Last December in Berlin, WINGS convened a ‘Symposium on a global movement’, a global gathering of community foundation practitioners, researchers and people from community foundation associations and support organizations. More than 160 people from 33 countries took part in plenaries and workshops which explored many aspects of community foundation development.

Participants confirmed that there is now a sense of a ‘global movement’, with opportunities to share experience between countries and regions, and expectations that we will now see deeper rooting of initiatives and surer progress towards asset-building, effective grantmaking, and increasing engagement with a social justice agenda. For information and updates on follow-up work, see http://www.cfsymposium.org. A full report will be published by WINGS and also available on this website.

WINGS-CF
Before the Symposium, over 40 participants from national and regional organizations that promote and develop community foundations took part in a WINGS-CF meeting. They discussed respective national developments and talked about WINGS-CF’s activities and value. In small group discussions, they looked at aspects of community foundation support and development such as standards and codes of ethics, visibility and marketing, sustainability of support organizations, and the core principles of community foundations. A report on the meeting is available on the WINGS website at http://www.wingsweb.org.

Peer learning
During 2005 WINGS will be convening two events for the network. The first, in London in May, will look at developing and implementing codes and standards for grantmakers. The second, likely to be held in late October, in Ottawa, Canada, will tackle public policy development and government relations. Information about both of these is on the WINGS website.

For more information on WINGS, contact Gaynor Humphreys, Director, at wings@efc.be

WINGS (Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support)
c/o European Foundation Centre
51 rue de la Concorde
Brussels B-1050 Belgium
Tel + 32 2 512 8938
Fax + 32 2 512 3265
Email wings@efc.be
Website http://www.wingsweb.org