Article: Strategic Philanthropy and Public Philanthropic Intermediaries: A Comparison of Institutional Responses in Singapore, Japan and Australia

Donors’ quests for more sophisticated, strategic and connected ways of philanthropic giving, long prominent in the United States, are now ubiquitous around the world. This is one factor in the stratospheric expansion of ‘donor-advised funds’ (DAFs), a form of philanthropic vehicle that enables donors to give to a public charity-including community foundations-claiming an immediate tax deduction, while retaining rights to advise the charity on how to distribute those funds later. The popularity of DAFs has expanded to the Asia Pacific, where many jurisdictions now provide public philanthropic intermediaries as an institutional response to donor desires. DAFs have been controversial in the United States, while analysis in other jurisdictions has been limited. This article identifies key concerns raised in the US context and compares the institutional responses of Singapore, Japan and Australia, focussing on the degree to which the responses address those concerns, whilst still retaining the advantages of intermediaries. In doing so it identifies that different regulatory approaches are possible, and likely desirable, due to differences between the three jurisdictions. The analysis also helps to predict whether public philanthropic intermediaries are likely to become a significant feature of the philanthropic landscape in Singapore, Japan and Australia.