Deep Report on Effective Giving in Asia

By Joel Tan🔸 @ 2026-01-04T12:46 (+49)

Note: An initial version of this report was published earlier this year; the report has since been updated, and this forum post with it.

Key Takeaway: CEARCH recommends effective giving in Asia as a high impact philanthropic cause.

The full report can be read here.

Introduction: This research project evaluated the cause area of effective giving in Asia. We focused in particular on promotion of the 10% pledge, while also investigating other paths to impact like outreach to high net worth individuals (HNWIs) and non-pledge public fundraising. We treated high-income East Asian countries (i.e. Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan & South Korea) as the primary targets, given their high donation potential and CEARCH's greater familiarity with the region.

As with all our research projects, this investigation heavily focused on estimating the cause area's cost-effectiveness using quantitative modelling, while gathering evidence from the scientific literature, expert interviews, and beneficiary surveys.

Cost-Effectiveness: We model the cost-effectiveness of effective giving in Asia as a function of (a) the value of pledge donations resulting from a 10% pledge by an Asian pledger; (b) the value of more talent resulting from a 10% pledge by an Asian pledger; and (c) the tractability of 10% pledge promotion in Asia (while applying a number of miscellaneous adjustments to account for other sources of impact like HNWI outreach and non-pledge public donations, and to discount for diminishing marginal returns and bias).

We estimate that effective giving in Asia has a giving multiplier of about 10x GiveWell; it averts the equivalent of 8,106 DALYs per USD 100,000.

Note that this estimate is highly uncertain:

• (a) We have painstakingly tried to incorporate all important variables into the structure of our model, but our analysis may well have excluded some key considerations.
• (b) We use hard empirical data to ground our line-item estimates whenever possible; unfortunately, relevant data is not always available, and we are sometimes forced to make subjective judgement calls to form key estimates instead.

Impact: A successful effective giving initiative (EGI) in Asia would have high impact, particularly through (a) securing highly-valuable 10% pledges, (b) engaging institutional grantmakers & HNWIs, and (c) fundraising for non-pledge public donations.

• As part of our analysis, and using data from Giving What We Can (GWWC), we estimated the monetary value of a pledge as being equivalent to USD 20,000 in GiveWell donations. However, after reviewing the scientific literature, consulting experts, and surveying high-impact GHD charities, our considered view is that 10% pledges in Asia will be less valuable in terms of money moved to effective charities; this is due to a number of key factors, such as Asian pledgers being (a) less effectiveness-oriented, and (b) less likely to give at all, though it is also true that Asian pledgers are (c) more counterfactually valuable, insofar as are less likely to do effective giving anyway in the absence of the pledge. Overall, we estimate the monetary value of a pledge in Asia as being equivalent to USD 14,000 in GiveWell donations.
• A pledge is also beneficial because it helps direct more talent to high-impact causes, particularly by getting people more socially involved in EA, where many people are thinking about high impact careers. We estimated the talent value of a pledge as being equivalent to USD 800 in GiveWell donations. That said, after reviewing the scientific literature, we believe that 10% pledges in Asia will be less valuable in terms of talent directed to high-impact causes; this is due to a number of key factors, such as Asian pledgers being (a) less likely to switch into lower-prestige but higher-impact causes, and (b) less likely to transition to a high-impact career at all. Overall, we estimate the talent value of a pledge in Asia as being equivalent to USD 700 in GiveWell donations.
• Beyond pledge promotion, the Asian effective giving organization can also engage institutional grantmakers & HNWIs, to get them to give effectively; existing data suggests that such HNWI outreach will move perhaps 90% of the money that pledge promotion does. Meanwhile, the Asian effective giving organization can also promote non-pledge effective giving to the public, particularly by acting as a donation platform; existing data suggests that such public fundraising will move perhaps 20% of the money that pledge promotion does.

Tractability: When evaluating the tractability of promoting effective giving in Asia, we relied on the track record of existing organizations like Charity Box, GWWC and EA Singapore. We also formed an inside view, and took into account various key considerations.

On the negative side:

• (1) Asians are both less likely to give, and (if they do give) to give less.
• (2) Asian donors are also less effectiveness-oriented.
• (3) Both the literature and direct experience suggest that there is a relative lack of EA talent in Asia, which would make founding or staffing local EGIs challenging.
• (4) Experts are pessimistic about the tractability of effective giving in Asia.
• (5) The high-impact GHD charities we surveyed testified that fundraising from local non-EA sources in Asia is difficult.

On the positive side:

• (6) There is a highly effective outreach strategy available, in the form of engaging East Asian students who go overseas to study in the UK & US.
• (7) There are various high-impact giving opportunities available locally in East Asia, across global health & development, animal welfare & biosecurity.
• (8) CEARCH is extremely well-connected in, and knowledgeable about, the Asian philanthropic landscape, and we can provide a lot of assistance to other EGIs operating in East Asia.
• (9) Ambitious Impact conducted a country analysis, and are particularly excited about new effective giving initiatives in Singapore, South Korea, and Japan, amongst other countries.
• (10) Newer effective giving organizations in Asia have done fairly well – EA HK raised significant sums on its giving platform GiveWise in 2025-26 at very little cost, and Impactful Giving in India has a positive giving multiplier through their success in setting up an India-focused animal welfare funding circle.

CEARCH is cautiously optimistic about the tractability of promoting effective giving in Asia, given the success of existing effective giving initiatives in Asia, the comparatively low budgetary costs, and the fact that marginal returns are probably near constant at the cause area's current funding levels.

Ecosystem Factors: On balance, ecosystem-level factors suggest that effective giving work in Asia is valuable; despite the scarcity of local EA talent making it difficult to run effective giving initiatives in Asia, there are significant funding gaps for highly cost-effective interventions, even as money helps fund the discovery of high-impact new ideas.

Conclusion: Overall, CEARCH recommends effective giving in Asia as a high impact philanthropic cause, on the basis of:

• High cost-effectiveness
• Significant impact being achieved if an effective giving initiative in Asia were to be successful
• Moderate-to-good tractability
• Favourable ecosystem-level factors

Concretely, we recommend that:

• Charity Entrepreneurship & Giving What We Can incubate new effective giving initiatives in Asia.
• Donors fund new & existing effective giving initiatives in Asia.