The Partnership and Partnership Action Funds
ERIN DALE BYRD: EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Erin Dale Byrd, Executive Director, The Partnership Funds
The Partnership Funds are proud to welcome Erin Dale Byrd as our incoming executive director. She will start work at the Funds in June. Erin brings over 19 years of experience in successful coalition work on campaigns including increasing the minimum wage, public financing of judicial campaigns and same-day voter registration. She is a mother, community activist, political strategist and cultural worker in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was raised in a military family with roots in Tennessee and Texas.
Erin will leverage her expertise in campaign planning, coalition building and community organizing to lead the Partnership Funds’ network. Erin will take the helm of the funder collaborative that has defined the practice of grantmaking to advance independent political power as TPF enters its next phase of work. In this role she will partner with a network of funders to increase the strength and influence of state leaders and their organizations.
As Executive Director of Blueprint NC—a collaborative of 58 progressive organizations working for a fairer more just North Carolina, and a member of the State Voices national network—Erin has been responsible for fundraising, compliance, managing staff and driving the organizations vision for collective impact. While there, Erin has pursued work about which she is passionate: organizational capacity building with an emphasis on culture, civic engagement/organizing, planning, communication and evaluation.
Erin is a founding member and the board chair of the Fertile Ground Food Cooperative in Southeast Raleigh, on the board of State Voices, the treasurer for Advance NC and a former board member of the Southern Partners Fund. She has been awarded the Ella Baker Award from the Youth Organizing Institute, Women to Watch from Women AdvaNCe, SiStars Award from the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Annie Mackie Award from NC Women United, the William C. Friday Fellowship for Human Relations, Local Hero Citizen of the Year in 2015 from Indy Week magazine and recently won the Community Leader of the Year award from the North Carolina A. Philip Randolph Institute.
Erin is most proud of her accomplishment as a mother of two Prince Kings. She has a degree in Sociology from the College of William and Mary.