By the Business & Philanthropy Forum · Published 8 September 2026 · Updated 10 September 2026

Belinda Tanoto of the Tanoto Foundation was not given birthday parties as a child. Her parents took her to an orphanage instead, to share her toys and books. She was angry about it at the time. She is grateful now, and she does the same with her own children. Hillary Tjioe describes almost the same upbringing, distributing books, toys and stationery to orphanages with her parents, long before she had any money of her own to give.

Two families, unconnected, one generation apart, doing the same thing. That is not a coincidence. It is the mechanism: a value passed down before it is ever a structure set up.

The scale of the handover

US$2.5tnFamily wealth passing to the next generation in Asia by 2030
81%Of social delivery organisations across 17 Asian economies say unrestricted funding is hard to secure
21% → 60%Billionaires involving the next generation in planning, over a decade

Most Asian families give a great deal and structure it very little. There is often no foundation, no strategy document and no staff, decades of cheques to a place of worship, a school, a hospital wing or a cause the family knows, decided by one person.

That works until the founding decision-maker steps back. Continuity then depends on what was put in place beforehand.

Family philanthropy in Asia is organised around family, clan and community rather than around causes, driven by personal relationships rather than grant applications, and used as a way of passing values down as much as moving money out. This is how it works in practice, what families build, and what the handover requires.

In short: Family philanthropy in Asia is giving directed by a family rather than an institution. It is less formal than the Western model, with fewer and smaller foundations, organised around family, clan and community rather than causes, and driven by affiliation and personal relationships. It also works as a way of passing values between generations.

What makes family philanthropy in Asia different

Asians are generous, but the giving is less structured than formal.

Laurence Lien, Asia Philanthropy Circle

The consequences are concrete. There are fewer foundations than in the West, and the ones that exist are usually smaller, with fewer procedures and less professional staff. Giving is organised, in his words, “around the main axis of family, clan and community” rather than around causes in the abstract. A family does not decide to work on education. It decides to help its school.

Three forces drive the behaviour.

Affiliation. Money goes to religious institutions, royal-sponsored charities and community endowments: institutions the family already belongs to. Membership comes first and the cause follows from it, which is the reverse of how a Western foundation typically starts.

Relationships. Gifts follow a friend’s recommendation or personal involvement rather than a proposal. The introduction matters more than the paperwork, and an organisation with no route to the family through someone it already trusts is effectively invisible.

Control. Very little giving is unrestricted. Lien attributes this to limited trust in delivery organisations and a perceived shortfall in accountability, transparency and governance.

What this means in practice

A 2026 study by the Centre for Asian Philanthropy and Society found 81% of social delivery organisations across 17 Asian economies say securing unrestricted funding is a challenge. If you run a charity in Asia and cannot get flexible money, that is the reason, and it is not about you.

The family business is usually the source

“Most Asian foundations and philanthropists are part of family business ecosystems,” says Tanoto. The giving is not a separate institution sitting beside the company. It grows out of it, is often staffed by people from it, and is funded by its cash flow rather than by an endowment.

She is direct about what this is for. Philanthropy is “a way to pass on family values from one generation to the next, which is quite different from philanthropy in the Western context.”

That reframes what an Asian family foundation is doing. In the American model a foundation exists to deploy capital effectively, and it is judged on that. In much of Asia it also exists to hold a family together and to teach the next generation something, and it is judged on that too. Both jobs are real. The second one rarely appears in the strategy documents, which is why outside advisers keep recommending changes that the family refuses.

The Western version of the same starting point ends somewhere different. Dick DeVos, son of Amway’s co-founder and later its president, built his giving into institutions, reshaping education and healthcare provision, and runs an investment firm alongside it. The business is still the source, exactly as in Asia. What differs is the destination: capital deployed through a structure built to outlast the family, rather than a practice designed to hold the family together. Neither is better. They answer different questions, and confusing the two is why imported advice so often lands badly.

It also explains the timing of handovers. Families give the next generation the foundation before they give them the company, because the downside is smaller and the lessons transfer. Watching how a family runs its giving is a reasonable way to predict where the business is going.

What families build

Four structures, roughly by how much machinery each one needs.

Structure What it is Best for Main weakness
Direct giving Cash or goods straight to causes the family knows Speed, and staying close to the recipient Spreads thin; results hard to see
Through the business The company funds causes, often near its sites Using company capability, not just money Blurs into CSR; rises and falls with trading
Donor-advised fund A giving account at a sponsoring organisation; contribute now, grant out over time A real budget without a board or filings Less control than a foundation; you recommend rather than direct
Family foundation A separate entity making grants, usually endowed Permanence, staff, a name that outlives you Needs a board, a process and reporting
Own programme The family builds and runs the work itself Problems where nothing suitable exists Takes the most time by a wide margin

The donor-advised fund is the newest of these in Asia and the fastest growing. The Community Foundation of Singapore operates them, and Singapore’s Economic Development Board has published a guide to them jointly with the Wealth Management Institute and the Private Banking Industry Group. For a family with a next generation to bring in, the appeal is specific: a defined budget and genuine decisions, without the board seats, staff and annual filings a foundation requires.

The last row is more common in Asia than the research suggests, and it produces effects that grant-making rarely does.

Tikam Jain, a leader in India’s real estate industry, built goshalas, or cow shelters, with his brother after seeing livestock left untended across rural communities that could no longer afford to keep them. The knock-on effects are the interesting part. Farmers who could not afford commercial fertiliser gained access to cow dung. The shelters created jobs and improved healthcare access nearby. His family has planted 90 to 100 trees. Jain does not call himself a philanthropist, runs the work himself from planning through execution, and takes nothing from it.

A grant-maker funding the same problem would have written a cheque to an animal welfare charity and learned none of that.

Where relationships beat financial models

The relationship-first pattern is not only a limitation. It is also what lets Asian families fund things nobody else will.

Research published by the Philanthropy Asia Alliance in May 2026, drawing on 37 interviews and ten case studies across 13 economies, found families backing unproven work at a scale institutions avoid.

Wadhwani AI

Sunil and Romesh Wadhwani committed US$30 million over ten years to an Indian non-profit embedding artificial intelligence into government service delivery. Ten-year horizons with uncertain outcomes are not something a government budget cycle or a fund’s holding period can accommodate.

The Tahija Foundation

More than US$17 million across a decade into a public health programme in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Dengue transmission fell 77% in trial. That result took years to appear, and required households to agree to participate in something unproven.

Urban Spring

A Hong Kong family put over US$11 million across nine years into displacing single-use plastic bottles across the city, a behaviour-change problem with no obvious revenue model.

What links them is patience, and patience is expensive. So how do these families manage the risk? Not with financial modelling. Through relationships: decades of credibility with government that let them place untested ideas inside public systems, and community trust deep enough that households will join a trial. The Tahija Foundation relied on exactly that in Yogyakarta.

The informality Lien describes is the same thing that makes this possible. A family that does not need a business case can act on a conversation.

What is changing

Three shifts are running at once.

The money is moving. An estimated US$2.5 trillion in family wealth passes to the next generation in Asia by 2030, a figure published by the Asia Philanthropy Circle and cited repeatedly by the next-generation leaders we interview.

Giving is formalising, and the next generation is already in the room. The Wealth Management Institute notes traditional models becoming structured, with donor-advised funds, foundations, impact investing and blended finance moving into common use. UBS puts a number on the governance side: a decade ago 21% of respondents to its billionaire survey involved the next generation in planning, and now 60% do. The handover is not a future event.

The next generation asks different questions.Nishtha Agarwal, a next-generation leader from a family of Indian textile manufacturers who now advises charities on winning support from ultra-wealthy donors, is blunt about what those families now assess:

“Vague promises don’t work — UHNW donors want proof of outcomes, not just intent or activity.”

Alignment first, then precision about the problem, then evidence. An organisation heavy on administration, or thin on transparency, gets dropped early and usually without being told why.

They measure more, collaborate more, and fund causes their parents left alone. We looked at that shift in detail in what next-generation philanthropists in Asia do differently.

Hillary Tjioe, the child taken to orphanages in the story above, now works on mental health, wildlife conservation and environmental sustainability with the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Spirit of Enterprise and Junior Chamber International. Her test is simple: “If you can’t help the people around you, how can you help the world?” The Rising Generation of Asia →

Three areas to strengthen

  1. The values transfer, but the structure does notParents pass on the instinct to give without ever building anything that survives them. The giving stops when they do. This is the most common gap and the least discussed, because from inside the family it looks like success right up until the moment it is not.
  2. Control becomes a ceilingRestricting every gift gives the family confidence in how funds are used, and also prevents the organisations they fund from ever building the capacity to do more. The 81% figure is what this looks like from the other side of the table. Families end up funding organisations that stay permanently dependent, then conclude the sector is weak.
  3. Nobody agreed what success meantWithout deciding upfront what evidence would show the work is succeeding, nobody can say afterwards whether it did. Which is precisely the proof Agarwal says families now demand of everyone else.

Questions families ask

What is family philanthropy?

Giving directed by a family rather than an institution, through a foundation, a family office, the family business, a donor-advised fund, or directly. The family decides what to fund, and the money is theirs.

How is family philanthropy in Asia different?

It is less formal, with fewer and smaller foundations. It is organised around family, clan and community rather than causes. Giving follows affiliation and personal relationships, and very little of it is unrestricted. It also functions as a way of transmitting family values, which is not the primary purpose it serves in the West.

What is the difference between charity and philanthropy?

Charity meets an immediate need: food, treatment, emergency relief. Philanthropy funds the cause behind the need, over years. Most Asian families do both without drawing a line between them.

Why is unrestricted funding so hard to get in Asia?

Because families exercise a lot of control over how gifts are used, which Laurence Lien attributes to limited trust in delivery organisations. The Centre for Asian Philanthropy and Society found 81% of social delivery organisations across 17 Asian economies name it as a challenge.

Should a family set up a foundation or use a donor-advised fund?

A foundation if you need permanence, staff and a name that outlives you, and can carry the governance and reporting. A donor-advised fund if you want a real budget and real decisions without that machinery, which also makes it the easier way to hand something meaningful to the next generation. In Singapore the Community Foundation of Singapore operates them.

How much wealth is passing to the next generation?

An estimated US$2.5 trillion in Asia by 2030. On the governance side, UBS reports next-generation involvement in planning rising from 21% to 60% of surveyed billionaires over a decade.

Where can I read the research?

The UBS-INSEAD study Family Philanthropy in Asia surveyed over 200 wealthy families across ten markets. The Centre for Asian Philanthropy and Society, the Asia Philanthropy Circle and the Philanthropy Asia Alliance all publish on the region.

What this means if you are starting

If philanthropy in your family is currently a habit rather than a structure, the useful question is not which vehicle to set up. It is whether the habit survives you.

Answer that first and the structure follows. Direct giving if speed and closeness matter most. A donor-advised fund if you want the next generation making real decisions this year. A foundation if you need permanence and staff. Your own programme if the thing you want does not exist yet.

Belinda Tanoto’s parents built a habit that did survive. They took her to an orphanage instead of throwing her a party, and thirty years later she runs a foundation and takes her own children.

That is the thing worth engineering. Family philanthropy in Asia works this way round: the values come first, and the structures are downstream of them.

Before you move on

  • If the founding decision-maker in your family stepped back tomorrow, who signs the next gift?
  • Could someone outside the family explain why you funded what you funded last year?
  • Is your giving organised around causes, or around the relationships you already have?
  • Have you ever written down what evidence would show the work is succeeding?

One thing to do this week. Take the last gift your family made and write the single sentence that explains why. If you cannot, that is the gap, and it is the one that decides whether the habit survives you.

Sources

Related: What do next-generation philanthropists in Asia do differently?

The Business & Philanthropy Forum publishes interviews with the families and family offices working through exactly this.

The Business & Philanthropy Forum 2026 runs 6 to 7 November at Shangri-La Singapore.

Two days with the families, family offices and foundations making these decisions, rather than reading about them afterwards. Reserve a place, or read the interviews first.