BY LAURENCE LIEN, CHAIRMAN, ASIA PHILANTHROPY CIRCLE
This year APC celebrates our 10th anniversary. How time has flown! I often worry about not achieving the impact that we should have had by now, but this year I have been able to be more reflective and can see how much so many of our members have grown in their philanthropic practice–hopefully we contributed to that–and how our collaborative projects have made a real difference.
As a community, we do not celebrate enough what our members have accomplished, both individually and collectively. 2025 is the time to change that. Celebration is not about self-congratulation; it’s about fostering community bonds, appreciating one another, replenishing our emotional well-being, learning for future growth, and reinforcing our shared values. Therefore, we invite you to join us for our 10th anniversary dinner on 26 June 2025 at Lien Villa, and for venn2025 on 23-24 October 2025.
While we look back over the last 10 years, we also look forward. The world has taken a sharp turn, and the roads and landscape around us look increasingly unfamiliar. Some people say we are in a polycrisis world with climate change, economic instability, geopolitical tensions and AI disruptions all happening simultaneously. In the past month, APC and Asia Community Foundation (ACF) have zoomed in on one major crisis: the deep US AID cuts to more than 80% of their funding.
A recent survey conducted by APC and Asia Community Foundation of about 360 NGO respondents in the region reported a combined immediate loss of US$275 million in funding, with only $2 million that they are confident of raising through alternative sources within the year. The consequences will be severe, with significant programme cutbacks, organisational closures, and widespread loss of jobs. More importantly, millions of lives are badly affected, with some literally dying as a result.
We cannot sit still. APC and ACF are helping to put together some immediately initiatives so that our members and donors can more easily respond, even while many of you are already stepping up. Realistically speaking, the gap is so large that philanthropy alone cannot simply by itself fill the hole. We have to explore how to crowd in alternative sources of support, help consolidate programmes and collectively build a stronger, self-reliant civil society in Asia.
One way forward is through collaborative funds. I just returned from San Francisco from the Gates Global Summit of Collaborative Funds. I learnt at the summit that such funds are gaining a lot of traction because they help donors act and scale funding quickly with less staff, while participating in work that is difficult to drive in-house. These benefits are some of what we need today. Yet, in Bridgespan’s survey, Southeast Asia’s 60 or so collaborative funds only give about US$40 Million a year–puny compared with $270M a year in India and $300M in Africa. Now is the time to level these numbers up!