ClimateWorks Foundation emphasised the need to address the impacts of climate change, with philanthropy efforts such as The Global Cooling prize playing a key role in catalysing innovative solutions. This speeds up the next step in working with businesses and governments to pool resources for more significant outcomes, and to set the standards to implement the solutions globally so that impact is wide-reaching and long-lasting. Once solutions are widely adopted, philanthropy can cease with the government and markets taking over.
Mae Fah Luang Foundation believes that community involvement is a crucial aspect of successful projects. Understanding and prioritising the needs of the community, getting their buy in, and working collaboratively are seen as fundamental strategies. Through this people-centric model, the community gradually gains capacity and reaches a stage of self-governance whereby they are able to look after themselves and understand the external forces of economic environment. For this approach, time and scale are critical challenges, with philanthropy needing to kickstart the process and attract impact investors to scale thereafter.
The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust highlights the need to aggregate impact at an individual project to programmatic to organisational level. Establishing a scientific impact measurement framework and methodology allows for better systematic and transparent integrated reporting. If the return on investment is not as good financially, one should think about measuring it with a different metric, pull out of social impact investing and use the funding for philanthropy instead. It is necessary to foster cohesive efforts across sectors in order to maximise scale and impact, as philanthropy’s contribution is small relative to government and private funding.