Twenty-two participants from 11 countries gathered in Cape Town, South Africa, last November to discuss the data-related challenges of their work and use the Global Philanthropy Data Charter as a practical tool to address them.

Bringing together a wealth of knowledge to foster peer learning and collaboration is key to improving philanthropy data. Catherine Mwendwa, from the East Africa Association of Grantmakers in Kenya, said that her organization sees the charter ‘as an opportunity to learn from the experiences of other regions’. Haneen Khatib, from the Arab Foundations Forum, emphasized the ‘need for us as networks and organizations to work on a global scale to improve philanthropic data collection’.

The meeting provided an important opportunity to apply the charter to members’ projects and initiatives, validating it as a framework for data collection. Participants formed geographic and issue-based working groups on capacity building, knowledge sharing and visualization tools, among other topics. Participants will also be using the charter in upcoming research projects and collaborations. Progress on each working group will be shared at a WINGS meeting in May, and final results will be presented at WINGSForum 2017.

For more information visit
http://philanthropydata.wingsweb.org