This summary of the Commission on Asian Philanthropy’s Interim Report is a conversation starter for policymakers and decision-makers—including planning departments, think tanks, finance ministries, and bodies overseeing philanthropy, charity, and development.
The report makes the case that Asia’s philanthropic ecosystems can help society act together and are therefore a strategic asset to be cultivated for national development.
Across Asia, leading economies share the ambition of inclusive and sustainable growth by 2050. Achieving this vision will require a society-wide effort, with state, market, and community working together on national missions and priorities.
Hear directly from members of the Commission about the research, findings, and potential of philanthropy across Asia.
The Commission on Asian Philanthropy is a three-year research-to-action initiative (2024–2027) working to accelerate the quantity, quality, and impact of Asia’s domestic philanthropic ecosystems in support of inclusive, sustainable growth over the next two decades.
The Commission brings together 13 leading philanthropic funders across the region to map the current state of Asian philanthropy, study philanthropic growth models, and engage policymakers and institutions.
Asia’s philanthropic ecosystems are larger than conventional frames suggest and offer valuable capabilities for development beyond money.
The Commission’s research highlights the scale and diversity of Asia’s philanthropic ecosystems, showing how they can support national development.
A diverse and rich ecosystem of five philanthropy models, facilitating four sources of giving from three societal engines:
The major forces that drive societal development at scale
Sources of new philanthropic monetary inflows from the three engines
Actors responsible for collection and distribution of resources
Community-led models help communities organise themselves, aggregate their social and financial capital to solve their own problems, and improve overall resilience. They also bring unmatched insights into local needs and challenges, support last-mile delivery, and can enable government spending to reach communities and achieve intended outcomes more effectively.
Faith-based models share many of the benefits of community-led models, with the additional benefit of unifying people in shared beliefs that inform what philanthropy should be used for, which generally leads to more cohesive and aligned efforts for their sustained and perpetual giving.
State-led models bring institutional trust and legitimacy. They anchor national priorities and carry the unparalleled reach of public infrastructure and authority. Collaboration requires coordination and often the state will be best placed to ensure collective action—and synergies with public budgets.
Corporate-led models can ensure alignment to stakeholder value and bring corporate assets and capabilities as well as leverage their relationships and networks.
Ultra-high-net-worth individual-led models bring corporate assets and capabilities; catalytic, patient risk capital for innovation or niche issues; and relationship networks and longer-term, patient commitments.
* equivalent to more than $1tn over the next decade
Philanthropic ecosystems can help countries pursue national missions more effectively.
Across Asia, countries are pursuing national visions for inclusive and sustainable growth. Most are aware that states and markets alone cannot deliver this kind of growth at the scale and level of complexity required, and that society-wide efforts are called for.
What’s needed, specifically, is greater “collaborative infrastructure” between state, market, and communities. This infrastructure includes the institutions, mechanisms, norms, and channels that foster trust and enable large numbers of actors across the three engines to work together.
Philanthropic ecosystems are helping to develop this kind of collaborative infrastructure.
Alleviating poverty and achieving “common prosperity” by mid-century
Under state leadership, China lifted 98.99 million rural residents out of extreme poverty between 2013 and 2020. One major contribution of collaborative infrastructure established by the State was the East-West Cooperation in Poverty Alleviation, which paired the wealthier eastern region with 573 impoverished counties in central and western China. State-led and corporate-led models of philanthropy supported this mechanism, adding resources and capabilities to expand reach at the last-mile.
Viksit Bharat 2047 and India’s rural livelihoods mission
Viksit Bharat 2047 emphasises inclusive development, calling for the empowerment of youth, poor households, women, and farmers. Bihar—one of India’s lowest income states—moved 37.7 million people out of multidimensional poverty within a decade (between 2014 and 2023). The philanthropic ecosystem strengthened the community’s market access, by organising 12 million rural women into over one million self-help groups, enabling $4.7 billion in credit to support livelihoods development.
Philanthropic ecosystems need targeted investments to be a productive development asset. Cross-learning in Asia can accelerate progress.
To move the philanthropic ecosystem forward and grow its impact, the Commission suggests three important areas in which domestic investment is needed. These are interim suggestions: the Commission intends to refine them over the coming year, building towards a full action roadmap as part of its final report in 2027.
Better data visibility allows governments and others to understand the resources and capabilities their philanthropic ecosystems can offer for development. This can lead to more consequential policy questions and decisions.
For example, Indonesia’s Ministry of Religious Affairs, with support from the Commission, conducted its first national survey in more than 20 years, to learn the scale and potential of informal giving in Islamic philanthropy.
Cultivating domestic philanthropy models requires intentional leadership and commitment. The Commission has uncovered 12 growth playbooks operating across the five philanthropy models; six of these operate at a scale of more than $1 billion a year in monetary value alone. These playbooks often take 5–10 years to materialise at scale. Countries can innovate their own approaches or learn from one another’s growth playbooks, adapting them to their own contexts.
UHNWI-led
* At scale = in excess of $1 billion
To estimate the upside opportunity, the Commission used growth playbooks as inspiration and envisaged 23 “stories of possibility” for their jurisdictions—plausible opportunities to increase monetary giving.
Estimation of potential domestic monetary giving upside across Commission jurisdictions between 2027 and 2036 (breakdown by philanthropy models)
Planning departments and ministries of finance that coordinate national missions aimed at inclusive and sustainable growth can explore how they can better partner with their philanthropic ecosystems to maximise the impact of their domestic resources and capabilities. Regional cooperation can accelerate progress through shared principles and practices, interoperable frameworks and data taxonomies, and mechanisms for cross-learning among policymakers and decision-makers.
For instance, Malaysia’s Ministry of Finance mobilised Government-Linked Companies (GLC), Government-Linked Investment Companies (GLICs), and their philanthropic efforts to support two national priorities: “Raise the Ceiling”, which focuses on accelerating industrial transformation in high-growth, high-value sectors such as semiconductors and the energy transition, and “Raise the Floor”, which aims to improve quality of life and promote inclusive growth.
There is a much bigger vision at stake. Success in our national missions moves us towards our collective vision for inclusive and sustainable growth by 2050. Asia can be a global leader, inspiring other regions with rich and diverse pathways for models of growth that leaves no one behind and leaves a better world for the next generation.
This interim report is a conversation starter for policymakers and decision-makers, including central, state, or provincial planning departments, policy think tanks, ministries of finance, and ministries overseeing philanthropy, charity, and development.
The Commission invites you to engage with them through 2026 and the first half of 2027 to inform an action roadmap that will shape the next decade of inclusive, sustainable growth together.
The state operates at three tiers with respect to the philanthropic ecosystem:
The state sets the rules and regulations for the philanthropic ecosystem within which every actor operates.
The state participates in philanthropic giving alongside community and market, injecting new resources each year into the philanthropic ecosystem. The Commission calls the state engine’s injection “public discretionary giving”.
Public discretionary giving is defined by its mandated usage (for the benefit of the public beyond fiscal mandates) and the existence of a strong governance structure for the allocation of funds.* It includes matching funds whose primary purpose is to crowd-in non-state philanthropic resources, lottery funds, dormant deposits, special funds or endowments, and ring-fenced levies. It excludes government spending in the delivery of fiscal mandates and services such as general education, health, welfare, or development spending.**
* Governance structures vary by jurisdiction; examples include structures separate from line ministries with discretionary power to allocate the resources, structures governed by central and/or coordinating ministries such as Ministries of Finance or Cabinet and Presidential Offices, and structures representing multiple ministries.
** Tax incentives and other foregone public revenue are not counted as public discretionary giving. They subsidise private giving that is already counted as philanthropy, so counting the foregone revenue in addition would lead to double counting. These types of incentives represent choices as part of the enabling environment tier, for example, the extent to which to incentivise versus obligate giving. The full definition used by the Commission for public discretionary giving can be found in Annex 2 along with jurisdictional examples.
The state participates as an actor through state-funded or -established institutions that operate the state-led philanthropy model: collecting and distributing philanthropic resources and coordinating partnerships for national priorities. Classification of what is philanthropic attaches to the resource flows these actors manage, as opposed to the institutions themselves. State actors may simultaneously manage mandated fiscal budgets for development purposes (not considered philanthropic resources but public budgets) and operate as state-led philanthropic vehicles collecting and distributing philanthropic resources. When doing this, state-led models are not limited to distributing only public discretionary giving. In some jurisdictions in Asia, they collect and distribute philanthropic resources from more than one engine, enabling state-led models to play unique roles in blending public and private resources and coordinating cross-sector partnerships for national missions and priorities. The institutions that do this might include multiple forms of special government agencies given different names across jurisdictions, such as government-organised non-governmental organisations (GONGOs), autonomous public organisations, authorities, bodies, and state-established societies, trusts, and charitable companies.
Therefore, the Commission defines philanthropy as the giving of private or public resources, with discretionary allocation for the benefit of others, beyond fiscal or commercial obligation.
This definition recognises that three societal engines (state, community, and market) participate in philanthropy. This broadens the definition often used outside Asia, namely “private, voluntary giving for public good”, by recognising two differences commonly found in jurisdictions in Asia. First, the Commission recognises that the state plays a major role in shaping philanthropic ecosystems in Asia—operating at all three tiers described above, and through its direct contribution of public discretionary giving at the sources-of-giving tier. This is distinct from mainstream fiscal government spending.
Second, the Commission recognises that the voluntary criterion is not universally shared. In some jurisdictions, giving mandated by law or faith is still widely understood in those contexts as an expression of acting philanthropically. In these cases, the actors retain discretion over how to deploy or allocate the resources for the benefit of others. Requiring the decision to give to be voluntary would exclude forms of giving that many communities themselves would consider philanthropic by nature.
Therefore, for quantification of philanthropic resources by sources of giving, we include all forms of private resources for public good and include public discretionary giving that meets the Commission’s definition. For philanthropy models, we include all actors that collect and distribute philanthropic resources and capabilities for the benefit of others, whether through operating their own programmes or giving to third parties.
The Commission on Asian Philanthropy is a three-year research-to-action initiative (2024–2027) working to accelerate the quantity, quality, and impact of Asia’s domestic philanthropic ecosystems in support of inclusive, sustainable growth.
The Commission brings together 13 leading philanthropic funders across the region to map the current state of Asian philanthropy, study philanthropic growth models, and engage policymakers and institutions.
The designs on our front cover are inspired by the deep-rooted cultural heritage, symbolic motifs, and diverse landscapes of the Commissioners’ jurisdictions.
