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ABAG Member News
We are delighted to welcome the Cammack Family Charitable Gift Fund and the Mid-Shore Community Foundation as our newest ABAG members. National Philanthropy Day in Maryland on October 26th will honor the Baltimore Community Foundation as the Association of Fundraising Professionals-Maryland 2009 Outstanding Philanthropic Foundation of the Year Award. Congratulations, BCF! Alycia Steinberg, Program Officer at the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, will not be returning to the Foundation after her maternity leave. We wish her and her family all the best. Congratulations to Patrick Corvington, Senior Associate for Leadership Development at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, on the arrival of his baby girl, Chloe. Best wishes to Patrick and his family!
ABAG’s Best Reads
As summer winds down, we hope you will find some time to relax between the hustle and bustle of fall. We have compiled a list of book recommendations from ABAG staff and your fellow ABAG members. These are some great titles to add to anyone’s “To Read” list! Tom Kelly, Associate Director for Evaluation at the Annie E. Casey Foundation and new ABAG Board Member, recommends Getting to Maybe: How the World is Changed. Tom says, “...it is a very easy read and interesting framework that explains complexity and systems thinking without jargon that grew out of Dupont Canada Innovation Team Work.” He also recently purchased Clay Shirkey’s new book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations. Lynn Rauch, Kentfields Foundation and President, ABAG Board of Directors, recommends Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. “By far the best book I’ve read in a long time … I loved its layers of characters, plots, and locations, and especially learning more about a part of the world with which I'm unfamiliar (Yemen and Ethiopia principally). While daunting in size, the book moves quickly and draws you in to a world that you can almost see and smell.” Adam Donaldson, ABAG’s Member Services Director, recommends Inquiries into the Nature of Slow Money: Investing as if Food, Farms, and Fertility Mattered by Woody Tasch and Foundations and Public Policy: Leveraging Philanthropic Dollars, Knowledge and Networks for Greater Impact by James Ferris. Ted Rouse, Jim and Patty Rouse Charitable Foundation, recommends White Pine by Mary Oliver “...because I have always loved the sound of the wind in the white pines surrounding our summer cabin on a lake in Ontario.” Sheldon Caplis, Regional Director Community Relations at Citi, recommends South of Broad by Pat Conroy. Buffy Beaudoin-Schwartz, ABAG’s Communications Director, recommends Fade to Blue by Sean Beaudoin. Acclaimed author Sean Beaudoin's wildly innovative novel combines uproarious humor with enough plot twists to fill a tube sock. Part thriller, part darkly comic philosophical discussion, and accompanied by a comic book interstitial, Fade to Blue is a whip-smart romp that keeps readers guessing until the last paragraph.” (We should add that Sean is Buffy’s brother, so not a completely impartial recommendation)! Rebecca Southers, Grants Coordinator, Ausherman Family Foundation, recommends Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. “...my all time favorite book. The imagery is beautiful—at times the reader wonders if it’s a novel or a poem! Hurston uses figurative language so well. If you can let yourself be immersed in the dialect it’s a quick and easy read full of timeless themes and a heroine who is truly inspiring.”
ABAG Members’ Memo—September 2009