Exciting things are happening in the Impact Investing space in Asia. My friend En Lee, is involved in IIX Asia, home of Asia's first private and public platforms for Social Enterprises (SE's) to raise capital efficiently.
Shujog, IIX's nonprofit sister organization was created to carry out the research and impact assessment work on SEs across Asia Pacific. In addition, Shujog also took on the role to do advocacy work for SEs interms of arranging monthly talks around impact investing.
I feel China is behind in the Impact Investing space. In my recent tour of HK and China, whenever I bought up the topic of Impact Investing, after extended explanations, I was always met with "that will never work in China". I guess the underlying assumption is that the Chinese people are too busy chasing money, and there is no value system nor a trusted infrastructure to support philanthropic work other than those backed by the government. Even home grown charities are rare in China, never mind something that tries to make money and do good at the same time.
But things are changing. As people's wealth grow, there is an increasing need to do some good with one's pile of cash, especially amongst the super rich. Putting the fundamental motivations of such actions aside, there need to be a system that supports the distribution and handling of this stream of money. Already, we hear of opportunities of foundations being set up by the the new generation of wealth who are no longer satisfied with donating to monasteries or government funded projects, yet desperately wanting to address social issues in China. There are also examples of social entrepreneurs doing great work on the ground. More work needs to be done connecting these two communities, or at least let each know the other exists. This, I think is the great work carried out by organizations such as IIX. Please open an office in China!
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