(Illustration by Peter Grant)
Asian philanthropists are increasingly concerned about the ripple effects of shrinking global aid. In addition to the striking financial clawback and restructuring of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia, and other major donors have announced significant reductions in aid, citing fiscal pressures and shifting geopolitical priorities. These cuts have collectively disrupted access to essential services such as education, health care, and livelihood support for vulnerable communities across the region.
Amid the reduction of aid support, Asian philanthropists now face a pressing question: How do we stay the course toward our impact goals? While they must act swiftly to address emerging gaps, they must also remain committed to a long-term vision, drawing on a spirit of collaboration, community-driven approaches, and the region’s rich traditions of informal giving.
Embracing a Long-Term Vision
In times of volatility, long-term vision must guide philanthropic action. Uncertainty may prompt hesitation, leading some individuals and organizations to pause, reassess, or wait for clarity. This instinct is understandable, but prolonged paralysis can be costly. The challenges philanthropy seeks to address do not diminish during crises; if anything, they grow more urgent.
Recent efforts in the region suggest that forward momentum is already underway. One example is the recent launch of two communities by the Philanthropy Asia Alliance, a Temasek Trust initiative. The Health for Human Potential Community focuses on reducing preventable deaths and disease burdens (particularly in maternal, newborn, and child health) and tackling infectious diseases. Its goal is to raise more than $100 million in philanthropic funding by 2030. The Just Energy Transition Community seeks to accelerate Asia’s shift toward clean, inclusive energy solutions, coled by organizations such as the Tara Climate Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Both communities are designed to pool philanthropic funding, aligning resources and expertise among diverse partners, with an aim toward supporting targeted programs and policy efforts that can create long-term, region-wide impact.
This approach exemplifies how Asian funders can move beyond siloed efforts, aligning resources and expertise around shared regional priorities. In doing so, it offers a practical and replicable model for how philanthropy can move from intent to impact, even in uncertain times. By leading, joining, or supporting such collaborative efforts, Asian philanthropists can move with greater speed and confidence, pooling resources, sharing risk, and taking decisive action amid complexity.
Fostering Collaboration
Staying the course toward their impact goals will require drawing strength from what has long defined Asian philanthropy: quiet resilience, contextual intelligence, and a deep commitment to community. Throughout the region, civil society and philanthropy efforts have long operated within various forms of constraint, whether legal, political, or cultural. Navigating sensitivities and working within boundaries are not new, but neither have they stopped these efforts from advancing.
The Narada Foundation in China offers a compelling example. The foundation has adopted an integrated approach—empowering grassroots leadership by providing it with capacity-building support, funding, and leadership development opportunities. It is also building platforms for knowledge sharing, research, and training aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of Chinese nonprofits, and working closely with government agencies, peer foundations, and civil-society actors to position philanthropy as a constructive partner in social development.
In India, Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies has focused on strengthening what it calls “societal platform thinking,” a framework for collaboration that is about building open cocreation platforms that reduce friction between society, government, and markets. This framework helps enable diverse, context‑sensitive solutions to emerge and scale. One such solution is the Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing (DIKSHA) platform, which enables a wide range of stakeholders, government bodies, educators, experts, and organizations across all 36 states and union territories in India to collaboratively create, contribute to, and leverage a shared digital content platform to advance national learning outcomes.
Finally, in Indonesia, the Tanoto Foundation has worked alongside government ministries and multilateral agencies to combat childhood stunting. The foundation is supporting policy innovation and establishing real-time, shared digital systems that let local health workers collect, access, and use child nutrition and health data. This way, local health workers, regional and district health offices, and relevant local nonprofits or philanthropic organizations working on this issue can make informed decisions, spot stunting risks early, and act faster in their own communities.
Across these examples, a shared principle emerges: Foundations can successfully navigate legal, political, and cultural complexities by partnering with local institutions and communities.
Adopting Flexible and Community-Driven Approaches
Philanthropy’s role is not to simply replace government funding. This moment calls for a more expansive change, beyond reliance on single-source funds. Instead, funders should focus on blending philanthropic capital with other resources, including social finance, public funds, business contributions, and private-sector expertise. Philanthropic funds must also focus on providing the initial capital to attract larger investments and absorb risks that other investors might shy away from, effectively kick-starting vital projects. These approaches will allow the field to innovate and champion community-driven solutions, particularly in underserved areas often overlooked because of perceived risks.
Asian Platform for Investment into Resilient Economies (ASPIRE), an initiative of AVPN, exemplifies this shift. ASPIRE aims to unlock and direct more blended and innovative finance across Asia by securing commitments from local capital pools, development finance institutions, multilateral development banks, philanthropies, and private investors. It will channel this capital into underserved areas like climate adaptation by originating and structuring derisked transactions that blend concessional and commercial funding. ASPIRE will also work with governments to drive the policy and regulatory reforms needed to accelerate such finance, while piloting scalable solutions like local currency offerings, funds of funds, and standardized models to reduce risk and cost. By creating a platform for knowledge sharing and convening diverse stakeholders, such as private investors and grassroots project developers, ASPIRE seeks to surface what works for Asia and foster new forms of collaboration that move capital more efficiently to where it is needed most.
Rather than filling funding gaps left by governments, Asian philanthropies should reposition themselves as enablers, using their resources strategically to derisk investments, unlock private capital, and drive innovation at scale. This is an opportunity to reshape the architecture of the sector itself, with collaboration and creativity at its core.
Tapping Into a Tradition of Informal Giving
Finally, Asian philanthropy must acknowledge that while foreign aid has its place, the vast majority of giving in the region happens informally, through families, communities, and local networks. These engines of resilience have sustained societies through crises.
In Pakistan, for example, philanthropy is deeply embedded in everyday life. An estimated 98 percent of Pakistanis give in some form, often through religious practices like Zakat, Sadaqa, and Fitrana. Most of this giving, amounting to more than 1 percent of gross domestic product, or more than $2 billion annually, is informal and directed not at institutions but at individuals, such as family and friends, and local causes.
This pattern is echoed elsewhere. According to a study by the Centre for Social Impact and Philanthropy
at Ashoka University, Indian households donated an
estimated 27,000 crore rupees ($3.3 billion) between October 2021 and September 2022, up from 23,700 crore rupees ($2.9 billion) the previous year. A large share of this giving is informal; religious organizations alone receive 75 percent of total household donations during the 2021-2022 time frame, up from 70 percent the previous year.
Meanwhile, in the Philippines, the spirit of bayanihan—communal solidarity—continues to shape everyday giving. While formal philanthropic infrastructure is growing, much of the country’s generosity still flows through informal channels, including remittances directed to extended family needs, church-based collections, neighborhood fundraising efforts, and mutual aid during disasters. During crises like Typhoon Haiyan or the COVID-19 pandemic, it was often these grassroots networks, not institutional funders, that mobilized resources most rapidly and effectively.
These examples make clear that philanthropy in Asia has long drawn its strength from within. The numbers reflect the scale and cultural depth of informal giving in Asia, underscoring its important role in sustaining community welfare outside formal philanthropic structures. This basis presents an opportunity for philanthropists to directly partner with local faith-based and community-led organizations that already have a deep understanding of grassroots needs.
To be sure, the scale and speed of today’s aid pullback have created a deep sense of uncertainty. The question now is not whether Asia can step up—it already is. Staying the course toward impact goals means looking to the future with clarity and resolve, navigating uncertainty by drawing from its strengths, lived experiences, Indigenous practices, and a deep-rooted culture of collaboration to shape solutions that are resilient, relevant, and its own.
This series appeared in SSIR’s Fall 2025 Issue, including a new follow-up essay from MacArthur Foundation President John Palfrey.
Read more stories by Naina Subberwal Batra.