The Philanthropy in Asia 2014 conference launched on 20 October in the chambers of Singapore’s Old Parliament Building, the wood-panelled halls where the city-state was founded. Prime Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s worn leather seat bears his name etched in a bronze plaque on the headrest.

The historic site was purposely selected by Patsian Low, conference organizer at the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre, in order to evoke the economic progress that supports increasing levels of philanthropy – and the uneven distribution of wealth that calls for it.

Current affairs played a role in the conference proceedings. Attendance at the swearing-in ceremony of Indonesia’s newly elected President Joko Widodo prevented Mr Tahir of the Tahir Foundation (and recent Giving Pledge signatory) from delivering the keynote, and teatime hallway discussions included many questions to Hong Kong participants about the ongoing protests. Yet the focus remained on the future.

The keynote was ably delivered by Audette Exel of Australia’s ISIS Foundation who described the lessons learned from her long-term philanthropic work with children in remote villages in Uganda and Nepal. The ISIS Foundation (which will soon undergo a name change) is funded entirely by ISIS Asia Pacific, her niche financial services corporation where all profits go towards funding the non-profit foundation. ‘I’m not a successful businessperson now turning to doing good, I am a social activist who figured I needed to learn about business.’ She talked about the importance of ‘purpose’ for all employees, not just those in the social sector, and the fact that more financial services firms need to take up social engagement.

Prapti Upadhyay and I shared highlights from the Lien Centre for Social Innovation’s report Levers for Change: Philanthropy in Select Southeast Asian Countries which outlined key public policies that can encourage strategic philanthropy in the region. These include creating clearly defined charitable legal structures, improving tax policy, encouraging more community philanthropy, building philanthropy advisory services, mandating greater transparency and data collection.

Following that, a plenary panel entitled ‘Windows to the Future: A Networked Philanthropy’ featured Naina Subberwal Batra, director of Asian Venture Philanthropy Network, moderating a discussion with representatives from Twitter, Microsoft, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Lien Centre for Social Innovation. Parminder Singh from Twitter described the power of Twitter as a platform for social change and fundraising, citing the spontaneous response to the Jammu and Kashmir floods that resulted in the creation of #JKfloodrelief (and subsequently JKfloodrelief.org). This entirely volunteer-run response, in the first week following the floods, used Twitter to coordinate the delivery of 15 tons of food and 4 tons of life-saving medicine and opened a critical communication platform for emergency relief coordination. Most of the organizers have still never met in person, but they nonetheless created a powerful volunteer team.

In a breakout session on collaboration, Veronica Colondam of the YCAB Foundation in Indonesia described the ways in which lack of a legal structure to incorporate social enterprises is limiting their ability to expand their services to at-risk youth. In the same session, Rob John of the Asia Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Philanthropy at NUS Business School shared his research on the rise of giving circles in Asia as a means of philanthropy, donor education and community building.

As participants boarded buses to diverse themed dinners, discussions were lively and debates engaging. The gathering provided a great setting for plotting the future course of philanthropy in the region.

This post was also published in Alliance Magazine’s online edition.