Philip Collyer
Director, Strategic Enterprises
National Human Services Assembly
(Washington, DC USA)
Philip Collyer is a practicing philanthropist who has devoted the last 12 years to strengthening nonprofit organizations in the Washington region through Greater DC Cares. Retiring in 1991 from active careers in the mining, aerospace and nuclear industries, Mr. Collyer has helped to build Greater DC Cares into the region's largest and most comprehensive provider of community service and volunteer management. He has served on the Board of Directors of Cares since 1992. He also served for four years as its Executive Director (1993-1997) and then its President (1997-2001) while contributing his fulltime management and technology leadership to the organization without compensation. Mr. Collyer is currently helping to launch TechCares, a new program of Greater DC Cares to manage and connect skills from volunteers in the technology industry for the benefit of social service nonprofits.
Mr. Collyer has a strong belief that nonprofits should strive for financial self-sustainability. Furthering that belief, in 1997 he founded and chaired Cares@Law, a for-profit subsidiary of Greater DC Cares. Those efforts attracted the attention of NESsT. Mr. Collyer is a member of the NESsT Board of Directors and is active in supporting its leadership, often traveling to its offices in Santiago and Budapest.
Mr. Collyer has served two terms on the Governors Commission for Service and Volunteerism for the State of Maryland to which he was appointed by both Governors William Donald Schaefer and Parris Glendening. He currently serves on the Commission for National and Community Service in the District of Columbia by appointment of Mayor Anthony Williams.
Prior to beginning his philanthropy career, Mr. Collyer co-founded an international technology company, and worked for two decades in the mining and consulting industries for Anaconda Copper, Battelle Memorial Institute and ICF Kaiser Engineers. He is published in the fields of mathematics, geology and nuclear fuel disposal; has a Bachelor of Science from Denison University, a Master of Science from Syracuse University, and worked toward his PhD at the Colorado School of Mines. He was a competitive triathlete until 1999 when he was sidelined by a bad ankle. He is a 1994 graduate of Leadership Washington and received its Volunteer of the Year Award in 1998. Mr. Collyer and Rosemary, a partner in a D.C. law firm, have been married for 33 years and have a grown son.