I recently had the pleasure in attending the Brazilian Philanthropy Forum in Sao Paulo organized by the Brazilian WINGS member, the Institute for the Development of Social Investment (IDIS).

As every year, IDIS gathers a diverse group of large companies, civil society organizations and wealthy families to discuss jointly how to achieve sustainable development in Brazil.

The theme of this year’s event was ‘success’, and it fit well with this edition of the Forum, having over 180 participants and interesting discussions around questions such as ‘how to evaluate success in addressing complex social issues’ or ‘is scalability necessary to achieve success?’.

Photo credit: IDIS.

I’ve seen that recently, a key focus has been specificities of family philanthropy, corporate philanthropy and corporate social responsibility when it comes to the vision of success.

After participating in a workshop on the Sustainable Development Goals and listening to the intriguing speech of Michael Mapstone from CAF Global Alliance on the impact and perspectives of new technologies on philanthropy, I facilitated a table discussion on global philanthropy trends.

Photo credit: IDIS.

It was good to speak with a diverse group of Brazilian foundations about philanthropy infrastructure and why it is strategic to invest in a strong ecosystem to grow philanthropy and strengthen its impact.

The Brazilian Philanthropy Forum ended up with a conversation between a physician and an administrator talking about the how the future gets shaped and how we can influence it.

This session concluded a day of debates that helped reflect on how wealthy Brazilian families can have more impact in addressing social issues and what tools and approaches they can use to measure it.

If you would like to catch up on what went on at the conference, visit the #ForumIdis2017 hashtag on Twitter.

Benjamin Bellegy is the CEO of WINGS.