Alliance Online - March 2007

From the lofty to the workaday

Caroline Hartnell

EVENT WINGSForum 2006
Date 16-18 November
Venue Bangkok
Organizer WINGS – Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support
Title Making a Difference in Philanthropy

Something that was very apparent at this WINGS Forum and at the last one I went to four years ago in Sydney, Australia, is how much the WINGS members have in common and what a lot they can learn from each other. While the plenary sessions introduced loftier themes relating to the role of grantmakers in today’s world, the breakout sessions were real working – and learning – sessions.

The first keynote speaker, Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala, Chairman and CEO of the Ayala Corporation, outlined what he saw as the three main challenges to philanthropic giving. The first was the issue of scale relative to the magnitude of the problem – something that must strike a chord with philanthropists and philanthropoids the world over. In Asia, he said, the level of philanthropic resources is still low. ‘Systemic change will only happen when projects can extend beyond the pilot phase and be implemented at national level.’ He described how corporate donors in the Philippines have come together in capital-intensive ‘Social Consortia’ to implement nationwide projects, such as the installation of the internet in schools. Second, there is a need to expand the donor base for philanthropy; in Asia, he said, philanthropy has not yet ‘gone public’. Third, the relationship between private philanthropy and the government needs to be clarified: philanthropy’s role is not to usurp government nor to let government off the hook.

Anuradha Mittal of the Oakland Institute called on foundations to play a role in progressive policy-making. In the US over the past four decades, she said, right-wing foundations have invested consistently in the development of ideas and in organizations and intellectuals capable of articulating and defending these ideas. They had ‘out-organized, out-fought and out-thought liberal America as a unified force’. If the contradictions and injustices of today’s world are to be tackled, progressive foundations will have to focus their efforts towards shifting the overall political environment. An emphasis on service delivery ‘is a recipe for sliding backwards’, she said.

In addition, she said, US foreign aid to the developing world has harmed local farmers. Microcredit schemes will never be more than a survival strategy if they exist within structures that perpetuate inequality, such as concentrated land ownership. She was critical of the ‘new’ Green Revolution that the Bill and Melinda Gates and Rockefeller Foundations are bringing to Africa, for its failure to acknowledge either the causes of hunger and poverty in Africa or the failure of the first Green Revolution. The likely results of this ‘$150 million altruistic offensive’ would most likely be a negligible impact on total food production, higher profits for seed and fertilizer industries, and worsening exclusion and marginalization in the countryside.

The working sessions

The concurrent sessions were organized in four tracks, with the wide variety of topics reflecting the wide (sometimes conflicting) range of tasks undertaken by grantmaker support organizations. The first track looked at ‘Organizational capacity-building and sustainability’. In a session on Sustainability and growth, panellists and audience discussed the key challenges facing their own organizations in relation to sustainability. One point that came up was the importance of diversified funding. Associations need a healthy mix of membership fees, service fees and grants. The Southern African Grantmakers’ Association (SAGA), which closed in February 2006, had depended heavily on grants from international donors, while membership fees constituted only 2 per cent of its overall income. Another big challenge for membership organizations was striking the right balance between providing services to members and taking a more active leadership role in sector-wide issues. Interestingly, when all those in the session were asked about the biggest sustainability challenge facing their organization, 14 people mentioned issues related to membership while only 10 mentioned finance-related issues.

The ‘Raising awareness/Communicating about the field’ track focused more on the external environment. One session explored the barriers to funding for indigenous people, while others looked at reaching out to the newly wealthy, programmes to teach philanthropy in schools both in the US and in Korea, and promoting corporate social responsibility. Both the League of Corporate Foundations (Philippines) and the Czech Donors Forum are playing an active role in this last area. Moving forward the corporate initiative is likely to be a priority for WINGS in years to come, according to a recent Alliance Online interview with new WINGS Director Marissa Camacho-Reyes.

The track on ‘Developing an enabling environment’ looked at a wide range of topics. A session on external communication strategies and tools addressed the ever-perplexing issue of why the mainstream media tends not to cover the work of the philanthropic sector. Could it possibly be that what foundations and non-profits write about themselves is often fairly boring? Although there was general agreement that it would be useful for journalists to have a better understanding of what philanthropy is and what grantmakers can and have achieved, it was probably more of a priority for foundations to learn how to communicate what they do in more interesting ways.

The final track, on ‘Accountability and effectiveness’, looked, among other things, at the role of grantmaker associations in providing guidance and examples of good practice to their members, for example the Principles of Accountability for international philanthropy developed jointly by the US Council on Foundations and the European Foundation Centre. While Janet Mawiyoo (Kenya Community Development Foundation) thought that many of the guidelines for international grantmakers could be usefully applied to local grantmakers such as her own organization, Noshir Dadrawala observed that in the context of India, the COF/EFC’s principles represent a very advanced document, ‘a PhD thesis for a region that is still an undergraduate’, but one that could serve as a very useful blueprint for the growing Indian philanthropic sector.

This track also included a session on self-assessment tools developed by grantmaker associations in the US, the UK and Canada. It was pointed out that all these tools are for ‘reflecting’: any outcomes or conclusions would need to be backed up with quantitative data. Finally, a session on Developing grantmaker principles/standards turned to the more proactive leadership role that grantmaker associations can play in setting standards and ensuring good practice among their members.

Whither WINGS?

WINGS seems to be a thriving organization. Membership has grown from 85 to 135 in four years, of which two-thirds are member associations. A special plenary session called ‘WINGS: Looking back and looking forward’ gave members time to think about the organization and its future and how they would like it to develop. One delegate expressed a hope that it would transform from hub and spokes to a network where members communicate among themselves. Several people expressed the wish for more frequent meetings than the four-yearly forums. What about regional meetings? While the Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium provides a regional meeting for the Asia Pacific region, a Latin American group had failed to take off.

Questions were raised about the difficulties of maintaining a global infrastructure organization, at a cost of $500,000 a year. Rory Tolentino reminded delegates of the need to continue to question and assert the value of global infrastructure. In a question and answer session following the first Barry Gaberman Lecture, at the end of the Forum, Barry Gaberman was asked about the challenges of sustaining infrastructure organizations. The answer is always very ‘contextual’, he said, and some subsidy will always be needed. In developing countries, this will often come from outside because local philanthropic resources are not ready to take on the task.

Other questions raised included: How does WINGS remain relevant to a broad range of members? What is the role for corporate members? How do we engage the media? Will the four-yearly rotation of the Secretariat continue? Six weeks after the Bangkok Forum, the WINGS Secretariat had moved to the Philippines and Marissa Camacho-Reyes had taken on the role of director. At this stage, the only reasonable answer to these and many other questions seems to be ‘wait and see’.

For more information
www.wingsweb.org or email info@wingsweb.org

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