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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 38 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 2023 is drawn from data on more than 10,000 full-time paid staff at nearly 1,000 grantmaking organizations. The South region accounted for approximately 26 percent of all respondents. We wish to thank all Philanthropy Southeast member organizations that responded to the 2023 Grantmaker Salary and Benefits Survey earlier this year, providing the valuable benchmarking data that informs these reports.

The 2023 salary tables for Southeast foundations are available exclusively to Philanthropy Southeast members under the For Members section of our website – or you can click this link to access them directly (login required). 

What did this year’s survey reveal? Here are some of the key findings:

The latest issue of Inspiration, Philanthropy Southeast’s quarterly magazine, is now available in print and online. Stories covered in the Summer 2023 issue include:

• A look at Drawdown Georgia, a coalition led by five family foundations in the state, and it support for work that addresses climate change and its inequitable impacts.
• Checkin in with the inaugural cohort of the Accelerating Equity Learning Collaborative, whose members are halfway through a journey focused on transforming themselves and their organizations.
• A conversation with philanthropic leaders and experts on the importance of listening and feedback.
• An interview with the Cone Health Foundation's Susan Shumaker, who discusses the foundation's role in supporting Medicaid expansion in North Carolina

This issue also includes an opening message from Janine Lee and a roundup of the latest hires and appointments from members across the region.

This year, we’ve expanded our Inspiration mailing list to better share stories of philanthropy’s work in the region. Each member organization receives at least one print copy of Inspiration, with additional copies sent to other senior leaders, program staff and Hull Fellows alumni.

This issue and previous issues can also be viewed on PhilanthropySoutheast.org.

If you have a story you’d like to see highlighted in Inspiration, contact David Miller, vice president of strategic communications, at david@philanthropysoutheast.org.

Explore these recently-published works, 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.

The Smart Nonprofit: Staying Human-Centered in An Automated World
by Beth Kanter & Allison Fine
The Smart Nonprofit offers a roadmap for the once-in-a-generation opportunity to remake work and accelerate positive social change. It comes from understanding how to use smart tech strategically, ethically, and well. Smart tech does well with rote tasks like filling out expense reports and identifying prospective donors. However, it is also beginning to do very human things like screening applicants for jobs and social services. Beth Kanter and Allison Fine outline the ways that smart nonprofits must stay human-centered and root out embedded bias in order to succeed at the compassionate and creative work that only humans can and should do.

The Toolbox: Strategies for Crafting Social Impact
by Jacob Harold
Former GuideStar CEO and celebrated nonprofit executive Jacob Harold delivers an expert guide to doing good in the 21st century. This book explores nine tools that have driven world-shaking social movements and billion-dollar businesses – tools that can work just as well for a farmer’s market or fire department, or any other organization aimed at achieving social good. The author describes each of the tools – including storytelling, mathematical modeling, and design thinking – in stand-alone chapters, intertwining each with a consistent narrative and full-color visual structure.

This week, we discontinued the Philanthropy Southeast mobile app – we made this decision following a thorough discussion and review of our members’ needs and feedback.

The mobile app was launched in October 2020. At that time, in-person events had already been canceled for several months and it was unclear when it would be safe to come together again. The app’s features were designed to help members remain connected to one another, and to Philanthropy Southeast, during a time of social distancing.

As in-person programming resumed in 2021, we saw that app usage declined significantly, only rising during events like the Annual Meeting. While the mobile app doubled as our Annual Meeting app for two years, this was not its primary purpose, and it did not contain many useful features that are widely available on apps dedicated to live events.

While this version of the mobile app is going away, we are currently working on a new mobile app that will debut later this year and be used for this year’s Annual Meeting! We are also looking at ways to bring the mobile experience to other Philanthropy Southeast programming.

We look forward to sharing more information with you soon regarding our next mobile app – in the meantime, if you have questions or feedback, please contact David Miller, vice president of strategic communications, at david@philanthropysoutheast.org.

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.