Community foundations and the associations and organisations that support them around the world have long been a focus of WINGS.

Roughly half of the WINGS network is involved in Community Philanthropy. A part of the overall WINGS network, WINGS-CF includes organisations supporting the development and work of community foundations in different areas of the world.

Some of these organisations first came together in 1998 in Miami Beach, USA, the report for which proved to be a useful and popular resource around the globe. The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation (US) provided support to update that report and in April 2000 a new report, "Building the Worldwide Community Foundation Movement", was published.

The WINGS-CF network came together in Ottawa, Canada, in May 2000 and agreed to a set of priorities and activities for the period between 2000 and 2002. The WINGS-CF Secretariat was hosted by Community Foundations of Canada between 2000 and 2002, and in 2003 rotated to the European Foundation Centre (Belgium), another participant in the WINGS and WINGS-CF networks.

In 2006, WINGS participated in a joint initiative with the World Bank, the Ford Foundation and the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation to set up the Global Fund for Community Foundations (GFCF), a three-year pilot project intended as a means of supporting the development of community foundations in transitioning and developing countries. The GFCF has been an independent entity since 2009.

In an interview with the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation in 2012, WINGS Executive Director Helena Monteiro said:

When we look at the big issues—hunger, environment, migrations, sustainable development, food security, peace and security, health and education, and democracy building—we see that these issues are growing in the level of concern expressed by NGOs. These had been seen as regional concerns, but now are seen as interconnected. We're seeing an advanced understanding of social welfare and well-being.

Global Status Report on Community Foundations

The WINGS Community Foundations Global Status Report has tracked the growth and development of community worldwide since 2000. The report is a useful way to access important statistics and to learn about community philanthropy.

In 1999, the International Programs department of the Council on Foundations and WINGS-CF sponsored a project to track for the first time the global development of community foundations. This resulted in the publication, "The Growth of Community Foundations Around the World: An examination of the vitality of the community foundation movement" (2000). The 2003 status report update focused on international community foundation trends and developments since the previous report, and became the first in a series of three annual reports, followed by the 2004 status report and the 2005 status report. The 2008 status report includes brief country status reports, and in 2010 WINGS produced the first web version of the report. Visit the WINGS-CF Global Status Report 2010 website.

WINGS Knowledge Center Resources

In "Building the Worldwide Community Foundation Movement" (Council on Foundations, 2000) Suzanne Fuert defines a community foundation as "an independent philanthropy organisation working in a specific geographic area which, over time, builds up a collection of endowed funds from many donors, provides services to those donors, and makes grants and undertakes community leadership and partnership activities to address a wide variety of needs in the community"—adding that the definition of community foundations is part of an ongoing conversation, and that "not all community foundations recognise themselves in this description". Click to view resources from our Knowledge Center.

• International Connections: resources that support the growth and development of community foundations globally (2005)
• WINGS-CF: Beginning to Record the History (2003)
• Establishing a resource center: A guide for organizations supporting community foundations (2003)
• Serving a Wider Community: CF's Use of Geographic Component Funds and Other Strategies and Structures to Cover Territory (2002)

CF Capacity Building and Benchmarking

Between 2000 and 2010 the WINGS-CF network convened global meetings to bring together grantmaker associations and support organisations serving community foundations. Click to view the reports.

• CF Satellite Meeting, Thailand (2006)
• CF Symposium on global movement, Germany (2004)
• WINGS-CF Peer Meeting, Australia (2002)
• WINGS-CF Peer Meeting, Canada (2000)

In 2012, WINGS produced a toolkit on Community Foundations Benchmarking and WINGS members participated in a webinar based on the toolkit.