This is the third piece in WINGS’ #LiftUpPhilanthropy Fund mini-series featuring grantees from our 2024 Call for Proposals. Read the earlier updates from Africa and Latin America.
Photo by Wemmy L / WINGS
By Hana Superal, Milet Aquino, and Gina Estipona (Association of Foundations Secretariat), and Shazia Maqsood Amjad (Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy)
This article spotlights how Philanthropy Support Organisations in Asia are working in strengthening philanthropy ecosystems and advancing multi-stakeholder climate action and regulatory reforms at the country level.
The philanthropic landscape in Asia is vast and diverse, rooted in traditions of charity and community, while also evolving through more institutionalised forms with the rise of corporate and family foundations. Asia is the second most ‘giving’ region after Africa, yet many countries transitioning to middle-income status are facing aid cuts both from the United States and European countries, creating pressure to strengthen domestic sources of funding. This changing context is opening space for innovation within the sector, from early interventions and proactive funding to the use of data and evidence for decision-making. Collaboration is also gaining momentum, though networks and ecosystem builders still struggle to secure resources.
Across the region, the threats and impacts of climate change are reshaping the role of philanthropy. In the Philippines, which ranks first globally in climate vulnerability, philanthropic actors, together with other stakeholders, are pushing philanthropy beyond immediate disaster response to long-term mitigation and adaptation. Meanwhile, Pakistan is making resilience a central lens for social investment, with nonprofits and corporations increasingly embedding climate adaptation into education, health, and livelihoods.
In both contexts, Philanthropy Support Organisations (PSOs)1 are emerging as vital enablers, bridging policy and practice, building local capacity, and ensuring that climate action is mainstreamed into development priorities. It is within this shifting landscape that the Association of Foundations (AF) in the Philippines puts climate action at the centre while working to strengthen Philanthropy Support Ecosystems (PSEs)2. The Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy (PCP) focuses on enhancing PSEs and fostering an enabling environment for philanthropy and giving. As grantees of the first Call for Proposals, under the WINGS #LiftUpPhilanthropy Fund, both organisations led country actions to advance the impact of PSOs in Asia.
Building PSO capacity and multi-stakeholder collaborations for climate action:
PSOs in the Philippines have long been active in poverty alleviation, education, health, food and water security, and biodiversity conservation. Project ICARE, led by AF, seeks to strengthen these PSOs’ capacities and deepen their engagement in advancing the Sustainable Development Goals, with a particular focus on climate action by:
- Helping these PSOs weave climate action into their programme areas, expanding their role in addressing the urgent challenge of climate change.
- Collaborating with key stakeholders to equip PSOs with the knowledge, skills, and tools to design and implement concrete climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives.
- Mainstreaming climate action as a cross-cutting priority, integrating it into the planning and implementation of PSO programmes and embedding it in the communities and sectors they serve across the country.
Project ICARE has provided valuable lessons on what makes collaboration effective. Clear alignment on roles and expectations from the outset builds trust, makes coordination smoother, and nurtures a deeper sense of co-ownership and co-leadership. This approach has enabled the project’s Climate Action Core Group, comprising climate experts representing civil society, government, and the private sector, to sustain strong engagement and momentum from planning through implementation.
By bringing together institutions and individuals, the project benefits from their collective expertise, bridging climate science, policy, and community-driven solutions. This has led to a more inclusive and grounded approach to climate action that is both feasible and context-sensitive.
Beyond this Core Group, the project also creates spaces for PSO leaders to share experiences, learn from one another, and explore opportunities for joint initiatives. Many PSOs are eager to integrate climate action into their strategies and programmes, but often need guidance on where and how to begin. A dedicated go-to platform that curates tools and resources makes those first steps easier, supporting PSOs as they move from building foundational knowledge to applying solutions and exploring new opportunities for collaboration in the field.
Strengthening capacities in advocating for an enabling environment
Similarly, in Pakistan, PCP’s ‘Enhancing the Philanthropy Ecosystem in Pakistan’ project proves that it is important to strengthen PSOs and non-profit organisations (NPOs) in operational capacities and advocacy for an enabling environment. As a grantee of the LUP fund, PCP developed an evidence-based policy paper proposing actionable legal and regulatory reforms. This paper was informed by a comprehensive literature review, in-depth interviews, regional focus group discussions with more than 60 nonprofit organisations, and a comparative analysis of international best practices. A validation workshop further refined the recommendations to ensure they reflected ground realities and stakeholder perspectives.
The analysis reveals that Pakistan’s philanthropy ecosystem is constrained by:
- A fragmented legal framework, overlapping regulatory bodies, inconsistent tax policies, and stringent financial regulations.
- These challenges are compounded by the absence of a centralised platform to oversee PSO and NPO operations and the bureaucratic hurdles that disproportionately burden small and medium-sized organisations.
- Limited institutional capacity and duplicative compliance requirements further undermine PSO and NPOs’ ability to maximise their social impact.
Moreover, amid shifting global geopolitics, Pakistan can no longer rely heavily on foreign funding for development. This makes the mobilisation of domestic philanthropy all the more urgent, something that can only be achieved through strong institutional backing and consistent government support. In practice, PSOs and NPOs are already playing a transformative role by providing critical services in education, healthcare, and social welfare, areas traditionally seen as state responsibilities. The nonprofit sector has, thus, become a vital partner in national development, bridging service delivery gaps across the country.
To ensure sustainability, the project emphasises both capacity building and strengthening the skills of philanthropic organisations through:
- Regulatory reform to simplify processes and reduce duplication;
- Capacity development in compliance, stakeholder engagement, and programme delivery;
- Mindset shifts through campaigns promoting giving and social responsibility as shared cultural values;
- Collaboration platforms to bring together philanthropy, government, and private sector actors to reduce duplication and amplify impact.
Lessons for Asia’s philanthropic future
The experiences of AF and PCP show that while national contexts differ, shared challenges and opportunities cut across the region. Taken together, these cases highlight what philanthropy in Asia must prioritise if it is to adapt to shrinking aid, intensifying climate risks, and growing demands for accountability. Here are five lessons for what philanthropy can do:
- Strengthen domestic giving by building trust and aligning with cultural values to reduce dependency on international aid.
- Expand the role of PSOs as compliance bridges, knowledge hubs, and climate-responsive actors.
- Foster collaboration with clarity, ensuring early alignment on shared agendas, roles, and expectations.
- Listen to communities and integrate their framing of challenges – climate, poverty, or inequality – into broader strategies.
- Push for enabling regulation that simplifies compliance and allows nonprofits to focus on impact, not bureaucracy.
- Philanthropy support organisations, sometimes referred to as ‘intermediary’ or ‘infrastructure’ organisations, include entities that provide a variety of services to support and strengthen philanthropy in a region or around a theme. PSOs usually do not directly fund or implement philanthropic programmes themselves, but rather provide services to support those that do. That said, some philanthropic funders do provide ecosystem support services too, so the distinction is not always clear-cut. ↩︎
- The community of interacting organisations, functions and activities that assists and enables the achievement of philanthropy’s potential by nurturing its capacity, capabilities, connection and credibility. ↩︎
Hanazel B. Superal is a Project Officer at the Association of Foundations (AF), where she works on Project ICARE (Igniting Climate Action and Responsibility for the Environment). Prior to this, she was involved in a sustainability-focused skills development initiative for technical-vocational education and training.
Milet Agatha Aquino is the Communications Officer of the Association of Foundations (AF). Prior to that, she served as the Program Officer of AF’s capacity building flagship initiative, the Leaders Empowered and Dedicated to Serve through the NGO Sector (LEAD to Serve) Programme.
Gina M. Estipona is a Program Manager at the Association of Foundations (AF), where she leads the Igniting Climate Action and Responsibility for the Environment (ICARE) Project, and serves as Co Secretariat of the Zero Poverty PH 2030 (ZeP2030) coalition. She previously served as National Manager of the Department of Education’s Abot-Alam programme, a multi-sectoral collaboration aimed at addressing the needs of out-of-school youth across the Philippines.
Shazia Maqsood Amjad, the Executive Director at Pakistan Centre for Philanthropy is an international development professional and an education expert, having more than 30 years of experience working with national and international organizations. She is a graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Education (Boston, USA) and Institute of Development Policy Management, UK.
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