Five ideas shaping philanthropy across Asia
At this year’s Foundations Circle, philanthropic leaders from across Asia and beyond gathered for candid exchange on the pressures reshaping their work. Across the conversations on funders' mandates, government partnerships, Hong Kong's capital markets, artificial intelligence, blended finance, and measurement, one challenge kept resurfacing: many of the boundaries that have traditionally shaped philanthropy, between sectors, sources of capital, and even institutional mandates, are increasingly obstacles to impact rather than enablers of it. The ideas below capture some of the themes that emerged and what they may mean for the sector.
Funders need to look beyond the boundaries of their own mandates.
AI-driven disruption, geopolitical uncertainty, and growing financing constraints do not fit neatly within traditional funding areas. Addressing them will require funders to work across institutional and sector boundaries, combine different forms of expertise, and reconsider where one organisation’s role ends and another’s begins.
Bringing effective ideas into public systems takes time.
Once an idea has to move from a foundation’s own programme into a government system, the boundary looks less like a line to cross than a relationship to build. Funders from Asia and Europe described scaling as a long-term process built on trust, evidence, and close partnership with government. Philanthropy has a distinctive role to play by supporting unmet needs and testing new approaches before public funding is available, then helping effective models earn the confidence required for wider adoption.
Different sources of capital must reinforce one another.
Capital is not exempt from the same boundary problem. Leaders considered how development finance, humanitarian funding, and philanthropy increasingly intersect, each bringing different strengths, time horizons, and levels of risk tolerance. Greater impact will depend on using these differences with purpose, including directing philanthropic capital towards gaps that other sources cannot readily support. Hong Kong’s own experience shows what that looks like in practice. The Unlocking Impact Capital in Hong Kong: Learnings from Global Ecosystems report found that no single model can simply be imported from elsewhere; progress will depend on connecting the city’s own combination of financial expertise, philanthropic tradition, public institutions, and growing family office community more deliberately, and creating practical ways for capital, capabilities, and knowledge to work together.
AI will shape the communities and issues philanthropy serves.
The pressure to look past old boundaries reaches beyond funders’ own institutions too, into the communities they exist to serve. Advances in AI are set to affect employment, inequality, ageing populations, and access to opportunity. These changes place AI firmly within philanthropy’s field of concern. Funders will need to consider who benefits from technological progress, who may be left behind, and how societies can adapt while preserving trust and social cohesion.
A shared measure across causes, even an imperfect one, is worth adopting now.
It is precisely because these boundaries are blurring, and domains such as education, health, culture, and community increasingly overlap, that funders need a common way to compare where a dollar does the most good, and the confidence that a change they observe reflects real impact rather than noise. One idea raised in discussion was to treat this the way earlier imperfect standards, such as journal impact factors, were once treated: adopt something workable now, let it be tested and argued over in use, and improve it over time, rather than waiting for a measure that is perfect before anyone commits to one.
That instinct, connecting what usually stays apart, even if imperfectly at first, was the thread running through this year's Foundations Circle. By bringing funders together to speak openly, test ideas, and learn from different experiences, philanthropy can connect people, institutions, ideas, and capital that might otherwise remain apart. The task now is to turn the connections made in the room into stronger partnerships, better decisions, and sustained action.
Funders need to look beyond the boundaries of their own mandates.
AI-driven disruption, geopolitical uncertainty, and growing financing constraints do not fit neatly within traditional funding areas. Addressing them will require funders to work across institutional and sector boundaries, combine different forms of expertise, and reconsider where one organisation’s role ends and another’s begins.
Bringing effective ideas into public systems takes time.Once an idea has to move from a foundation’s own programme into a government system, the boundary looks less like a line to cross than a relationship to build. Funders from Asia and Europe described scaling as a long-term process built on trust, evidence, and close partnership with government. Philanthropy has a distinctive role to play by supporting unmet needs and testing new approaches before public funding is available, then helping effective models earn the confidence required for wider adoption.
Different sources of capital must reinforce one another.
Capital is not exempt from the same boundary problem. Leaders considered how development finance, humanitarian funding, and philanthropy increasingly intersect, each bringing different strengths, time horizons, and levels of risk tolerance. Greater impact will depend on using these differences with purpose, including directing philanthropic capital towards gaps that other sources cannot readily support. Hong Kong’s own experience shows what that looks like in practice. The Unlocking Impact Capital in Hong Kong: Learnings from Global Ecosystems report found that no single model can simply be imported from elsewhere; progress will depend on connecting the city’s own combination of financial expertise, philanthropic tradition, public institutions, and growing family office community more deliberately, and creating practical ways for capital, capabilities, and knowledge to work together.
AI will shape the communities and issues philanthropy serves.The pressure to look past old boundaries reaches beyond funders’ own institutions too, into the communities they exist to serve. Advances in AI are set to affect employment, inequality, ageing populations, and access to opportunity. These changes place AI firmly within philanthropy’s field of concern. Funders will need to consider who benefits from technological progress, who may be left behind, and how societies can adapt while preserving trust and social cohesion.
A shared measure across causes, even an imperfect one, is worth adopting now.
It is precisely because these boundaries are blurring, and domains such as education, health, culture, and community increasingly overlap, that funders need a common way to compare where a dollar does the most good, and the confidence that a change they observe reflects real impact rather than noise. One idea raised in discussion was to treat this the way earlier imperfect standards, such as journal impact factors, were once treated: adopt something workable now, let it be tested and argued over in use, and improve it over time, rather than waiting for a measure that is perfect before anyone commits to one.
That instinct, connecting what usually stays apart, even if imperfectly at first, was the thread running through this year's Foundations Circle. By bringing funders together to speak openly, test ideas, and learn from different experiences, philanthropy can connect people, institutions, ideas, and capital that might otherwise remain apart. The task now is to turn the connections made in the room into stronger partnerships, better decisions, and sustained action.