Alliance Online - January 2007

Marissa Camacho-Reyes Interview
A new era for WINGS

Following its policy of rotating the Secretariat between different regions of the world, for the next four years WINGS (Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support) will be based in Manila. (For its first three years it was based in the US, with the Council on Foundations, and for the last four it has been in Europe, with the European Foundation Centre in Brussels.) Alliance talked to the new director – Marissa Camacho-Reyes, who took up her post on 1 January – about her priorities in the new job, the challenges facing WINGS, and the virtues and drawbacks of rotating the location of the WINGS Secretariat.

Alliance What are your priorities as you take up your new position as director of WINGS?

MC-R The success of WINGS as a network will depend on our making sure our participants/members find value in being part of WINGS, so my personal priority is to get to know the members of WINGS and begin to understand their needs so that we can respond to them. I will take every opportunity that presents itself to have face-to-face meetings, but I will also be using virtual methods of communication such as email and teleconferences.

And the priorities for the organization more generally?

We will be continuing with the basic activities and direction of WINGS – increasing knowledge about the sector through the different research projects we’re doing; supporting learning opportunities for our members for professional development and helping them to be more effective, and strengthening collaboration among the participants.

One priority will be to move forward our corporate initiative – I think we’ll be putting quite a bit of effort into this.

Given the prominence of corporate philanthropy in the Philippines, do you think this side of things is likely to gain greater prominence in WINGS?

Well, our experience in the Philippines – and my own personal experience – certainly makes me more comfortable working on the development of the corporate initiative in WINGS. However, I understand that there is also a lot of interest among other WINGS participants in developing it. I sat in on one session on this in Bangkok and I could see there was a lot of enthusiasm there.

Do you think the corporate sector is more of a focus in developing countries, and in countries in Central and Eastern Europe and Russia, for example, where there aren’t many grantmaking foundations with endowments? By contrast, say in America and Western Europe, there are many endowed foundations and it seems the corporate sector may have less importance. What do you think?

I’m not sure. Australia, for example, has a strong corporate foundation sector. But you are right in the sense that in developing countries, the corporate sector does offer significant resources that can be channelled to development programmes. There is also an appreciation, as part of corporate social responsibility, that the contribution companies make to development of the community in general will at the end of the day improve the markets that support them. Both of those things help to put a greater emphasis on corporate philanthropy in such countries.

What do you see as the main challenges you face in your new job at WINGS?

WINGS has a very diverse membership. There are organizations that are very well established with a lot of experience and there are some that are very new. Considering that they are at different levels of development as institutions, the challenge is how to be relevant to them and to respond to the needs of most if not all of them. The other challenge is how best to use the wealth of knowledge and experience of our more established participants to help the newer and less experienced organizations and at the same time contribute to the continued growth and development of the more established members.

Even experienced organizations have their own needs and we have to be able to respond to them. This goes back to my first point that what I need to do first is understand the needs of the different participants. The question is, how can we design a programme that will be relevant to all of them, so they will feel that there is value added in being an active participant in WINGS?

Do you think it’s significant for the development of philanthropy in the Asia Pacific region to have WINGS based in Manila?

I certainly see it as an opportunity for the region to further develop and expand philanthropy, but we have to keep in mind that we’re a global network and have to remain relevant to the other regions.

What is the significance of WINGS as a global network now being based for the first time in a developing country?

The decision to move here can be seen as a recognition of the opportunities there are for developing philanthropy in developing countries and that helping to build the institutional infrastructure for philanthropy in such places is an important aspect of the work of WINGS. But I must repeat that it’s very important for the WINGS Secretariat to remember that we must have something to offer the rest of the world.

Do you see the rotation of the WINGS Secretariat to different countries every four years as an important aspect of how WINGS operates?

It’s perhaps too early for me to have any real comment on that. One clear benefit of having the WINGS Secretariat move around is that it gets immersed in different regions and this adds to our capacity to respond to the different challenges we face.

Is there a problem of institutional learning here? Gaynor Humphreys, your predecessor, was based in Brussels and would have gained experience of Western Europe, and for the next four years WINGS will have experience of the Asia Pacific. But when the Secretariat moves on, and you have a complete new set of staff, is there a danger that that experience will get lost instead of being accumulated?

This is something I had informal discussions about in Bangkok. There is some danger. I think the WINGS Coordinating Committee and the Secretariat have to think about how we can ensure that the capacities and insights that are developed in each different place will not be lost in the transition to a new home. This is one of our challenges – moving offices and accumulating and keeping the experiences as we move.

I think it will help us very much that one staff member from the Brussels office will be joining the Secretariat here in Manila – Gina Estipona. She has accepted the position of programme officer, and we are very happy that she will be staying on while WINGS is in the Philippines.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

The success of WINGS really depends on how effective we are in inspiring our network participants to become actively involved. We have to work on how to get them as actively involved as possible.

Will that mean members communicating with each other direct rather than always coming through the Secretariat?

Yes, I think there are instances when it’s better for members to be communicating directly. It can be faster and more efficient. At the same time, I hope that by encouraging this the Secretariat doesn’t get sidelined. Another challenge for us is to find a way of avoiding this.

As you can see, there are many challenges and I’ve talked mostly about them here, but there are also many opportunities. What we need to do is maximize those opportunities.

Marissa Camacho-Reyes is Director of WINGS. She can be contacted at camacho.marissa@gmail.com

See www.wingsweb.org

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