As the South Grows

On Fertile Soil

GETTING STARTED

Are you ready to engage in high-impact philanthropy in the South? Here is a quick guide that applies the Do’s and Don’ts and suggests resources from the region.

We understand that the recommendations from Southern leaders are ambitious, so we’ve included some first steps and a list of people and organizations to turn to for help. They are a good jumping off point, and they can point to other Southerners who will be able to help, too.

 

1. UNDERSTAND CONTEXT, BUILD AUTHENTIC TRANSFORMATIONAL RELATIONSHIPS.

How to Start Who Can Help
  • Be physically present as often as possible, and leave assumptions behind so that you can be emotionally and mentally present, too.
  • Ask open-ended, curious questions instead of pointed or leading ones.
  • Leave space and time for storytelling and relationship-building by imagining yourself a curious, welcomed guest and not an anxious traveler on a tight schedule.
  • Trust the experience of local leaders from affected communities and the information they convey, even when it is uncomfortable.
  • Nonprofit staff
  • Faith networks
  • Local artists and historians
  • Community foundation staff

 

2. APPRECIATE COLLECTIVE POWER. EXPLORE ADVOCACY FUNDING AS A COMPLEMENTARY STRATEGY TO FUNDING DIRECT SERVICE.

How to Start Who Can Help
  • Spend time to understand the ways community organizing is different in Southern communities.
  • Find out where are the existing organizing spaces.
  • Ask Southern community leaders how you, your funding, your trustees and staff can be most supportive, understanding that because of resistance to outside interference, your role will often be as a background player.
  • Don’t make assumptions about what is or isn’t possible – Southern community leaders are adept at nurturing unlikely alliances.
  • Project South
  • Highlander Center
  • Southern Movement Assembly
  • Local labor networks

 

 

3. FOCUS ON SHARED GOALS AND VALUE DIFFERENT APPROACHES. SET “BIG TABLE” INCLUSIVE ENOUGH FOR DIVERSE LOCAL AND NATIONAL PARTNERS.

How to Start Who Can Help
  • Begin with the big picture: What are the community’s priorities, their vision? Where do these goals overlap with the funder’s? A difference in preferred strategy should be secondary to identifying the places where funders and grantees can agree on a vision for the future.
  • Don’t expect grantees to articulate their values or goals in the language you might use yourself. Spend time processing community-based strategies and goals to understand their origins and their context.
  • Use your foundation’s political and trust capital to benefit grantees. Lean on reluctant partners to practice patience, to come to the table with an open ear and to bring the weight of their own institutional resources to bear.
  • Be bold. Foundations can be nimbler and more experimental than government or business partners when they are bold in their vision and their approach to their work and when they think about long-term action.
  • Southeastern Council on Foundations
  • State funder networks like Alabama Giving
  • Southern Partners Fund
  • Foundation for the Mid South
  • Foundation for Louisiana
  • Black Belt Community Foundation
  • Grantmakers for Southern Progress
  • Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation

 

 

4. MAKE LONG-TERM, FLEXIBLE COMMITMENTS OF CAPITAL, TIME AND CAPACITY.

 

WHAT’S NEXT?

In 2016, hundreds of nonprofit leaders and community advocates gathered at the Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth & Reconciliation, jamming that room outside Ainka’s office in sight of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The 51st Anniversary Jubilee had just concluded and the national philanthropic and civic leaders it attracted had begun their journey back home. Those Southern nonprofit leaders stayed in Selma, though, because they had work to do.

Across the Deep South – where building democratic accountability and collective power for disenfranchised communities was once a globally recognized specialty – there are exciting opportunities for philanthropic investment. If Southern and national funders as well as individual donors come together and identify specific places and causes that align with their values, Southern leaders in the Deep South can and will change their communities for the better.

Building collective power in Southern communities is the seed for a fruitful harvest of equitable change in the South. But, without philanthropic support to build assets and institutions for marginalized communities, power quickly can be eroded by those opposed to shared prosperity.

How can foundations and donors support the work of building community assets and institutions that can protect those assets, especially in parts of the South undergoing dramatic economic transition? Find out in the next report in the “As the South Grows” series when we explore asset-building work underway in the Lowcountry of South Carolina and the Coalfield of Eastern Kentucky.


Photo by DXR. Under under Creative Commons license.

As the South Grows

Learn More

INTRODUCTORY LETTER

Learn More

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Learn More

INTRODUCTION

Learn More

DEEP SOUTH VOICES

Learn More

THE BOTTOM LINE

Learn More

Acknowledgements & Interviewees

Advisory Committee and Black Belt + Delta Interview and Focus Group Participants

READ MORE

Appendix A

Methodology

READ MORE

ON FERTILE SOIL

Back to main page

LEARN MORE