Welfare groups must do more to address 'trust deficit': Report, Latest Singapore News - The New Paper
Singapore

Welfare groups must do more to address 'trust deficit': Report

This article is more than 12 months old

Report finds that more needs to be done to boost charitable efforts here

Welfare groups must do more to address the "trust deficit" and spread awareness of their work here, researchers assessing conditions for philanthropic efforts in the region concluded in a report.

This is despite the fact that Singapore outperformed 14 other Asian economies in the report, in terms of policies such as tax incentives that encourage charitable giving, they said. Individuals and companies enjoy a 250 per cent tax deduction for donations made in Singapore.

The co-authors of the report "Doing Good Index 2018", Dr Ruth A. Shapiro and Ms Mehvesh Mumtaz Ahmed, explored the reasons for this mismatch between a conducive regulatory framework that promotes philanthropy and the lack of societal engagement during a presentation at the Singapore Management University (SMU) yesterday.

SMU conducted a survey of 48 for-profit and non-profit organisations that address social needs here to help in the compiling of the report.

An overwhelming number of the organisations - 94 per cent - agreed that there was a public perception that non-profit employees should earn less.

Sixty per cent of those surveyed also felt that the level of individual giving remained low.

"People don't want to give because they don't trust the organisations to use their money," said Dr Shapiro, who is also the chief executive of the Centre for Asian Philanthropy and Society (Caps), a Hong Kong-based philanthropy think-tank that published the report in January.

Co-author Ms Ahmed, who is also research director at the think-tank, said that conducive policies in Singapore contributed to its strong performance in the index compiled in the study.

But she warned that because the government was doing so much to promote charitable giving, society was merely being pulled along and lagging behind.

Many of the organisations surveyed - 84 per cent - also indicated that they had difficulty recruiting skilled staff.

Mr Dhana Sekar, a 40 year-old IT engineer, who donates $50 to charity each month, agreed with the overall conclusions of the report.

"If I give you $100, my next question is - what are you going to do with it?" he said, adding that organisations here could regularly conduct independent audits and post their projects online.

"Trust comes when there is transparency," Mr Sekar said.

COMMUNITY ISSUES