New initiative targets Asia’s millionaires for philanthropic giving

With just 710 square kilometers of land area, Singapore is one of the smallest countries in Asia. But don’t be fooled by its size. It’s one of the wealthiest countries across the continent, and home to more than 300,000 millionaires. It seems fitting then that the island nation serves as the initial base for ImpactCollab, a new initiative by the AVPN aimed at engaging Asia’s richest in philanthropic giving. It comes at a crucial moment, as philanthropy is being asked to step up, at a time of distress in the aid sector and high debt burden in countries. The initiative is being supported by the Monetary Authority of Singapore and the Gates Foundation. The latter announced plans in May to open an office in Singapore to partner with philanthropic partners in the region. Singapore, meanwhile, has ambitions of becoming a regional philanthropy hub in Asia. “By 2030 we want to be able to be at the level of channeling $100 million per year [for philanthropy],” Kevin Teo, head of ImpactCollab, told Devex. There are $1.2 trillion of assets under management in Singapore. If only 1% of the income from those assets were set aside for philanthropy, “you'll be somewhere in the $1 billion range easily. And that's just looking at wealth that is domiciled in Singapore,” Teo said. How it works The initiative has a database of vetted charities, nongovernmental organizations, and social enterprises from different countries in Asia, similar to several other existing platforms such as Give What You Can. This is aimed at helping Asian funders easily identify impactful organizations to give to that match their intent. But it has another component: Engaging private bankers and wealth advisors who can plant the seed for how their high-net-worth clients could engage in social impact, creating a proactive approach to philanthropic giving. “We feel that it is critical to engage this group, because they are the ones who would know the client best and are able to actually link that knowledge into the rest of what we are trying to do – which is enabling philanthropic and social impact capital to flow into the sector,” Teo said. He explained that those engaged in philanthropy today are only a tiny portion of the millionaires in Singapore and across Asia. While many of them want to give meaningfully, they face a series of challenges, including due diligence costs, limited access to verified organizations, as well as cross-border giving. The initiative aims to ensure philanthropic giving is simplified and accessible for new entrants to the sector. “Clearly, philanthropy is not the reason why banks exist. Some see it as being valuable in terms of their service offering to the clients, and those are the ones that we are working closely with at the moment. And over time, we want to work with as many, if not all of them,” Teo said. Plans for expansion At present, ImpactCollab is engaged with 13 banks, while its database has an estimated 482 impact organizations based in nine countries across Asia, including those working on health, climate, and nutrition. It plans to further grow those numbers. “While we have support from MAS and the Gates Foundation to develop from Singapore as the initial base, we’re not going to stop here. We will be engaging with other wealth centers like Hong Kong and Dubai, and those will be additional ecosystems of assets and capital,” Teo said. Meanwhile, for organizations wishing to be part of the database, they can send an expression of interest through ImpactCollab’s website. Teo encourages organizations to indicate if they have received funding or support from existing members of the AVPN network, as it can help expedite the due diligence process for vetting organizations.