Southeast Roundtable (September 2026)

The Southeast chapter held its monthly first-Wednesday roundtable in Atlanta on September 2, 2026, chaired as always by Dana Whitfield, president and CEO of the Southeastern Textile Manufacturers Council.

Whitfield opened with an update on the shared-services pilot she built in 2023, now at 11 member organizations after the Rocky Mountain Outfitters and Guides Council joined remotely in 2025. Attendees compared notes on which shared roles — finance, events, or the AMS license — had been easiest to bring a new organization into.

The roundtable's timing lined up with registration opening for NANA's Leadership Summit — the first held in December, in 2027 — and Whitfield walked attendees through the early-bird deadline and group rate before the room moved into its usual budget-benchmarking exercise.

Beatriz Solano-Whitaker, membership director at the Institute of Coastal Resilience Planners and a two-time Membership Growth Summit speaker, asked the room how the pilot handled disagreements over a shared coordinator's calendar during peak conference season — a question Whitfield said the pilot's five founding organizations still revisit every budget cycle. Her answer, in short: whoever books first keeps the slot, and the pilot reviews the rule annually rather than case by case.

The roundtable ran 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. with breakfast included, free for chapter members, in downtown Atlanta. Members joining from Charlotte, where the chapter also maintains a presence, were offered a dial-in line for the shared-services update.

The roundtable is open to Southeast chapter member organizations, with particular value for smaller associations weighing whether to join the shared-services pilot, and for anyone deciding whether to register early for the December Summit.