Asia’s richest families approach philanthropy in much the same way they approach business: Managing things directly and keeping a close eye on outputs, rather than just writing the checks.
That’s one of the conclusions from a new report from the Bridgespan Group, a U.S.-based philanthropy advisory group, released at the Philanthropy for Better Cities Forum in Hong Kong on Sept. 7.
Asia’s family fortunes are still younger than the rest of the world’s. About 94% of the Asian families Bridgespan studied are in their first or second generation of wealth, versus 85% of families in high-income economies elsewhere. Around as many are still in control of the businesses that made them rich, compared with 68% outside the region.
That continued ownership shapes how Asian families give. Business-linked giving dominates in Asia, used by 95% of wealthy families in the region’s middle-income economies and 80% in its high-income ones. Elsewhere, just 28% of high-income families give through their businesses. Most Western families instead choose to set up their own foundation: Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, for example, chose to set up their own foundations rather than give through Microsoft or Berkshire Hathaway.
“The level of control that families expect to have over their giving—because they’re still so used to having that level of control over the corporate—is definitely a lot more hands-on,” says Gwendolyn Lim, head of Southeast Asia at Bridgespan and an author of the report.
She traces the habit to the conglomerate era, when Asia’s tycoons built sprawling groups by spotting “gaps in the market” and grew comfortable running operations that had nothing to do with each other.
When they turned to philanthropy, they saw similar gaps, such as non-profits lacking the capacity to do good work or governments unwilling to step in to take action. The result was the “operating foundation” that both funded and managed charitable projects.
Western philanthropists, on the other hand, are surrounded by mature civil-society groups, and so are more content to just deliver funding through grants. Bridgespan’s report finds that families in middle-income countries are more likely to administer their own programs than those in higher-income countries.
Working with the state
More than three-quarters of Asian family philanthropies partner with the government, versus 58% outside Asia.
That willingness to work with the state is unique, Lim says. Asian families are used to dealing with ministries through their businesses, and thus see few qualms in doing so again through their charities.
Yet Western donors are more wary of the government. “If you talk to American or European philanthropists, working closely with the government is something that makes them nervous,” she says. “Their faces change a little bit. They’re like, ‘Maybe we influence the government from an advocacy perspective.’”
Bridgespan’s report notes that Asian families might fund pilot programs to prove that something works, before handing over successful models to the government to run at a larger scale. Lim points out that philanthropic families are “usually standard bearers who are able to experiment a lot more.”
Another difference is that Asian philanthropists are more willing than their Western counterparts to report how much work they’re doing, using metrics like schools built or teachers trained. More than 80% of Asian families report their outputs, compared with 45% of families in high-income economies elsewhere.
Yet relatively few families—in Asia or elsewhere—report outcomes, or how things changed because of what an organizatrion did. “They go: ‘I don’t want to pay you to measure outcomes, but I want you to report on outcomes.’ That’s pretty terrible,” Lim admits.
The world’s largest givers
This week, Bridgespan also updated its rankings of the world’s largest corporate and institutional givers, based on average annual giving between 2020 and 2024.
The Hong Kong Jockey Club, the city’s only authorized betting operator, tops Asia’s corporate rankings at $774 million a year, ahead of Tencent at $404 million.
Globally, the Jockey Club is the only Asian entity in the corporate top 10, at No. 8, behind Deutsche Telekom and well behind Johnson & Johnson, the world’s largest corporate giver at $3.8 billion a year.
Much of the Jockey Club’s money is funneled through the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust. The Trust gave an average of $705 million a year between 2020 and 2024, putting it in the lead among Asian philanthropic organizations, but just shy of the global top 10. The Gates Foundation leads the way among institutional funders at $6.5 billion per year.
The top 20 Asian philanthropies together gave $2.7 billion annually; the global top 20, $21.4 billion.
Both reports were commissioned by Bridgespan’s Funders’ Council, whose members include the Institute of Philanthropy, the Gates Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, and were released at the Philanthropy for Better Cities Forum, organized by the Jockey Club.
The first line of risk
According to AVPN, a network of Asia-based social investors, the region faces a development funding shortfall of $26 trillion through 2030. Filling that gap will be a tall order.
“We call philanthropy the first line of risk,” Lim says. “Philanthropic giving fills the spots where corporates may be too nervous to invest. And family philanthropy is even more at the vanguard of giving.”
Yet the gap Asian philanthropy is being asked to fill keeps growing. The Trump administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development canceled roughly 83% of the agency’s programs, gutting development budgets in a region where USAID once spent about $860 million a year; in Indonesia and the Philippines, program values fell by 95% or more. Aid financing to Southeast Asia could drop by more than $2 billion, according to estimates from the Lowy Institute.
Nobody, Lim concedes, can plug the hole left by Washington. “Governments can’t fill the gap. Philanthropy can’t fill the gap. There’s not enough money,” she says.
Still, in the “Asian decade,” Asia’s philanthropists will need to find some way to pick up the slack. “This is the decade where our own people have to help our own people,” she says.