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Over the holidays, the latest issue of Philanthropy Southeast's Inspiration magazine was mailed to each of our member organizations, as well as Hull Fellows alumni. If you haven't had the chance to read the print copy, you can access a PDF copy now at our Inspiration archive page.

Highlights of our Winter 2022 issue include:

• The story of the cancellation of the 2022 Annual Meeting and how it provided an example of Philanthropy Southeast living its values while offering important lessons, perspective and inspiration for the future.
• An in-depth look at the Healthcare Georgia Foundation's Two Georgias Initiative, winner of the 2022 Truist Promise Award. The initiative made a sustained commitment to rural health equity while working with partners throughout the state.
• Highlights of Leading With Courage: Reshaping Southern Philanthropy for a New Era, a new report from Philanthropy Southeast that explores the people and ideas transforming the giving landscape and communities throughout the region.
• A spotlight on the exhibitors for the 2022 Annual Meeting. Thank you to all our exhibitors for their support!

As usual, Inspiration also includes a letter from President & CEO Janine Lee, a review of the latest hirings and promotions in the region, and a list of the newest Philanthropy Southeast members.

You can access this issue, and previous issues, now on our Inspiration archive.

Each year, Philanthropy Southeast partners with the Council on Foundations (COF) to produce salary benchmarking reports for foundation staff and CEOs in the Southeast. These reports include the average, median, minimum and maximum salaries for a range of 36 staff positions at all levels in foundations based in the 11 Southeast states and U.S. Caribbean territories. Salary tables are organized by both grantmaker type and asset size to provide quick access to benchmarking data for foundations of all shapes and sizes.

Salary information for 2022 is drawn from data on more than 10,000 full-time paid staff at over 1,000 grantmaking organizations. The South region accounted for approximately 27 percent of all respondents.

Thank you to all the Philanthropy Southeast member organizations that responded to the 2022 Grantmaker Salary and Benefits Survey earlier this year, providing the valuable benchmarking data that informs these reports.

The 2022 salary tables for Southeast foundations are available exclusively to Philanthropy Southeast members under the For Members section of our web site – you can click this link to access them directly (login required). 

Get ready for Philanthropy Southeast’s 53^rd Annual Meeting with these titles by our keynote and plenary speakers, now available through our online Lending Library. Philanthropy Southeast members have exclusive access to our virtual collection offering e-books and audiobooks on best practices in philanthropy, advancing equity, and social sector leadership. Visit our website to get started today!

Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
by Matthew Desmond

In Evicted, Princeton sociologist and MacArthur “Genius” Matthew Desmond follows eight families in Milwaukee as they each struggle to keep a roof over their heads. Hailed as “wrenching and revelatory” (The Nation), “vivid and unsettling” (New York Review of Books), Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible.

The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story
by Nikole Hannah-Jones

In late August 1619, a ship arrived in the British colony of Virginia bearing a cargo of twenty to thirty enslaved people from Africa. Their arrival led to the barbaric and unprecedented system of American chattel slavery that would last for the next 250 years. This is sometimes referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the source of so much that still defines the United States. The New York Times Magazine’s award-winning “1619 Project” issue reframed our understanding of American history by placing slavery and its continuing legacy at the center of our national narrative. This new book substantially expands on that work, weaving together eighteen essays that explore the legacy of slavery in present-day America with thirty-six poems and works of fiction that illuminate key moments of oppression, struggle, and resistance. The essays show how the inheritance of 1619 reaches into every part of contemporary American society, from politics, music, diet, traffic, and citizenship to capitalism, religion, and our democracy itself.

One of our most popular member benefits – regional salary data for foundation staff and CEOs – has just been updated on SECF.org!

Each year, SECF partners with the Council on Foundations (COF) to produce salary benchmarking reports for foundation staff and CEOs in the Southeast. These reports include the average, median, minimum and maximum salaries for a range of 36 staff positions at all levels in foundations based in the 11 Southeast states. Salary tables are organized by both grantmaker type and asset size to provide quick access to comparable data for foundations of all shapes and sizes.

You can view this data now under the For Members section of our website – or access the information directly here (SECF.org login required).

Salary information for 2021 is drawn from data on nearly 10,000 full-time paid staff at over 900 organizations across the United States. The South region accounted for 27 percent of all respondents.

Thank you to all SECF member organizations that responded to the 2021 Grantmaker Salary and Benefits Survey earlier this year, providing the valuable benchmarking data that informs these reports.

By Stephen Sherman

We’ve recently expanded our Lending Library to include the titles below and much more. SECF members have exclusive access to our virtual collection offering e-books and audiobooks on best practices in philanthropy, advancing equity, and social sector leadership. Visit our website to get started today! 

Read Up On Our Annual Meeting Speakers

Get ready for the SECF 52^nd Annual Meeting with these titles by our opening and closing keynote speakers, Wes Moore and Heather McGhee. 

The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates by Wes Moore

In December 2000, the Baltimore Sun ran a small piece about Wes Moore, a local student who had just received a Rhodes Scholarship. The same paper also ran a series of articles about four young men who had allegedly killed a police officer in a spectacularly botched armed robbery. The police were still hunting for two of the suspects who had gone on the lam, a pair of brothers. One was named Wes Moore. Wes just couldn’t shake off the unsettling coincidence, or the inkling that the two shared much more than space in the same newspaper. After following the story of the robbery, the manhunt, and the trial to its conclusion, he wrote a letter to the other Wes, now a convicted murderer serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His letter tentatively asked the questions that had been haunting him: Who are you? How did this happen?

The Work: Searching for a Life that Matters by Wes Moore

The Work is the story of how one young man traced a path through the world to find his life’s purpose. Wes Moore graduated from a difficult childhood in the Bronx and Baltimore to an adult life that would find him at some of the most critical moments in our recent history: as a combat officer in Afghanistan; a White House fellow in a time of wars abroad and disasters at home; and a Wall Street banker during the financial crisis. In this insightful book, Moore shares the lessons he learned from people he met along the way – from the brave Afghan translator who taught him to find his fight, to the resilient young students in Katrina-ravaged Mississippi who showed him the true meaning of grit, to his late grandfather, who taught him to find grace in service.

The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together by Heather McGhee

Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy – and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. From the financial crisis to rising student debt to collapsing public infrastructure, she found a common root problem: racism. But not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most vexing public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all. But how did this happen? And is there a way out? McGhee embarks on a deeply personal journey across the country from Maine to Mississippi to California, tallying what we lose when we buy into the zero-sum paradigm – the idea that progress for some of us must come at the expense of others.

SECF members have exclusive access to the Winter 2020 issue of our quarterly Inspiration magazine, now available for viewing and download at SECF.org!

Here’s what you can read about in our latest issue:

• The winners of the inaugural Truist Foundation Promise Award – the Charlottesville Area Community Foundation and the Coastal Community Foundation – that helped their communities in the wake of tragedy while examining themselves. Today, both are providing leadership in addressing inequity while responding to the COVID-19 crisis.
• The story of the Greater High Point Food Alliance, a philanthropy-backed initiative that has built partnerships across multiple sectors – government, nonprofits, faith-based institutions and others – to combat food insecurity.
• A recap of the 51^st Annual Meeting, where SECF members didn’t let a lack of in-person events get in the way of connecting with one another while being educated and inspired by this year’s lineup of speakers and sessions.

This issue also includes insights from the newest members of the SECF Board of Trustees, as well as a year-end message from President & CEO Janine Lee!

You can view this issue and previous issues at the Inspiration page at SECF.org (login required).

If you’re involved with a project you think should be highlighted in a future issue of Inspiration, contact David Miller, director of marketing and communications, at david@secf.org.

All members have access to the new SECF Mobile App, the latest way to stay informed, engage with our events and programs and connect with peers across the region!

The Mobile App is available for iOS and Android devices. You can access the app here:
 

The SECF Mobile App makes the best benefits of membership available anytime, anywhere, right on your mobile device. Download the Mobile App today and you’ll be able to:

• Receive the latest news and updates from SECF via the Mobile App News Feed
• Register for all SECF events and programs
• Send and receive direct, 1-to-1 messages with SECF Members from across the region
• Connect with multiple colleagues at once through group chats
• Use the Member Directory for easy outreach
• Engage in discussions through Member Forums – post new topics and reply to others
• Participate in polls and surveys
• Access members-only resources on public policy and best practices
• Read the latest issues of Inspiration magazine
• Receive notifications so you don’t miss out on any of the above!

The Mobile App will be updated constantly with new content and features, but it also serves as an app for many SECF programs, including the Annual Meeting!

To use the mobile app, just download it from your device’s app store and sign in once using your SECF.org login and password – if you need help logging in, please email Stephen Sherman, director of research and data, at stephen@secf.org.

If you have other questions about the mobile app, or would like to request other features, please contact David Miller, director of marketing and communications, at david@secf.org.

SECF’s Lending Library gives our members the ability to borrow e-books and audiobooks on a variety of topics relevant to Southern philanthropy. Like any library, we’re constantly updating our offerings with new titles that reflect emerging trends and topics in the news. We’ve highlighted some of our most recent additions below!

If you’re not already using it, you can learn more about the Lending Library here to get started or browse our full collection of titles.  

Have a book or author you’d like to borrow that isn’t in our collection? Suggest a title by contacting Stephen Sherman via email at stephen@secf.org or by phone at (404) 524-0911.

SECF’s Lending Library allows SECF members to borrow e-books and audiobooks on a variety of topics relevant to Southern philanthropy. Like any library, we’re constantly updating our offerings with new titles that reflect emerging trends and topics in the news.

We’ve recently added several new titles focused on systemic racism and other topics. We’ve highlighted a few below, and a list of all new titles is at the end of this post.

Visit our Lending Library information page to learn more and to sign up for an account!

How to Be an Antiracist
By Ibram X. Kendi

Antiracism is a transformative concept that reorients and reenergizes the conversation about racism—and, even more fundamentally, points us toward liberating new ways of thinking about ourselves and each other. At it's core, racism is a powerful system that creates false hierarchies of human value; its warped logic extends beyond race, from the way we regard people of different ethnicities or skin colors to the way we treat people of different sexes, gender identities, and body types. Racism intersects with class and culture and geography and even changes the way we see and value ourselves. In How to Be an Antiracist, Kendi takes readers through a widening circle of antiracist ideas—from the most basic concepts to visionary possibilites—that will help readers see all forms of racism clearly, understand their posionous consequences, and work to oppose them in our systems and in ourselves.