Singapore is at a unique juncture to solidify its role as a hub for impact-driven capital and philanthropy in the region. Yet while philanthropists can certainly build on Singapore’s ecosystem and national capabilities to drive their philanthropy in the Asia Pacific, the first steps toward it could be overwhelming.
With this in mind, supported by Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB), AVPN launched “Philanthropy Handbook: Giving Effectively from Singapore to Asia-Pacific”, a resource that helps philanthropists at all stages of the journey navigate the giving process from Singapore. It discusses:
- Pathways to unlock the full potential of philanthropy in Asia-Pacific
- Singapore’s philanthropic ecosystem
- ‘How-to’ steps to get your philanthropy started in Singapore
- In-depth learning from philanthropists.
This report was launched with a dynamic discussion between Dino Tan, Senior Vice President & Head, International Organisations Programme Office at EDB and leading philanthropists in Singapore: Raman Sidhu, CEO at Octava Foundation, Sandhya Aswani, Program Director at Ishk Tolaram Foundation, and Jamie Choi, Managing Director at Tara. The conversation was facilitated by Komal Sahu and highlighted the role of Singapore as a philanthropic hub in:
- Creating room for conversation and peer learning. By learning from and working with each other, organisations can begin to build or rethink their own philanthropic strategies. Singapore’s mature, diverse, and ever-growing ecosystems allow philanthropists to gather insights and identify best practices from one another.
- Fostering conducive spaces for collaboration. Leveraging the resources that the Singapore ecosystem offers, including those from outside the social sector, can lead to identifying like-minded allies, with whom they can not only learn but also partner to scale impact.
- Enabling philanthropists to tap into opportunities and drive innovation together. Singapore’s unique position as a trade, wealth etc hub, makes it the ideal base from which philanthropists can conduct scoping exercises, landscape research, and incubate novel solutions. It also provides the right infrastructure to not only design and develop impact measurement and management frameworks, but also to build consensus around this.
“We are mindful that philanthropists are actually in different stages of their journey. Some very advanced some fairly new. So if their communities can help create platforms for [the] exchange of ideas, learning opportunities, I think they’ll be very helpful and hopefully [the growth] will be more organic.” Dino Tan, EDB
The handbook is designed by practitioners to practitioners, for easy reference as philanthropists reflect on their impact goals. No matter where they are in their philanthropic journey, the opportunities exist here for philanthropists to walk the talk for the change they want to see.
AVPN “Philanthropy Handbook: Giving Effectively from Singapore to Asia-Pacific” is available here. We encourage you to share this with your networks.