WINGS evolved from a series of meetings beginning in the 1990s among associations of grantmakers which had discovered they carried out several tasks in common on behalf of foundations and grantmaking organisations. Their work included monitoring and promotion of enabling legal and regulatory frameworks for philanthropy and nonprofit organisations; provision of services to strengthen foundations; promotion of philanthropy; and good practice and accountability in grantmaking.

These meetings culminated in the first International Meeting of Associations Serving Grantmakers (IMAG) held in Oaxaca, Mexico, in February 1998. Participants in IMAG recognised the importance of creating opportunities for all organisations supporting grantmakers to share expertise and experience learned from working in diverse sociocultural, economic, political, and legal environments. Community foundation support organisations also met in 1998 in Miami, Florida, USA, to develop a plan of action for promoting community philanthropy, and they subsequently created a network.

In 1999, the two initiatives, IMAG and the community foundation support network, joined together as Worldwide Initiatives for Grantmaker Support. WINGS was formally established in January 2000. From 2000 to 2002 WINGS was hosted by the Council on Foundations, USA, and WINGS-CF, by Community Foundations of Canada. From 2003 to 2006, the two initiatives were serviced by one Secretariat hosted by the European Foundation Centre in Brussels, Belgium. From 2007 to the end of 2010 the Secretariat was hosted by the Asia Pacific Philanthropy Consortium in the Philippines. In January 2011 arrangements were finalized to give WINGS a permanent home: after becoming a public charity in the USA, the organization moved its offices to São Paolo, Brazil.

Today, WINGS is a global network of more than 145 membership associations serving grantmakers and support organisations serving philanthropy. WINGS endeavours to expand the knowledge and scope of global philanthropy, relying on the expertise of leaders in the field of philanthropy and the shared experience of participants around the globe.