Collective Philanthropy: The Strength of Giving Together (2017) (original) (raw)

Giving to charity has never been a solitary activity in any culture. People have joined together to give for millennia. In Asia, clan associations, religious groups or just friends have enjoyed the benefits of giving as a group. But there appears to be a renaissance of collective giving with the advent of more organised, strategic and outcome-focused philanthropy. At the Asia Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy (ACSEP) where I am presently based, our research team’s curiosity about giving circles was first piqued when investigating the nature of innovation in Asian philanthropy in 2012. In that study, we reported several initiatives where individuals pooled their resources and jointly selected a non-profit organisation to fund. Since then, the number and variety of giving circle models have increased across the region, leading me to believe that giving circles will make a significant to the development of philanthropy in Asia over the coming decade. This article was originally published in Social Space Issue 8 (2016/7), and is reproduced with the kind permission of the Lien Centre for Social Innovation at Singapore Management University.