Supporting the minnow that funds the big, the bad and the ugly

When sifting through pages of notes to write up a conference, it’s often difficult to know where to start. Opening the WINGS meeting in Sydney in March, Barry Gaberman (Ford Foundation), Chair of the WINGS Coordinating Committee,  set out three clear aims for the conference: the workshops were to impart skills, the plenary sessions were to ‘allow us to soar’, and the final afternoon was to be ‘a visioning exercise for WINGS’. In so doing he provided a perfect framework for looking at the three days that followed.

The plenaries certainly provided plenty of inspiration. James Joseph, a former president of the Council on Foundations, clearly struck a chord with many people when he talked of philanthropy as ‘soft power’ (the ability to get people to want the same things) in a world largely dominated by ‘hard power’ (the ability to get others to do what we want). Rory Tolentino (Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium) presented a broad perspective on philanthropy in the region.

A fine lunchtime panel session focused on the role of philanthropy in promoting justice for aboriginal people. Governments are not good at funding dissident voices, so foundations have a particularly crucial role to play here. Darren Godwell, CEO of Australia’s first indigenous community foundation, spoke of the need for private funding to balance the influence of government. Charles Lane (Myer Foundation) spoke of the need for foundations to fund the ‘big, bad, ugly’ issues. Philanthropy is very small he said, a minnow, but it has a distinct role. The Myer Foundation is actively supporting reconciliation, both material and symbolic. One of its programmes is investing in indigenous enterprise, the aim being to bring aboriginals into the real economy rather than the welfare economy.

Learning from each other
 
People were clearly keen to learn from each other in the workshops. People at a workshop on ‘Promoting Philanthropy’ compared notes on use of TV ‘clips’ to promote the idea of philanthropy. In Poland TV channels are obliged to give charities free air time, but in Canada $1 million worth of air time was donated by a TV company, and the creative input was also donated. But people generally agreed that a documentary can achieve far more than short clips.

Pushpa Sundar (Indian Centre for Philanthropy) aired a subject that must have had resonance for all present. It’s relatively easy to run a good campaign to get people to give to sick children or orphans, but much harder to promote the generic concept of philanthropy, the idea of giving per se. Of course, the approach is necessarily very context-specific. As Olga Alexeeva (CAF Russia) pointed out, the last thing Russian donors want is recognition as Russians still tend to see giving as strange rather than admirable.

Looking at WINGS itself

The final afternoon, when Forum participants actually talked about what they wanted from the network, was for me probably the most interesting. There are so many networks: what do they achieve? Do they provide valuable support or are they just another ‘layer’ absorbing both money and time?

People at this session were asked to split up into groups and come up with a list of things they would like from WINGS. What was striking was how similar the lists were. People clearly did want the obvious things that networks offer – more information, peer learning, peer exchanges, documentation of relevant materials, research.

One thing that is clearly very much needed is support for emerging associations. As a  workshop on this subject made clear, new associations are being set up all the time,[1] and many participants in the WINGS network are very young organizations. In fact, what they want from WINGS seems very similar to what longer-established organizations want, but the younger the organization the sharper the challenge of having to be ‘learning and doing’ at the same time. One speaker suggested that a peer exchange with others with very recent experience of forming an association would be valuable.

One crucial issue for any network is what is expected of participants. It is clear that the value of a network must come from its participants as well as from the secretariat. Membership of the seemingly much appreciated US-based Forum of Regional Associations of Grantmakers commits members, among other things, to respond to peer requests for information and to Forum surveys and requests for action, share newsletters and other products with their peers, and send the CEO, board and staff to participate in various Forum meetings and committees. WINGS may not have a formal membership, but input from participants will be no less crucial for that.

1 A grantmakers association was set up in Ecuador less than two weeks after the Forum, and associations are being talked about for Nigeria and East Africa.

EVENT WINGSForum 2002
Date 10-13 March
Venue Sydney, Australia