I’m unsure of are the responsibilities I hold.

My title is Public Relations Specialist but lately I find leadership and many of my coworkers asking me to launch all these projects. Right now I’m leading the reconstruction of our website, cold-calling donors for an upcoming event I suggested, developing our social media presence, & our training coordinator just asked me to help construct a training video for our organization. This is all alongside many other tasks. I’m not particularly annoyed or completely unaware of who I work for; I know that we have limited funds and don’t have a formal fundraising & graphic design team. In fact not until I arrived was there no PR team, which now consists of me & one marketing specialist.

I hope this isn’t a dumb question, but are these my responsibilities? Is it normal to wear many hats? I feel a little overwhelmed having all these ideas thrown at me and I try not to look doe-eyed and ask why the hell they’re coming to me for as it seems more relevant to their department. This is a very underveloped non-profit, my first job out of college, & I was a sociology major — the only relevant experience I had in PR was a 3 month internship. Thanks for any advice.

Been working for a non-profit for a few years but don’t know what my actual role is . We all do a bit of everything. Problem being I don’t know what role to look for when applying for new jobs. Any suggestions for a recruiter or advice giver within the NGO space who can help figure out what positions i should be applying for?

Are all NGO’s like this? Based in South Africa.

The nonprofit I work for failed to turn in on time and submitted an incomplete grant renewal that my position entirely relies on for salary and funding for our program. I did everything that was required of me to do. It was those above me who did not complete their required work.

I’m worried I won’t have a job if the grant doesn’t get renewed (it has strict requirements).

Advice?

I'm feeling torn and guilty about leaving my nonprofit job. I love the mission. Love the work I do and the impact on the community. But the finances are just not sustainable. I'm currently interviewing for a government job that more than doubles my salary without being a supervisor. There's no way I could turn it down or not pursue it. I just feel shitty. I've given 8 plus years to them and my community. I just learned, throigh my current employer, how to be a trainer in my field and now am basically turning around around and taking those skills to another position. Even with a promotion, I wouldn't make as much as I could leaving the non profit world. Of course I can stay on as a volunteer, but I'll need to focus on my new role.

I know my team and ED are going to be pissed and hurt. Any advice on having the conversation with them? Or advice how to wane some of this guilt I'm feeling?

We recently received a large gift from the giving arm of a corporation based in Europe. Can anyone tell me what the basic regulations for an international donation like this -- is it US based regulations, or regulations from this specific country? TIA!

Does anyone have experience with board managment software here to better manage the board of directors? Looking for ways to bring communication, board deck sharing, meeting notes, action items, signatures, etc. to one place. Specifically, does anyone have experience with Diligent or Onboard or another software solution?

My job title is volunteer recruitment and outreach manager. I started four months ago. Our goal is to diversify our volunteer base. I put together a thorough and data-backed recruitment and outreach strategy that involves actually going out in the city to specific areas and places, forming relationships and giving presentations, and tracking the return on effort for each outreach event to better adjust in the future when deciding which sites are most profitable for us. I love outreach and have done it for many years and I’m good at it. I set ambitious but attainable goals and can adjust quickly. I’ve been doing this work for 11 years now.

This is a small team - 14 people. In my interview social media responsibilities were discussed, I related I do not like SM work, I am not very good at it (only SM I use is Reddit and barely know how the others one work), and our studies show by and large our volunteers come to us through connections to current volunteers and community events - so SM seems more like a marketing job to me, though we do not have a marketing position, we do have a director of development that constantly, nearly every day, is posting graphics about fundraising.

My CEO has so many ideas and asks for SM - wanting me to recognize all these months and holidays and feature all these volunteers that have a connection to said holiday eg mother volunteers for mothers days, volunteers that are nurses for nurses month, etc. also interviewing volunteers about their experience and posting their anniversaries and…you can see how it piles up. She also wants more “slice of life” and “behind the scenes” posts of us as an office - but folks are busy and many aren’t interested in being posted about, understandably. I’m Making gifs and videos and converting file types for Hootsuite and compressing other files - writing stuff getting feedback from multiple leadership people, sometimes contradictory, then rewriting and resubmitting for approval. At this point it’s easily 30% of my week, but my CEO has said it should only take me a couple hours each week. She’s great, I really do respect her, but she’s not realistic about this. She also watches it closely cause she likes every post that goes up within an hour.

I don’t mind a few posts here and there, but I also do our monthly newsletter which takes a good amount of time cause again everyone has opinions and feedback and changes and additions and subtractions once I send it to them.

How do i address this?

I track NGOs that work overseas and see that they will list a minimal amount of employees on their 990s but I know for a fact that they have many more in country. Does the IRS only consider those employees who are getting a W9?

I plan to start paying myself a salary from my nonprofit but I want to save up for retirement also, the retire benefit I want the most in a 401A Plan because it like a pension how do I go about setting it up?

Good morning everyone,

I'm a late start student (late 20s) who currently works in a development office for a non profit. I'm thinking about getting a master's degree to further my education and also help myself into my dream career. I want to stay in development and fundraising but inside an art museum. The MET recently post a job for this position and they want someone with a Master's preferably Art History or similar field related. I know this would help me connect with donors and align myself with the mission of any art museum but is it worth it overall? I was thinking Media Studies as some programs art Art History and film focused (which is my interest.)

Really I'm asking if anyone has recommendations for degrees that would benefit AND engage me? I can't see myself doing a MBA like is often suggested...

Thank you for any and all advice!

This might be a better question for an AITA thread, but I am wondering if this is normal for a non-profit. During “season” here in South Florida, many of us, especially the Dev team, work a ton of hours. We have so many events that we often work 3 weeks with no day off and many days are 12-16 hours long. Despite this, we are expected to use PTO if we come in late or leave early one day. For example, I worked 18 days straight and finally when there was a small break in the action and I caught up on my work, I asked to leave at noon and was made to use PTO time. AITA for thinking this is unreasonable? What is your organization’s policy regarding non-exempt employees/overtime/PTO? Thank you!

I help nonprofits increase their capacity through business development workshops and social impact community incubators, been doing it for over 10 years, and through this work have track record increasing unrestricted funding for various missions. Prior to this I was an Executive Director leading a mid-sized nonprofit seeking to reduce homelessness.

My team and I recently built software originally to make our own capacity building work more efficient, however, partners and clients have expressed interest in using it as an internal business intelligence tool to help them make informed business decisions without needing to hire expensive experts. Now we're exploring if we should refine our software to see if there's a larger need for it.

I'm looking for recommendations or suggestions of foundations, capacity building organizations, other social incubators/accelerator programs I could connect with to possibly run a pilot project with. Would love a referral/connection or two if I can ask that of this community.

Thank you in advance.

How do you determine what people are paid? If they are paid?

Do you pay board members a salary or value their time as a donation?

Or is it all volunteer work and everyone has a second job?

I’m trying to understand how people keep their lights on after they leave.

Edit: I think left out you are the founder, board member, grant writer and canvasser… how do they get paid?

ChatGPT makes it sound like I would need to remove myself during a vote with the other board members during the hiring.

I am a volunteer with the society of decision professionals (SDP). www.decisionprofessionals.com.

Someone recently brought up the idea of an internal bookstore as a potential funding source. The association has maybe 6-10 members with their own books.

I have been tasked with trying to understand the opportunity. We have about 800 members and growing.

It seems that a simple model would be for the association to become an Amazon affiliate and make a little bit on click through purchases. That’s low effort, low gain probably.

Does anyone here have experience with this or can you guide me to a resource?

Thanks, Tony

Our non-profit received a donation of a family pack of tickets for a day visit to a local municipal run museum for an upcoming auction. On their own, they probably won’t generate a ton of interest so wondering if anyone has ideas of things we could pair with them to increase interest? Thanks!!

We got a few state grant that includes staff time. I was wondering how do we properly charge and report the staff pay? On the expenditure do we report the gross pay or net pay? If met we have to pay for state payroll and federal taxes. How to we report for these expenses?

I’ve been part of a nonprofit for about 10 years, starting out as a volunteer and becoming board chair a few years ago. I did a lot of stuff for free, grant writing project management prior on taking the role. The board asked me to help find more funding and I wrote grant that included subcontracting for project management - staff and other expenses. Since this is an ethnic organization there isn’t a lot of talent so the board authorized a contract to perform project management duties as well. So we’ve been charging the grant for the contract which is restricted to 3k a month, but I’ve been putting in a lot more work I also been doing a lot of administrative work as well helping with other project and obviously looking and applying for more funding. I feel like three thousand is a bit low. How can I lobby for additional pay?

I was wondering if any non profits or advocacy groups have an online community where members can log in and participate in discussions or forums ? My question is how valuable it that to your donors ? Is it worth the effort ? How engaged are members on such online communities ?

Hello. We recently got some state funding and hired some staff. The grant allows staff, but I’m curious about expenditure reports. Should I be reporting gross or net pay for staff. Also the 941 quarterly payments and monthly payroll taxes. If I report gross does it mean that all these are included in that net pay?

What issues are you facing?

Convincing board members to invest in marketing has been a real challenge. They keep focusing on ROI as if we're a retail business selling jewelry.

I’m in charge of building a mentorship, and I want to do criminal background checks on our applicants but struggling to find the right provider. Identogo is the one I was going to choose, but I had a nightmare experience with customer care and am totally turned off by them now.

I'll try to summarize this nuanced issue as clearly as possible, and here's the best shot. I would appreciate the advice on what to do.

I'm a relatively new board member for a local foundation that partners with school districts in my region. As an alumnus of this program many years ago and an expert in education policy, I chose to serve on this board as an important part of my connection to the community. It has been rewarding to grow exponentially as we expand our space. No others on the board have this expertise in school districts; most come from business sectors.

Recently, our state announced a strategic plan that will impede our operations as it will supersede authority on what we have been strategically aligned to provide. As an expert in the space, I advise (to other boards) that the new state plan is on the wrong side of an illegal grey area and will harm the company's operations and the community's interests. However, I am only accustomed to being the expert in the room, not the board member. I've brought this up to our board but would not know how to provide the expert consultation while also being a member of the board with an expectation to see things objectively.

What is the best way to approach this? In a simpler question, now that I have about 20 minutes on the agenda, what is the best way to approach this discussion as a board member? (Is there a format for coming to a consensus on a position statement?)

Hi everyone! The nonprofit I work for has doubled in size over the past year from about 20 to over 50 people. Largely, however, we've retained the same internal structures and processes. We're now trying to do an assessment of what changes we need to make to accommodate this rapid expansion but don't have a great sense of where to begin. Even when I try to Google things I'm not finding a lot of resources, which leads me to think I'm searching for the wrong things.

In case I'm still not describing this correctly, here are some examples of questions that I'm looking for resources to guide us through

• do we need to move to a different org structure (e.g. move from region based teams to subject matter teams)
• do we need more team managers and/or for large teams should we move from weekly check-ins to bi-weekly check-ins

Does anyone know of any resources, guides, tools, or even search terms to help orient us on what steps we need to take? I'd also be grateful for recs on any specific tools you've used to support expansion (like tools to meet your expansion needs as opposed to tools to assess your needs).

Thank you!

Hello! We are a nonprofit for a very specific rare genetic infantile epilepsy. Research in the past year into this condition has really shown some promising things for our kids and there will soon be clinical trials for gene specific treatments! The families we support are all over the world and the clinical trial will most likely take place in Brazil. We would like to provide financial travel assistance to the families who are desiring to travel to Brazil and take part in the study (if the study doesn’t cover these expenses already) ie. financial assistance for flights, hotel expenses, meals, etc. This would help lessen the financial burden of travel expenses for those who want to participate, while allowing the children access to a potential treatment.

We are located in the United States. What is the best way to go about doing this? Booking the flights for them? Having them send receipts and then reimbursing them? Are there any legal implications associated with this?

Thank you in advance. I know we are planning ahead but this is huge for our community. I know what it’s like to sit around and wait for research to finish about something so near and dear to your heart and then potentially not be able to participate in something that may actually be helpful.

EDIT: PLEASE DO NOT send referrals to other nonprofits who could just “do it for us.”

I've run a $1m budget NGO for 5 or so years, 41 years old, background in law and policy. Is this skillset in demand or is the market saturated? Interested in a change of scenery.

My department is exploring using a project management platform. We already have it, so I’m not asking for recs. But wondering if anyone uses one for tracking the pieces of grant submissions, who is working on them, what the status is, etc. can you share how you are using it? Samples/templates of how you are using it? Thanks!

Is the idea of the nonprofit industrial complex is something I have seen people that are socialist believe but outside of that most people I know have never even heard of it, is this idea a common belief with most people or is it just something a few believe?

Hi all - I just had an exploratory call with FreeWill. The cost is very high considering that the main thing I'm interested in is the tool that allows folks to make their will via a nonprofit's website. Seems like it would be at 10K for my organization.

Has anyone worked with or had introductory calls with the other companies in this industry? If so, are there others that offer a more scaled back version of this service at a lower cost than FreeWill? I don't really want the help with comms/strategy, as I have several existing mentors/sources on this front.