Mazlo Blog

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Nonprofit Finance

Why Your Nonprofit's Budget-to-Actual Report Is Already Too Late

If it takes days or weeks to know your budget-to-actuals, your decision-making is already kneecapped. Most nonprofits run a "Retroactive Budget" — a rearview mirror everyone treats like a windshield. Here's the real problem, and how to shift from archaeology to navigation.

Nonprofit Leadership

Dangerous Nonprofit Leaders: Why the Best Ones Can't Be Bought, Bored, or Broken

Everyone talks about resilient organizations. But organizations aren't resilient — people are. The best nonprofit leaders share a pattern: at some point their life broke completely, and they rebuilt around meaning. Here's why that makes them dangerous, and how funders and boards should respond.

Compliance and Risk

Why the Nonprofit Sector Has Amnesia — and How to Build Shared Memory

Nonprofits lose billions to the same preventable fraud every year — not because people are dishonest, but because the sector has no memory. Here's why independence and the funding model block shared learning, and where fiscal sponsors and built-in compliance come in.

Philanthropy

Boomers Built Modern Philanthropy. Now They Need to Help Fix It.

One generation scaled and professionalized modern philanthropy — and built layer upon layer that never got closed. The seats are still held by the people who built the system. This is a call for them to stay in the room and do the harder work: subtraction.

Nonprofit Leadership

How to Diagnose Your Nonprofit's Health in a Single Day: A Leadership Playbook

If you gave me one day on-site with your organization, I wouldn't write a report destined for the bottom of a board folder. I'd talk to the people who make it run — and listen for very specific things. Here's the exact diagnostic, role by role.

Nonprofit Finance

Fund Accounting Explained: Restricted vs. Unrestricted Funds and the Story Every Dollar Tells

In nonprofit accounting, every cent is more than a number — it's a promise. Fund accounting traces each dollar from the donor's hand to the final beneficiary. Here's how restricted and unrestricted funds work, and why this meticulousness is what protects trust and tax-exempt status.

Fundraising

How to Push Through a Shaky Funding Environment: Donors, Grants, and Mindset

Years ago a reliable funder shifted strategy overnight and left a gaping hole in the budget. The lesson: funding wobbles aren't new, and they're survivable. Here's how to get through an unsteady funding environment by focusing on individual donors, smarter grant writing, and mindset.

Nonprofit Finance

Your Revenue Mix Determines Your Vulnerability: Building Nonprofit Funding Resilience

When federal dollars dry up and foundations go quiet, the nonprofits that survive understand one thing: your revenue mix determines your vulnerability. Here's how to read your funding risk, map your revenue horizon, and build resilience before the next shock.

Fiscal Sponsorship

The Honest Fiscal Sponsor Job Description: Staff Burnout and the True Cost to Serve a Project

If fiscal sponsor job postings were honest, they'd ask one person to be a pseudo-accountant, grant manager, HR coordinator, compliance officer, mediator, mentor, and crisis responder — for whatever salary is left after an underpriced admin fee. Here's how to break the burnout cycle.