Earlier this year the EFC, Council on Foundations (CoF), DAFNE and WINGS proposed actions to member organizations in order to encourage FATF to formally engage in an improved and structured dialogue with the NPO sector. We asked Hanna Surmatz, the EFC senior legal affairs officer, to update the network on recent developments.
This month marks the end of Caroline Hartnell’s tenure at Alliance magazine, and it brings us great pleasure to highlight her outstanding contributions to WINGS and to the field of philanthropy with a few words from our members and partners.
Chris Delatorre (WINGS) reports on the International Conference on Social Media for Good, linking the Post-2015 Agenda and the concept of diffuse collaboration to a new framework for distributed social networking. “If diffuse reciprocity represents the exchange of items of nonequivalent value, then distributed social technology is the best substrate for realizing a system in which every contribution, large and small, is recognized within a greater ecosystem of social reality and practice, and met with gratitude.”
Community philanthropy is a field in expansion throughout the world – the number of community philanthropy organizations has more than doubled between 2000 and 2014. We asked Natalie Ross (COF) and Nick Deychakiwsky (Mott) to share on a few key initiatives that show this behind-the-scenes work.
Cecilia Calvo (Center for Disaster Philanthropy) shares a recent webinar with COF on Nepal relief efforts, and previews an upcoming webinar that will explore how to better use technology to respond to disasters.
Timothy Ogden (Sona Partners) comments on the state of impact investing in his recap of Council on Foundations’ annual conference. “It is the organizations that are still managing their corpus in-house, and therefore have a real chance of looking at their grantmaking, impact investing and fund management holistically, who are going to do the more interesting things and will push the field forward.”
CF Insights was created in 2006 as a partnership between FSG and the Council on Foundations. Its initial vision was to help community foundations make more informed, effective decisions about their operation models. Today, the CF Insights network includes more than 150 US community foundations.
The Council on Foundations 2015 Annual Meeting, ‘Leading Together: Hope and Opportunity in a Destabilized World’, is one of an exciting lineup of events hosted by WINGS members this year. Vikki Spruill: “The entire philanthropic community must lead together to bring hope and opportunity to the challenges of our day.”
If the philanthropic sector is to adapt and thrive, it must invest in developing the sector’s people and talent. The Rockefeller Foundation, in partnership with the Council on Foundations, convened twenty foundation leaders from sixteen countries for a three-day symposium on “Talent Management for Innovative and Impactful Philanthropy in the 21st Century”. That conversation is reflected and broadened within the September 2014 edition of Alliance magazine. Chris Grygo reports.
“Philanthropy can be the broker that brings disconnected parties and disparate entities together to create new bonds. Without the pressure of elections or markets, and by drawing on the insights and capacities of community foundations and global foundations, philanthropy has the potential to break down silos and connect local insights to global resources.” Rob Garris, Rockefeller Foundation
One of the best-attended sessions at the Council on Foundations conference this week was on foundation involvement in the global development agenda for the period 2015-30. The standing room only crowd was urged by panellists from the Hilton and Rockefeller Foundations, the Foundation Center and the World Bank to get involved both in the framing of the goals and in their execution over the coming decade and a half. Article by Peter Laugharn.
First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden recently joined Council on Foundations President and CEO Vikki Spruill, and others from across the country to announce the Philanthropy-Joining Forces Impact Pledge. Spruill and the First Lady also unveiled the new Veterans Philanthropy Exchange, an unprecedented clearinghouse for philanthropic funders to share best practices.
Christen Dobson, program director for International Human Rights Funders Group, asks grantmaker associations if they are acting in line with their missions. “Many associations aim to support progressive social change, yet how have we contributed to addressing the most acute problems plaguing our societies? How have we contributed to creating a more just and equitable world?”
Vikki Spruill, President and CEO of the Council on Foundations and WINGS board member, gives her take on transparency in the sector, and looks ahead to WINGSForum 2014: The Power of Networks. “The more we collectively operate as a part of a holistic philanthropic network, the closer we will come to working together to create a just and globally prosperous society.”
As technology continues to advance at what seems like lightning speed, the world around us becomes smaller and more interconnected, affecting everything from business to politics to entertainment, all the way to philanthropy. Some feel that philanthropy has some catching up to do in this new global, data-driven age. The Council on Foundations addressed this at its 2013 Annual Conference, Vision and Action.
(Originally published in September 2012.) On 18 September 2012 in Cairo, WINGS brought together 29 delegates from WINGS philanthropy networks in Africa and the Arab region to kick off a global consultation process to review and update the Principles of Accountability for International Philanthropy, developed by the Council on Foundations (COF) and the European Foundation Centre (EFC) and published in 2007.
Philanthropy in Focus 