BY JILL CHIN With increasing levels of wealth across Asia-Pacific, there is great potential to address pressing humanitarian needs by increasing funding flows between countries in the region. However, potential donors face a range of challenges: from varying tax incentives to vastly different regulations and restrictions on sending donations across borders—these hinder the growth of effective and sustained philanthropic giving within the region. Given an increasingly complex and diverse landscape of international philanthropy in the region, Asia Philanthropy Circle, Give2Asia and the King Baudouin Foundation have embarked on Transnational Giving Asia (TGA), a 1-year Feasibility Study to assess the appetite…

BY NAOMI WANG When COVID-19 hit migrant worker dormitories in March 2020, the APC community quickly responded and raised over S$600,000 over three days to support emergency relief efforts migrant worker NGOs were conducting on the ground. However, the impact-driven attitudes of some members led to further questioning of the broader issues facing migrant workers at the systems-level, and the possible solutions to address them: Why do migrant workers in Singapore occupy such vulnerable and disempowered positions? How can they be enabled to thrive in the longer term? With these questions in mind, the APC team set out to explore…

BY BRADLEY WO The desire to have evidence of impact to guide effective giving is at the forefront of the minds of many APC members. However, this can be difficult when experimenting with untested innovations or supporting complex social change. The challenges were exacerbated when COVID-19 hit, as programmes and life itself became disrupted. APC invited Dr Robyn Mildon, Founding Executive Director of the Centre for Evidence and Implementation (CEI), and Ravi Gurumurthy, Chief Executive Officer of UK-based innovation foundation Nesta to offer their perspectives with APC members on incorporating evidence and evaluation into philanthropic practice. Both Robyn and Ravi have extensive background in…

BY LAURENCE LIEN A year ago, it was easy to make plans, but difficult to carry them out. This year, I found it difficult to make plans, but yet a lot still seems to get done. What has replaced long term plans, are rolling short term ones, where the nimble, resilient and dynamic amongst us have thrived.  In terms of general outlook, things look more optimistic than six months ago.  It has been a marvel that humankind has developed so many successful vaccines in record time. Economic outlook is better today. And many governments and companies have also stepped up.  …