Personal Finance / Money Matters • Ask Rita in HR • By Tom Battin • April 23, 2011 • Email Print

Where are the best sites to post jobs? Where are the best sites to look for nonprofit jobs? This article reviews and rates 31 sites for several specific criteria, and includes a Table of Contents and the Tom Battin Awards for Best Nonprofit Job Sites. We're grateful to Tom and many Blue Avocado readers who sent in their suggestions for creating this very useful resource,

For this article, we revisited, updated, and expanded the job websites we reviewed in our original piece for Blue Avocado (2009). We've also dropped some of the original ones. One important addition to this update are sites that use "web crawlers" to find jobs posted anywhere on the web, and then aggregate them for you.

First, the Tom Battin Awards for Best Nonprofit Job Sites:

• Best all-around: Idealist
• Best nonprofit site: Opportunity Knocks
• Best commercial site: Simply Hired
• Best international: Devex

But don't ignore the other 27 sites in this directory! Many have special features that will make them the best for you.

About job sites

Job sites serve two audiences . . .

[Click here to open PDF with complete article and directory]

Personal Finance / Money Matters • By Nelson Layag • July 19, 2009 • Email Print

We at Blue Avocado want to encourage people to make use of Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networking sites as more ways to support our communities. At the same time, there's so much hype about these sites that we also want to demystify them and temper expectations. This First Person Nonprofit story does both perfectly, and at the end we draw some conclusions for organizations.

As my 40th birthday approached I decided to try Facebook Causes Birthday Wish application to raise money for a nonprofit. I had recently donated to a Facebook friend's birthday campaign and was impressed that she raised over $2,000. My goal was more modest : $800 (25 friends at $40 each).

Unexpectedly, my first challenge was choosing a . . .

Personal Finance / Money Matters • March 26, 2009 • Email Print

Personal finance guru Steve Zimmerman brings us some welcome good news that may help you keep health insurance if you're laid off.

In our February special layoff issue, Personal Finance focused on alternatives to paying enormously high COBRA payments. COBRA enables laid off workers to retain their health insurance through their former employer for up to 18 months after they leave the organization. A Families USA study shows what you probably already know if you've been laid off. The health advocacy group found that in 41 states, average COBRA payments amount to more than three-quarters of the average unemployment benefit!

Well, finally - some good news.

The recently enacted American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (stimulus . . .

Personal Finance / Money Matters • February 1, 2009 • Email Print

With 46 million Americans lacking health insurance, health care is a society-wide crisis as well as a personal, individual one, and there aren't ready solutions on either level. Steve Zimmerman provides a couple of tips if this is an issue that's come home to you:

When Francine, a 30-year-old program assistant at a Virginia domestic violence task force recently found out she was being laid off, the shock sent her mind spinning. It didn't take her long to wonder, "How will I pay for health insurance?"

Like most laid-off employees, Francine's initial reaction was that the smart thing to do would be to continue her insurance through the task force. But with a little legwork,  she came up with a surprising alternative that saved her more than $100 per month.

Personal Finance / Money Matters • By Steve Zimmerman • October 1, 2008 • Email Print

This is the third in this important series on nonprofit retirement. The first asked, "How Much Will I Need?" and the second discussed How and Where to Save. In this issue we speak directly to people considering retirement in the near future: What if You Don't Have Time to Save?

Retire from work, but not from life. --M.K. Soni

In the past two weeks we have seen financial giants fold and the stock market collapse, taking with them the jobs and retirement savings of hard working individuals. For workers who were close to retirement at Lehman Brothers or AIG are today looking at a very different picture with their nest eggs wiped out. Their situations are similar to many people in the nonprofit sector who are close to retirement without enough savings.
What should you do if retirement is near and you don't have time to save money?

Blue Avocado reader Dorene Werner will be 65 next year and plans on retiring from the nonprofit where she has worked for many years. She has been thinking and worrying about her retirement for a . . .

Personal Finance / Money Matters • By Steve Zimmerman • September 14, 2008 • Email Print

"I need a four-oh-what??"

Many eyes glaze over when it comes time to decide how to save and invest for retirement. If you wish that somehow, magically, a stash of money would
be waiting for you the minute you turn 65 -- a reward for all the hard work you put in at the senior center or in the environmental advocacy group -- well, it was a nice dream. For a not-too-painful dose of reality, Blue Avocado personal finance guru Steve Zimmerman discusses investment options in Part Two of our 3-part series on retirement planning:

The challenge of retirement is how to spend time without spending money. -- Author Unknown

In Part 1 of this Nonprofit Retirement series we discussed calculating the savings you need and the usefulness of professional advisors. In this article

Personal Finance / Money Matters • By Steve Zimmerman • September 1, 2008 • Email Print

This issue we begin a three-part series on nonprofit retirement, written by Blue Avocado columnist Steve
Zimmerman. You've read about how organizations should prepare for people retiring, but not much about how you can prepare. In our trademark fast read style, Part 1 looks at calculating retirement needs and using that information to explore choices. Part 2 is aimed at people who still have time to save: how and where to save. And Part 3 is for people who are running up close to traditional retirement ages: what to do now. Part 1:

When Pat Joyce retired in March from the regional arts council she ran for 23 years, the agency and its board threw her an elegant gala dinner. They provided her with some beautiful thank you gifts . . . but a retirement fund wasn't one of them.

Pat isn't alone. One Blue Avocado reader told us, "When I started in a public service career I knew I would never be wealthy, but I didn't think we would be at risk of living in poverty!" And another said wryly, "I'm in training to be a bag lady."

Low salaries and nonexistent retirement funds make it especially hard for . . .

Personal Finance / Money Matters • June 1, 2008 • Email Print

Q – I just bought a cell phone and got the extended warranty for $99. Then I bought a $150 back-up hard drive to use at home, and decided not to get the extended warranty. But I honestly don’t know whether either decision was right!

Blue Avocado Personal Finance -- I know the feeling: standing at the checkout line and the question catches us off guard – “Would you like to buy an extended warranty with that?”

Even under an extended warranty, your gadget may not get fixed. The most common reasons products break --"normal wear and tear"
and accidents--are