Nonprofit Good News-Letter Archive

Every Issue of the Nonprofit Good News-Letter

Most nonprofit newsletters tell you what is going wrong. Mine tells you what is working — and hands you the tools to copy it.

Every issue is built on real organizations. A Missouri nonprofit that split child care costs three ways. A Sarasota community foundation whose match rule paid out only on gifts between $25 and $100, with no cap, so 200 small donors beat one large one. An Omaha agency that gave 14 other nonprofits free rent and, two years later, had not seen a client return to homelessness. Named organizations, dated events, real numbers — then the part that matters to you: what the underlying design was, and how to run your version of it.

Alongside the stories are quick hits you can finish in 90 minutes: a charitable-solicitation registration audit, a volunteer waiver review, the Google Ad Grant fix that recovers most of the roughly $9,700 a month the average nonprofit leaves unclaimed. AI prompts written for nonprofit work rather than borrowed from marketing. And a board exercise in most issues that surfaces what your board has quietly been nodding through.

Only the first four issues ever went to everybody. From Issue #5 through Issue #41, this newsletter was closed — first to a small early-reader group, then behind a paywall. That is over. Every issue is free now, and all 42 of them are below.

One note before you dig in. Issues #5 through #41 were written while this newsletter was closed, and some of them say so. You will see references to subscription revenue, to the share of it that went to Rooted in Madison, and in one issue to a $10 monthly price. That ended when the paywall came down in August 2026. I have left the original wording alone rather than quietly editing the archive, so read those lines as history. Nothing here costs anything now.

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THE TOOL INDEX

Every tool in Issues #24 through the present has been published, and every one of them is listed below by issue — each What's Most Good feature, Quick Hit, AI prompt and board exercise, with what it does and, where it applies, how long it takes. Ten new ones arrive every Wednesday.

Looking for something specific? Use the search box in the site header, or your browser's find command — Ctrl+F, or Command+F on a Mac.

(Issues #1 through #23 used a different structure and are not indexed here yet. Every one of them is listed further down, and all of them are free to read.)

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Issue #42 — This Hospice Told Families: You Don't Need Permission to Call
August 26, 2026 · 11 tools

What's Most Good

A Florida Hospice Rebuilt Its Front Door So Families Don't Have to Wait for a Doctor — Treasure Coast Hospice, founded in 1982, serves three Florida counties and more than 4,000 patients a year, and rebuilt how families reach it.
Vermont Built One Door for Every Nonprofit's Hardest Questions — and Staffed It — When a nonprofit hits a legal, financial, or operational question it cannot answer, Vermont built a single staffed place to take it.
An Atlanta Food Bank Put a Conversational AI at the Front Door for Food Assistance — The Atlanta Community Food Bank has an intake problem that has nothing to do with food: the people who need it cannot easily find out how to get it.

Quick Hits

Cancel Anything You Are Paying for BOI Compliance — the Requirement Died on August 14 (20 minutes) — On August 14, FinCEN published a final rule permanently exempting all domestic entities from beneficial ownership information reporting.
Register for the Postage Discount Before Your Year-End Appeal Prints (30 minutes) — USPS promotions fit fundraising mail almost perfectly this fall, and they share one unforgiving rule: you must register before the first qualifying piece is mailed.
Mail the Letters That Keep the State From Taking Your Uncashed Checks (60–90 minutes) — Every state has an unclaimed property law and it applies to nonprofits: a payroll check nobody cashed, a vendor check that never cleared, a deposit never claimed.

AI Insights

Draft the Plain-Language Front Door for Your Highest-Volume Program — Answer the entry questions before people have to ask them, in words a stressed stranger can read.
Find Out Where AI Is Already Screening the People You Hire — Illinois amended its Human Rights Act effective January 1, 2026: employers using AI that influences hiring decisions must tell candidates and employees.
Give Your Donor Database a Health Screen Before the AI Agents Arrive — Vendors are shipping agents that act on your data instead of just holding it. An agent acting on a dirty database automates the dirt.

Board Corner

The Stranger's Walk — A 30-Minute Board Exercise (plus 20 minutes of homework) — Every board member believes the organization is easy to reach, because board members never have to reach it.

From Where I Sit

The Door I Deleted — On closing the paid tier of this newsletter, and what it means in practice.

Read Issue #42 in full →

Issue #41 — $200,000 Left This Nonprofit Through a Phone Call
August 17, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

A Cloned Voice Took $200,000 From a South Dakota Youth Club. Going Public Is What Got Some of It Back. — The Boys & Girls Club of the Northern Plains called police immediately and went on the record within two weeks. Both decisions paid.
Washington's State Technology Agency Went and Measured Its Nonprofits. The Numbers Are the Argument. — UC Berkeley's Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity published CyberCAN Washington in April 2026, with the state technology agency, and the findings make the case better than any warning could.
There Are Free Cybersecurity Clinics in Twenty-Eight States. Most Nonprofits Have Never Heard of Them. — Berkeley's Roadmap to Community Cyber Defense documents an initiative called the Cyber Resilience Corps, and the help is free.

Quick Hits

Find the Sublimit That Decides Whether Your Cyber Policy Pays (30 minutes, plus the broker's reply) — Cyber policies treat a voluntary transfer — an employee tricked into sending money — very differently from a hacking loss, and the sublimit is usually far below your headline limit.
Count Your Windows 10 Machines and Put a Real Price on Them (60 minutes) — Windows 10 reached end of support on October 14, 2025, and many nonprofits still run it, because replacing working hardware always loses to this year's budget.
Send Your Donor Database Vendor Four Questions in Writing (45 minutes) — In July 2026 a donor CRM used by more than 1,000 charities found that database backups had been accessed with compromised credentials. Ask before it is your vendor.

AI Insights

Write the Callback Rule That Would Have Stopped the Yankton Theft — The control that defeats a cloned voice is procedural, not technical, and it has to be written down before the call comes.
Build the Data Retention and Deletion Schedule You Do Not Have — Just 45% of the nonprofits in the Washington survey had a formal retention policy. Deletion is the only security control that reduces the cost of a breach to zero.
Map Your First Forty-Eight Hours Against Your Own State's Law — Every state has a breach notification statute, and unlike the broad consumer-privacy laws, these reach small organizations too.

Board Corner

The Fifty-Thousand-Dollar Phone Call — A 30-Minute Board Exercise — Boards approve cybersecurity spending they do not understand and skip the one question they are actually qualified to answer: who in this organization can move money?

Read Issue #41 in full →

Issue #40 — Who Tells Your Story — And Did They Agree to It?
August 10, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

Orangewood Foundation Gave Story Control to Its Foster Youth — and Reports Campaign Revenue Up 74% — The standard nonprofit fundraising story has a shape: a person at their lowest moment, rescued by the organization, transformed. It raises money.
The Shelter That Couldn't Talk Built a Nonprofit That Could — The Pawtucket Animal Shelter had a communications problem no hire could fix. As a city-run facility, its public voice was limited to official municipal channels — which is to say, it barely had one.
Chive Charities Keeps 98% of Its Monthly Donors. The Method Is Uncomfortable Honesty. — Across the nonprofit sector, donor retention hovers well under half — a leaky bucket every fundraising conference laments.

Quick Hits

Get Into Three Reporters' Contacts Before You Have News (90 minutes. Free) — When news breaks on your issue — a policy change, a local crisis, a viral story — reporters call the sources already in their phones.
Earn Candid's New Transparency Seal — Bronze Takes Minutes, Not Hours (Minutes for Bronze; an hour or two to Gold) — Funders screen you on Candid (formerly GuideStar) whether or not you have ever logged in, and an unclaimed profile reads as a silence you did not intend.
Fix the Google Listing Donors See Before They See You (45 minutes. Free) — Search your organization's name the way a first-time donor would. For most nonprofits, the Google Business Profile panel outranks the website.

AI Insights

Turn One Program Result Into a Pitch a Local Editor Will Run — Most nonprofit press releases die unread because they are written for the board, not the newsroom. The gap is not writing skill.
Build a Participant-Controlled Story Interview Kit — Consent before drafting, boundaries set by the storyteller, final approval by the person featured.
Plan Twelve Months of Stories From the Program Year You Already Have — The reason most small nonprofits communicate in bursts — silence, then a frantic year-end appeal — is not laziness. It is that story planning feels like a job for a department.

Board Corner

The Consent Walk-Through — Your board has probably never discussed who approves the stories your organization tells about the people it serves.

Read Issue #40 in full →

Issue #39 — The Cost Nobody Renegotiates
August 3, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

Virginia Changed Its Insurance Code So Charities Could Buy Health Coverage Together — For years the arithmetic facing a 12-person Virginia nonprofit was ugly. Group health coverage priced for a group of 12 costs far more per person than coverage priced for a group of 1,200.
Nearly 1,500 Nonprofits Stopped Paying State Unemployment Tax — Legally, and Since 1972 — Most nonprofit employers pay state unemployment insurance tax the same way a restaurant or a hardware store does: a percentage of payroll, quarterly, forever, regardless of whether anyone ever files a claim.
Retirement Plans You Join Instead of Build: Pooled 403(b)s Arrive — Ask a nonprofit ED why the organization has no retirement plan and you will usually get some version of the same answer: we looked into it, the fees were high, somebody has to be the fiduciary.

Quick Hits

Run the Unemployment Number Before September (90 minutes to gather, one email to send) — Your state unemployment tax rate is set from an experience rating most EDs have never looked at.
Check Whether Your State Already Requires You to Offer Retirement — You May Be Out of Compliance Now (30 minutes) — Auto-IRA mandates have spread quietly, and nonprofits are not exempt. California's CalSavers reaches employers with one or more eligible employees.
Join a Cooperative Purchasing Program — Free, and Most Nonprofits Qualify (45 minutes to register) — Cooperative purchasing organizations run competitive solicitations once, then let member agencies buy off the resulting contracts without running their own procurement.

AI Insights

Model What One Position Actually Costs You — Salary is the number that gets discussed. In most nonprofits it is only 70 to 80 percent of what the position actually costs.
Draft the Board Memo on Changing Unemployment Status — Reimbursing status is a real decision with a real downside, and it belongs to the board, not the ED.
Write the Total Rewards Statement Your Staff Will Actually Read — Your organization probably spends 25 to 35 cents on top of every salary dollar, and most of your staff have no idea. That is not their failure. Nobody has ever shown them.

Board Corner

The Never-Renegotiated List — Most boards review the budget every year and re-examine almost nothing in it. Line items get approved as a set.

Read Issue #39 in full →

Issue #38 — Before the Sirens
July 27, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

Baltimore Turned 17 Neighborhood Nonprofits Into Disaster Infrastructure — Without Asking Any of Them to Change Their Mission — Baltimore's Community Resiliency Hub Program starts from an observation any nonprofit leader will recognize: in a crisis, residents of under-resourced neighborhoods go first to the places they already trust.
Hawai'i Raised $209 Million After the Fires. Then It Did Something Smarter: It Built the Next Fund Before the Next Disaster — After the 2023 Lahaina wildfire, the Hawai'i Community Foundation's Maui Strong Fund drew more than $209 million in donations from around the world and has awarded more than $141 million.
A Tornado Destroyed 46 Homes in One Mississippi County. The Nonprofits There Decided It Would Be the Last Disaster They Faced Alone — In May 2026, an EF3 tornado tore through Lamar County, Mississippi — destroying 46 homes, damaging eight businesses, and injuring four people.

Quick Hits

Get Your Organization Into the Room Before the Disaster Does (30–60 minutes to find and contact the right network) — Every county has some version of the room where disaster response gets coordinated — a COAD, a VOAD affiliate, or the emergency manager's partner list.
Build the Document Go-Kit Your Organization Will Wish It Had (90 minutes to gather and load) — If your building were inaccessible tomorrow — fire, flood, police tape — could you reach your insurance policy, your lease, and your payroll information by evening?
Walk Your Building With Your Phone Recording — Your Future Insurance Claim Depends on It (30 minutes, including the call) — After a loss, insurers pay based on what you can document, not what you remember. A nonprofit that cannot show what it owned settles for less, later.

AI Insights

Draft the One-Page Continuity Plan Your Team Will Actually Use — Continuity plans fail in two ways: they never get written, or they get written at 40 pages and never get read.
Run a 45-Minute Tabletop Exercise Before Reality Runs One for You — Plans on paper hide their gaps until they are used. Emergency managers close those gaps with tabletop exercises — a guided walkthrough of a scenario, around a table, before anything is burning.
Draft the Mutual-Aid Agreement That Gives You a Second Building, a Borrowed Van, and a Partner on Your Worst Day — Hospitals and fire departments formalize mutual aid; nonprofits mostly rely on goodwill and improvisation.

Board Corner

The First 72 Hours — A 30-Minute Board Walkthrough of the Three Days You Hope Never Happen — Most nonprofit boards have discussed risk in the abstract and the first three days of a real emergency never.

Read Issue #38 in full →

Issue #37 — The Third Kind of Money
July 20, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

When Washington Froze the Money It Already Owed Them, These Nonprofits Borrowed Against the Contract — And Kept Their Doors Open — In early 2025, a federal funding freeze put thousands of nonprofits in an impossible spot. They held signed government contracts, they'd done the work, and the reimbursement simply stopped arriving.
A Foundation Gave This Nonprofit the Money on One Condition: Pay It Back So We Can Give It to Someone Else — RE-volv, a national nonprofit that finances solar for other nonprofits, runs on money most organizations have never been offered.
Their Supporters Stopped Just Donating — And Started Lending the Organization Money at Interest — When a nonprofit needs to buy a building, expand a clinic, or seed a loan pool, it usually sees two options: wait years for a capital campaign, or borrow from a bank on the bank's terms.

Quick Hits

Find Your CDFI Before You Need It (30 minutes to find your CDFIs; one call to open the conversation) — The worst time to look for a loan is the week you can't make payroll — your numbers look desperate and your options shrink.
Turn One Self-Funding Project Into a Recoverable-Grant Ask (90 minutes to choose the project and draft the ask) — Most major donors think there are two things they can do with money: give it away or invest it for themselves.
Assemble the Lender Packet Every Capital Source Will Ask For (Two hours to assemble; fifteen minutes a quarter to keep current) — Approach a CDFI, a bank, or a foundation offering a recoverable grant, and they all open with the same request: show us your numbers.

AI Insights

Draft a Working-Capital Loan Request a CDFI Loan Officer Will Take Seriously — Nonprofit leaders are fluent in grant proposals and lost in the language of loans. A funder wants impact and need; a lender wants use of funds, repayment source, and risk.
Build a Which-Financing-Fits-This-Need Decision Matrix — A nonprofit with a funding gap usually reaches for the first instrument that comes to mind — almost always another grant — without weighing the alternatives.
Prepare for the CDFI Loan-Officer Conversation — the Questions They'll Ask and the Ones You Should — A first meeting with a lender intimidates people who run nonprofits brilliantly, because it is unfamiliar ground.

Board Corner

The Borrowing Readiness Review — A 30-Minute Board Exercise — Most nonprofit boards have an unspoken policy on debt: never. No one voted on it, no one wrote it down, and it has never been tested against a real situation.

Read Issue #37 in full →

Issue #36 — Widening the Circle
July 13, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

Ordinary People Are Pooling Their Money and Handing Grant-Sized Checks to Local Nonprofits — Together — In 2025, a giving circle at the Catholic Community Foundation in Phoenix granted $251,432 to seventeen local organizations.
Nonprofits Received Hundreds of Millions of Dollars of Expert Work Last Year — Without Paying for Any of It — More Than Bootstraps, a small nonprofit, needed help it could never afford to hire — grant writing, marketing, strategic planning.
A Growing Number of Funders Are Handing Grant Decisions to the Communities They Serve — And the Grants Are Getting Better — For most of its history, philanthropy has worked one way: people with money and little connection to a community decide which of its organizations deserve a grant.

Quick Hits

Recruit One Skilled Volunteer for a Single Defined Project (30 minutes to scope and post) — Most small nonprofits carry projects they will get to when there is budget — the decade-old website, the dashboard no one built, the two-years-overdue HR policy. That budget is never coming.
Find and Approach One Giving Circle That Funds Organizations Like Yours (60 minutes to identify the circles) — There is almost certainly a group near you that pools money every year and votes on which local nonprofits receive it — and they may never have heard of you.
Publish a Specific In-Kind Wish List for Your Community (45 minutes to build the list; 15 to post it) — Your community is full of people and businesses who would give you something other than cash — a used laptop, a meeting space, printing, legal review — but they will never guess what you need.

AI Insights

Scope a Pro Bono Project and Write the Recruitment Pitch That Lands a Skilled Volunteer — The reason most nonprofits never get the free professional help available to them is not the platform — it is the brief.
Draft a Case for Support You Can Hand to a Donor, a Giving Circle, or a Volunteer — Every time someone in your community is ready to help, they need one document that explains what you do and why it works.
Build a One-Page Theory of Change for One of Your Programs — Funders, board members, and skilled volunteers all ask a version of the same question: how does what you do actually lead to the change you promise?

Board Corner

The Network Map — A 30-Minute Board Exercise to Surface the Doors Your Board Can Already Open — Most boards treat fundraising and connections as a vague hope — everyone nods that the board should open doors, and almost no one names which doors, or to whom.

Read Issue #36 in full →

Issue #35 — Keeping the People
July 6, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

A Montana Nonprofit Moved Its Whole Staff to a Four-Day Week — And Membership Went Up 30% — The Montana Nonprofit Association, based in Helena, did what most nonprofits assume they cannot afford.
More Than 10,000 Nonprofits Have Stopped Betting Everything on a Single Leader — The default nonprofit org chart puts one person at the top and asks them to carry fundraising, operations, HR, the board relationship, and often a piece of the program too.
A Growing Number of Funders Are Paying Nonprofit Leaders to Disappear for Three Months — And Their Organizations Come Back Stronger — The Rasmuson Foundation in Alaska gives up to eight nonprofit and tribal leaders a year a $50,000 award whose purpose is to get them to leave — 90 to 120 continuous days, fully unplugged.

Quick Hits

Calculate the Real Cost of Your Last Staff Departure (45 minutes to estimate; 15 to present) — Most nonprofits treat turnover as sad but free. It is neither — the empty seat, the scramble to cover, the search, the ramp-up months, and the knowledge that walked out the door all cost.
Write a One-Page Onboarding Checklist Before Your Next Hire (60 minutes to build the first version) — Most small nonprofits onboard by improvising — a desk, a login if someone remembers, and let us know if you have questions.
Reconcile Your Donor Database Against Your Accounting Records (90 minutes the first time; about 20 minutes a month after) — In most small nonprofits, the development team's donor total and the finance team's revenue total do not match, and no one reconciles them until the auditor forces the issue.

AI Insights

Build a Delegation Map for an Overloaded Executive Director — Small-nonprofit executives do three jobs for one salary, and the organization arranges itself around the assumption that the ED will absorb whatever falls.
Create a First-90-Days Guide for a Newly Promoted Manager — Nonprofits promote the best caseworker to supervisor and the best fundraiser to development director, then hand them a team with no training in how to lead one.
Build a Compensation Benchmarking Brief for One Hard-to-Fill Role — Nonprofits lose people to salaries they tell themselves they cannot match — often without knowing the market number, so they guess low and lose.

Board Corner

The Sustainable-Leadership Check — A 30-Minute Board Exercise — Most boards spend their energy evaluating whether the executive director is doing the job well. Almost none ask whether the job is humanly possible.

Read Issue #35 in full →

Issue #34 — Owning the Ground
June 29, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

A Philadelphia Neighborhood Is Becoming Its Own Landlord — And It Is About to Let Residents Buy In for $10 a Month — The Kensington Corridor Trust, founded in 2019 in Philadelphia, has spent six years buying and holding commercial property on behalf of the neighborhood.
A Nonprofit Just Helped Residents Buy the Land Under Their Manufactured Homes for the 10,000th Time — Most of the roughly 20 million Americans who live in manufactured-home communities own their homes but rent the land beneath them. That split is the whole problem.
With 40% of U.S. Farmland About to Change Hands, One Nonprofit Is Buying Farms and Holding Them in Common — Roughly 40% of U.S. farmland is expected to change ownership over the next 15 years, as the generation that has been farming it retires.

Quick Hits

Pull Your Lease and Find Three Clauses Before Your Next Renewal (30 minutes to read the lease; 15 to calendar the dates) — If your organization rents the space it operates out of, your mission has a hidden expiration date written into a document most EDs have not read since they signed it.
Check Whether Your Emails Are Actually Reaching Inboxes (15 minutes to run the check) — You can write the perfect appeal, and it does not matter if it lands in spam. Major providers have tightened their sender rules.
Reach Out to the Donors Who Gave Once and Vanished (60 minutes to build the list; about 2 hours to write 20 personal notes) — Every nonprofit has them: people who made a first gift and were never heard from again. They already proved they will give to you.

AI Insights

Build a Lease-vs.-Own-vs.-Partner Options Analysis for Your Program Space — Most nonprofits never seriously analyze their occupancy decision. They rent because they have always rented.
Draft Crisis-Communications Holding Statements for Your Three Most Likely Scenarios — When something goes wrong — a funding loss made public, an incident involving a client, a leadership departure — the first hours decide how it is remembered.
Build a Hiring Scorecard and Structured Interview Guide for Your Next Key Hire — Small nonprofits make their most consequential decisions — who to hire — with their least disciplined process.

Board Corner

The Asset Dependency Map — A 30-Minute Board Exercise — Every organization depends on a handful of assets it does not fully control — a leased building, a piece of land, a single major contract, a software platform.

Read Issue #34 in full →

Issue #33 — Mission and Margin in One Enterprise
June 22, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

A 38-Year-Old Seattle Culinary Workforce Nonprofit Just Hit Triple-Digit Job-Placement Growth — FareStart, the Seattle culinary-training nonprofit founded in 1988, released outcome data showing a 36% increase in student enrollment and a 75% increase in graduates.
A Los Angeles Nonprofit Built Eleven Social Enterprises to Employ Formerly Gang-Involved People — And 600+ Organizations Are Replicating It — Homeboy Industries, founded in Los Angeles in 1988 by Father Greg Boyle, is the largest gang-intervention, rehabilitation, and reentry program in the world.
A New York City Nonprofit Invests in Food Entrepreneurs, Mostly Women and Immigrants, So They Can Build Their Own Businesses — Hot Bread Kitchen, founded in New York City in 2007, is not primarily a workforce-training program for individuals seeking jobs.

Quick Hits

Run a 60-Minute Pricing Audit on Services You Are Currently Giving Away (60 minutes) — Most small nonprofits give away at least one service that has real market value. The bookkeeping consult a partner agency sent over. The grant-writing help a peer ED asked for.
Add a One-Page Financial Dashboard to Your Next Board Meeting (60–90 minutes to build; 15 per meeting to update) — Most board meetings get financials as a multi-page treasurer's report. The one or two members comfortable with financials read them.
Test the Autoresponder on Every Email Address Listed on Your Homepage (15 minutes to send the tests) — Most nonprofits list a few email addresses on their homepage. Most were set up years ago and never tested since. Some go to inboxes nobody checks.

AI Insights

Build a Pricing Analysis for One Earned-Revenue Stream — Most nonprofit earned-revenue streams are priced once at launch and never revisited.
Draft a We-Tried-This-and-It-Did-Not-Work Internal Memo — Most nonprofits do not document their failures. The program that underdelivered, the partnership that fizzled, the pilot that quietly ended — these vanish from institutional memory.
Generate a Three-Question Anonymous Pulse Survey for Staff — Most nonprofits have no reliable way to hear what staff actually think. The annual survey, if it exists, is too long and too infrequent.

Board Corner

The Where-Could-We-Charge Discussion — A 30-Minute Board Exercise — Every nonprofit gives away services that have market value. Some should stay free. Some should be priced — the organization is leaving money on the table.

Read Issue #33 in full →

Issue #32 — The Numbers Are the News
June 15, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

An Omaha Nonprofit's Housing Stability Clinic Just Hit a 0% Recurrence Rate Over Two Years — Together, an Omaha social-services nonprofit founded in 1975, released data on its Housing Stability Clinic — the co-located service center that made the result possible.
An Orange County Nonprofit's HUB Served Nearly 20,000 People in 2025 — Pathways of Hope, based in Fullerton and serving Orange County, California, served 19,916 people through its programs in 2025.
A Small Mansfield, Texas Nonprofit's Free Clinic Almost Doubled Its Patient Visits in Two Years — Mansfield Mission Center runs the Linda Nix Clinic — free medical care for uninsured and underinsured residents — and is building a $4 million campus.

Quick Hits

Audit Your Board Conflict-of-Interest Disclosures From the Past Year (60–90 minutes) — Most boards collect annual conflict-of-interest disclosure forms, file them with the minutes, and never look at them again.
Add a First-Time Visitor Path to Your Homepage (30 minutes to audit; 30 to draft) — Most nonprofit websites are built for people who already know the organization — donors, volunteers, beneficiaries, journalists.
Review One Staff Job Description That Is Three or More Years Old (90 minutes per role) — At least one of your roles has a job description that has not changed since the role was created. The work has shifted; the document has not.

AI Insights

Generate a 2025 Outcomes Summary Draft From Your Program Data — Most small nonprofits have the program data to tell a real outcomes story but never the time to assemble it.
Build a Cross-Training Plan for Two-Person Role Redundancy — Every small nonprofit has at least two roles whose loss would trigger a 90-day crisis, because the role has no backup.
Generate a Question Bank for Your Next Board Onboarding Conversation — Most small nonprofits onboard new board members with a packet and a single orientation meeting they sit through politely.

Board Corner

The Beneficiary Voice Audit — A 30-Minute Board Exercise — Almost every board hears beneficiary voice or lived-experience input as a value. This surfaces where that input was collected but never acted on.

Read Issue #32 in full →

Issue #31 — What Travels
June 8, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

A 23-Year-Old Youth Mental Health Nonprofit Just Got Its First Federal Bill Introduced — Active Minds secured the introduction of the Campus Lifeline Act in the U.S. House of Representatives on May 4, 2026 — on an idea that started at one student chapter a decade ago.
A Los Angeles Nonprofit Trains the People Black People Already Trust — Because the Therapist Supply Will Never Match the Need — BEAM, the Black Emotional and Mental Health Collective, is a Los Angeles-based national nonprofit founded in 2016 by Yolo Akili Robinson.
A Small Austin Nonprofit Trains High School Graduates to Be Dementia Caregivers — And Other Care Providers Then Hire Them — The Memory Caregiver Academy of Austin is a small nonprofit founded in 2021 by Debbie Wilder.

Quick Hits

Refresh Your Gift Acceptance Policy Before Your Next Major-Gift Conversation (30 minutes to audit) — Most small nonprofits adopted a Gift Acceptance Policy at some point in the past decade, filed it in the board minutes, and never looked at it again.
Add a One-Question Post-Service Exit Survey to Your Highest-Volume Program (15 minutes to design) — Most nonprofits collect more data about donors than about beneficiaries.
Send a Single Quarterly Update to Your Three Most Recent Grantors (45 minutes per quarter) — Most nonprofits communicate with foundation grantors only when required. Between those moments, silence.

AI Insights

Generate a Beneficiary Listening Plan for Your Most Underserved Subgroup — Most nonprofits collect beneficiary data in the aggregate: total clients served, percentage from the priority population, demographic breakdowns.
Draft a Replication Decision Memo: Should We Help Another Organization Adopt Our Model? — Most nonprofits with a model worth replicating get the same email at some point, from a larger organization in another city.
Generate Your Organization's First External-Facing Methodology Document — If your nonprofit has a model worth replicating, it almost certainly has no document that lets another organization understand it without you in the room.

Board Corner

The Replication Pressure Test — A 25-Minute Board Exercise — Boards routinely discuss whether the organization should grow, but rarely what would have to be true for the work to be done by anyone else.

Read Issue #31 in full →

Issue #30 — Reshape. Don't Retrench.
June 1, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

When North Carolina Shuttered the Healthy Opportunities Pilot, the Nonprofits That Ran It Repositioned Instead of Closing — HOP was the first program in the country to use Medicaid dollars to pay for non-medical services. The state shut it down; the nonprofits did not close.
A Minnesota Nonprofit Delivers One Service Through Four Channels — And Reaches 13,000 People With a Staff of Roughly 30 — Prepare + Prosper, a Saint Paul nonprofit founded in 1971, files tax returns. That is the core service.
Southeastern Pennsylvania Employers Just Pooled $5.4 Million to Fund a New Regional Workforce Backbone — On May 5, 2026, four conveners launched the Greater Philadelphia Growth Partnership, because no single employer could run it alone.

Quick Hits

Add an Explicit No Decision to Your Next Board Meeting Agenda (5 minutes to add; 15 of discussion) — Most board agendas list items the board will consider or approve. Almost none include an item the board will explicitly decide not to do.
Send a One-Paragraph Monthly Update to Your Top 10 Volunteers (30 minutes per month) — Most nonprofits manage volunteers the same way they manage donors after the first gift: with silence.
Audit the Accessibility Settings on Your Donation Page (30 minutes to test) — Roughly one in four U.S. adults lives with a disability, and the share of your donor base affected by a poorly built donation page is higher than that.

AI Insights

Build a Service-Delivery Redesign Analysis for One of Your Core Programs — Most nonprofit services were designed by whoever happened to be in the office when the program was created.
Map Who Believes What About Your Organization Right Now — Your Funder Stakeholder Map — Every ED has a mental model of how major funders see the organization. It is almost always rosier and less current than reality.
Run a Pre-Mortem on Your Most Important Initiative of the Next 12 Months — The pre-mortem is one of the most useful tools in operational planning, and one of the least used in nonprofit settings.

Board Corner

The If-We-Started-Today Exercise — A 25-Minute Board Exercise — Every nonprofit's structure is partly intentional and partly inherited. This separates the two.

Read Issue #30 in full →

Issue #29 — Borrowed Infrastructure
May 26, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

A Literacy Nonprofit Is Running a Choice-Based Food Market Inside Public Housing — And the Partnership Is the Lesson — Mighty Writers, a Philadelphia literacy nonprofit founded in 2009, reopened the West Philadelphia Mighty Market on April 23, 2026. The headline is not the renovation.
A Detroit Youth Services Nonprofit Parked Its Mobile Unit in the Middle of Downtown — In Partnership With the Business District — The Detroit Phoenix Center announced on May 19, 2026 that it will run YouthUp Fridays at Cadillac Square.
A Tarrant County United Way Became a Tech Utility for Local Nonprofits — By Borrowing Dell's Hardware and AT&T's Connectivity — The United Way of Tarrant County opened the United Way Institute Powered by Dell Technologies in April 2026.

Quick Hits

Audit Your Email List Segmentation Before Your Next Appeal Send (45 minutes) — Most small nonprofits send the same email to everyone — every donor, every lapsed donor, every event volunteer who handed over an address three years ago.
Document Your Volunteer Hours Before You Submit Another Grant Application (90 minutes to assemble the prior year) — Most small nonprofits know how many volunteers they had and have no idea what those hours were worth.
Run a One-Page Strategic Plan Progress Check Before Summer (45 minutes) — Most nonprofit strategic plans are approved by the board and then quietly stop driving decisions about six months later.

AI Insights

Audit Your Backup System Before You Discover It Does Not Work — Most nonprofits believe they have a backup system. They have a vendor invoice, a cloud subscription, an external drive in a drawer — something.
Write a Standard Operating Procedure for Your Most Vulnerable Single-Person Workflow — Every small nonprofit has at least one workflow that lives entirely in the head of one person.
Audit Your Whistleblower and Anonymous Reporting Pathway Before You Need It — Most nonprofits have a whistleblower policy in their board minutes from sometime in the past five years, and no working pathway.

Board Corner

The Strategic Partner Inventory — A 20-Minute Exercise — Most boards spend their strategy time talking about programs they could add, rather than infrastructure they could borrow.

Read Issue #29 in full →

Issue #28 — Three Ways to Do More Without Hiring
May 18, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

A Phoenix Nonprofit Just Proved Its Peer Reading Model Works — With Numbers Most Education Programs Cannot Match — Read Better Be Better published its 2025 Implementation and Impact Evaluation in late April. The headline finding is the kind of data education funders rarely see.
A Kenosha Food Bank and a Community Action Agency Took the Third Path — Neither Merger Nor Solo Operation — A structural option between staying independent and combining outright, and how the two organizations built it.
Mobile Pathways Negotiated Direct Access to USCIS Data — And the Result Was a 167% Earnings Boost for the Asylum Seekers They Serve — A small nonprofit using mobile technology and AI to help immigrants through the court process announced an enhanced version of its Pathfinder tool.

Quick Hits

Renegotiate Your D&O Insurance Renewal Before You Sign It Again (under 2 hours) — Most nonprofits renew Directors and Officers liability insurance the way they renew building insurance: receive a quote, glance at the premium change, sign.
Re-Acknowledge Your Employee Handbook Before Summer Hires Start (15 minutes per staff member) — Most nonprofits ask new hires to sign acknowledgment of the employee handbook on day one and then never ask again.
Refresh Your Tribute Gift Acknowledgment Workflow Before Memorial Day (under 2 hours) — Tribute gifts represent roughly 10% of household donations for most community-serving nonprofits, and they are usually acknowledged with the wrong template.

AI Insights

Map Your Earned Revenue Opportunities Before Your Next Budget Cycle — Most small nonprofits never ask the structured question: where in our operations could we be selling something we already produce?
Draft a Board Recruitment Search Profile Before Your Nominating Committee Meets — Most nonprofit boards recruit by personal network and end up with members who look like the people already on the board.
Write a Volunteer Recruitment Pitch Worth Forwarding — Volunteer recruitment pitches fail because they read like a cause appeal — emotional, vague, and low on specifics about what the volunteer will actually do.

Board Corner

The Mission Drift Check — A 20-Minute Diagnostic for Mid-Year Course Correction — Most boards know mission drift when they see it in someone else's organization. They struggle to see it in their own.

Read Issue #28 in full →

Issue #27 — Stretch Past the Lane
May 11, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

A Milwaukee Nonprofit Just Launched Its First Capital Campaign in 113 Years — And the Lesson Is Not About the Money — Wisconsin Community Services opened in 1912 as the Society of the Friendless, and has repeatedly redefined what it does.
A Small Illinois Library Is Running Bilingual Mental Health Counseling and a Grocery Pickup Program — From the Same Building — Highwood Public Library, in a small North Shore community outside Chicago, has spent nearly four years quietly redefining what a library does.
Ford and MacArthur Are Paying Nonprofits to Combine — And the Signal Matters Even If You Are Not Eligible — On March 12, 2026, the Sorenson Impact Institute launched a $1 million pooled grant fund anchored by the Ford and MacArthur foundations.

Quick Hits

Audit Your Vendor W-9s and 1099 Records Before June — Most nonprofits learn they are missing W-9s for vendors they paid last year only when the bookkeeper starts assembling 1099s.
Deploy a Password Manager Across Your Organization — Multi-factor authentication catches credential theft from outside. It does nothing about the credential-management problem most nonprofits have inside the building.
Get Your Treasurer to Sign a Quarterly Internal-Controls Certification — Most small nonprofits have internal-controls policies on paper that nobody confirms are being followed in practice.

AI Insights

Run a Vendor Risk Assessment on Your Top Ten Operational Vendors — Most nonprofits know which donors might leave. Far fewer know which vendors could break their operations.
Build a Training Needs Assessment for Your Staff Before Your Next Budget Cycle — Most nonprofit training budgets get spent on whatever the ED happened to hear about that month, rather than on the gaps the organization actually has.
Audit the Strategic Questions Your Board Should Be Asking — But Is Not — Most nonprofit boards spend their time reviewing reports about the past quarter and approving the budget for the next one.

Board Corner

CEO Emergency Succession Cards — What Actually Happens in the First Seven Days If Your ED Disappears Tomorrow (15 minutes) — Most boards have never written down who does what in the week after an unplanned executive departure.

Read Issue #27 in full →

Issue #26 — Designs That Compound
May 4, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

A Community Foundation Raised $16.7 Million in 24 Hours — And the Match Rule Is What You Should Copy — Most giving days reward the nonprofits that already have the biggest donor lists. The 2026 Giving Challenge in Sarasota was designed to do the opposite.
AFSP and JED Announced a Merger of Equals — And the Structure Is the Lesson — On April 21, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and The Jed Foundation announced their intent to combine into the nation's largest suicide-prevention nonprofit.
A Holocaust Survivor's Bequest Is Funding $28 Million in Veteran Housing — And Three Partners Are Making It Work — On April 2, ground broke on a 30-unit affordable housing development at 1351 North E Street in San Bernardino.

Quick Hits

Audit Where You Are Legally Allowed to Solicit Donations Before Your Next Email Send — A single online donation accepted from the wrong state can trigger registration requirements most small nonprofits have not met.
Move Your Google Ad Grant from $300 a Month to $8,000 — In One Afternoon — Every eligible 501(c)(3) gets $10,000 per month in free Google Search ads. The average account uses about $300 of it. The other $9,700 goes unused every month.
Pull Your Volunteer Waivers — They Are Probably Already Out of Date — Volunteer waivers get signed once and filed, and most are out of date long before anyone reads them again.

AI Insights

Build a One-Page Risk Register for Your Nonprofit's Top 10 Threats — Most nonprofits have no risk register because the consultants who sell them charge $15,000 and produce 40 pages nobody reads. You do not need that.
Draft a Story-First Annual Report Before You Collect a Single Stat — Most nonprofit annual reports start with the development team collecting stats and end with an ED letter explaining what the numbers really mean.
Run a Should-We-Still-Be-Doing-This Audit on Your Five Largest Programs — Most nonprofit programs survive past their useful life because nobody asks. The grant renews, the staff are good people, the spreadsheet shows participation.

Board Corner

The Sixty-Second Budget Test: How Many of Your Board Members Can Actually Explain the Money — Most nonprofit boards have one or two members who can explain the budget. Everyone else nods.

Read Issue #26 in full →

Issue #25 — A $30M Food Bank, an $825K Clinic Partnership, and a Produce Locker
April 27, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

A Florida Food Bank Is Doubling Its Capacity — And the Math Is What You Should Borrow — Harry Chapin Food Bank is going from 45 million to 80 million pounds a year, on the discipline of a named campaign with a specific facility target.
A Three-Partner Funding Stack Is Keeping Mental Health Care Alive at Eleven Free Clinics — On April 14, Direct Relief, Teva Pharmaceuticals, and the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics announced a second round of funding — $75,000 each to eleven clinics.
A Hospital System and a Hunger Alliance Are Prescribing $50 of Produce a Month — Through a Locker and a PIN — Eat more vegetables is useless advice if you cannot afford them. A hospital system and a food nonprofit in Arkansas solved that with $50, a pantry, and a locker.

Quick Hits

Update Your I-9 Forms Before the Fines Start Hitting $2,861 Each — On March 16, 2026, ICE reclassified more than ten common I-9 error categories that used to be correctable technical violations.
Run a SaaS Subscription Audit and Cut $1,000–$3,000 From Your Annual Budget — Gartner estimates roughly 30% of SaaS spend is wasted on unused licenses and features. The fix requires a spreadsheet and two hours.
Launch a Five-Donor Thank-You Sprint This Week — The Fundraising Effectiveness Project has tracked overall donor retention in the low 40s for more than a decade. The cheapest fix is the fastest one.

AI Insights

Build a 90-Day Moves Management Plan for Your Top 10 Donors — Most development directors carry the cultivation cycle in their head, which means nothing happens when that person is out.
Run a Cash Flow Stress Test Against Your Three Most Likely Funding Disruptions — Most nonprofit leaders have a vague sense of which grants would hurt most if they disappeared. This converts that into a dollar figure and a month on the calendar.
Draft a Stay Interview Script for Your Three Most Critical Staff — Exit interviews tell you what went wrong after you have lost the person. Stay interviews tell you what is going to go wrong while you can still fix it.

Board Corner

The Strategy vs. Operations Boundary Map (20 minutes) — Most boards drift into operations without noticing. This exercise draws the line explicitly, in writing, before the next disagreement.

Read Issue #25 in full →

Issue #24 — What Happens When 60 Nonprofits Fix Their Boards at the Same Time
April 20, 2026 · 10 tools

What's Most Good

Sixty Jewish Nonprofits Are Fixing Their Boards Together — And Building a Model Anyone Can Steal — What would happen if every board in your community got better at the same time? Leading Edge set out to find out.
Microsoft Just Opened a Free AI Training Program for Nonprofit Leaders — Most nonprofit AI training sells you a dream. Microsoft's program hands you a credential.
The 7% Problem: Why Most Nonprofits Are Not Getting Real Value from AI — And What the Winners Do Differently — Ninety-two percent of nonprofits are using AI. Seven percent are seeing major improvements. That is a system failure.

Quick Hits

Build a 90-Day Revenue Diversification Snapshot — If your largest funder disappeared tomorrow, how many months could you operate? Most EDs cannot answer without opening a spreadsheet.
Run a 15-Minute Cybersecurity Spot Check on Your Donor Platform — Cyber threats remain one of the top technology concerns for nonprofits in 2026, and your donor data is your most sensitive asset.
Create a Board Member Expectations Agreement Before Your Next Meeting — Engaged boards raise 17% more money year-over-year, according to the CCS Philanthropy Pulse Report. Engagement starts with clarity, not inspiration.

AI Insights

Audit Your Grant Compliance Calendar Before a Deadline Sneaks Up — Most compliance tracking lives in someone's head, their email, or a spreadsheet nobody else opens.
Draft a Board Self-Assessment Survey Your Board Will Actually Complete — Most board self-assessments die in someone's inbox because they read like academic research instruments — 40 questions, Likert scales, no clear payoff.
Write a Crisis Communication Holding Statement Before You Need One — The reporter calls. The board chair texts. In that moment you need 200 words that buy you 24 hours.

Board Corner

The Fundraising Comfort Thermometer (15 minutes) — Governance conversations are shifting from supporting fundraising to boards actively shaping and driving it. This finds out where yours actually sits.

Read Issue #24 in full →

[Issues are in reverse chronological order below]

Issue #42 August 26, 2026 - This Hospice Told Families: You Don't Need Permission to Call

Issue #41 August 17, 2026 - $200,000 Left This Nonprofit Through a Phone Call

Issue #40 August 10, 2026 - Who Tells Your Story - And Did They Agree to It?

Issue #39 August 3, 2026 - The Cost Nobody Renegotiates

Issue #38 July 27, 2026 - Before the Sirens

Issue #37 July 20, 2026 - The Third Kind of Money

Issue #36 July 13, 2026 - Widening the Circle

Issue #35 July 6, 2026 - Keeping the People

Issue #34 June 29, 2026 - Owning the Ground

Issue #33 June 22, 2026 - Mission and Margin in One Enterprise