NVPC sets target of S$1b in donations in a year by 2020

By Claire Huang | Posted: 07 July 2010 1140 hrs


SINGAPORE: The National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre has set itself a lofty target. By 2020, it hopes that donations to charities or Institutions of Public Character in Singapore will go up by some 45 per cent to a billion dollars a year. 

A 2006 Charities Aid Foundation Ranking found that Singapore spent about 0.3 per cent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on charities. 

This is about five times lower than the United States' 1.7 per cent. 

The centre also wants the volunteerism rate to go up to 25 per cent from the current 17 per cent. 

In the United States, the rate is more than 30 per cent while it's about 40 per cent in Britain. 

An NVPC survey found that Singaporeans want to volunteer in general. But many don't know where and how to go about doing it. 

Lawrence Lien, chief executive, National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre, said: "Organisations or non-profit organisations can spend more effort to create those jobs that volunteers can do. They can also manage volunteers well because it's one thing to bring them in to do the job while it's another thing to retain them. Volunteer management is very important and I think that over time it has been professionalised but we can invest even more in it." 

NVPC Chairman Stanley Tan said the community has to take a more pro-active stance too. 

He said: "So the challenge is having the community take ownership of participating in growing the community and cementing ourselves as a society." 

Former NVPC head, Willie Cheng, points out that the social services sector needs more capacity-building organisations. 

He said: "The social sector in Singapore is under-developed in that particular area because people are just focused on the non-profit organisations. But you need non-profit organisations that are focused on helping these non-profit organisations grow and to do their work." 

Another key challenge is for the sector to attract non-profit organisation leaders as well as staff. 

Besides the less than attractive financial incentives, the sector also needs to revamp its image to show people that this is a viable career. 

Mr Lien added: "Donors tend to not want to pay for overheads. Donors tend to not want to pay for organisational capacity building. I think we need to educate donors why these things are important and so donors will invest in capacity building and leadership development." 

Some 200 participants took part in a forum organised by NVPC aimed at bringing the social services sector to the next level. 


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