Title of the session: Plenary 2- Disruptive vs.

Sustaining social investing

Summary of the session content:
This session focuses on how social impact community should engage with governments and other
stakeholders in order to scale up and systematic change. Despite of governments bureaucratic
nature, it is core player of the ecosystem and responsibility holder for the society. Since things
should be done within the framework provided by the government, engaging with government,
earning their trust is necessary. Another important factor of multi sector collaboration, we need to
know whom to approach, defining the right person is a key to collaboration. Government is not one
body, it has many layers of authority organizations, politicians, therefore always requires lengthy
time. Governments always look into many things at once and prefers wide and deep impact because
of their responsibilities.
Speakers:
Melissa Berman, President&CEO Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors
She has joined Rockefeller Foundation Philanthropy Advisors .Inc. in 2001.Rockefeller Philanthropy
Advisors is a non-profit organization that currently advises on manages more than 280$ annual
giving. They have broad range of services: developing strategic and operating plans, implementing
and evaluating grant programs, impact assessment of grant making, supporting fiscal sponsorship,
and developing tools to strategic giving. Rockefeller foundation primarily focused on developing
educational system in US, eradicating diseases by supporting health system. They have flagship
institutions around the world. Trends in donors and investors have changed to Global Culture of
giving. New ways to use financial resources to increase awareness, advocating people to concern
about social problems have been becoming popular these days.
Kyungsun Chung (Founder & CEO of Root Impact)
Root impact is a nonprofit organization, focuses on philanthropic advisory service and building
capacity of social innovation sector in Korea. He believes in multi-stakeholder collaboration for
public good. Root impact helped Ashoka to launch Ashoka Korea and also, established partnership
with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisory. Recently, he has involved with the project on establishing
hub city for social innovators (Hub& Company). He successfully raised 25million USD for housing for
30 change makers, 20 offices to NGOs and SEs. Now, almost 300 people are working in these offices.
Main goal is to show private sector can also make social cluster.
Laurience Lien, Chairman and Chief Executive Asia Philanthropy Circle
Asia Philanthropy Circle is a new non-profit initiative that convenes Asian philanthropist to learn,
collaborate and catalyze new social interventions. His grandfather started his business from the
scratch and always insisted on doing well for the society. He donated 48% of his assets to donation.

In 1950s, Foundation collaborated with many stakeholders to establish universities which have
significantly influenced the quality of Singaporean education system. He believes that in order to
keep sustainable investing going, we need both sustainers and disruptive investors to commit long
term change.

Questions and Answers:

Question 1: What was the wealth distribution in their lifetime?
Melissa
There has been an increasing willingness to make big bets. It has been proven that a lot of money in
short time span makes huge impact, but little money on time to time has little. However, it highly
depends on the ecosystem, very situational. For donors, how to use / manage their money to have
huge impact on society is very appealing.
Kyungsung
In Asian context, children are expected to succeed their family money; therefore, there is huge
family dynamics into it. Working with Asian donors could be different. Therefore, educating them
and also customizing could be some of the solutions. Most of them are very peer driven,
collaborative mindset. Therefore, by sharing and facilitating best practices definitely help.

Question 2: Experiences with private and public collaboration. Have you ever worked with
government?
Kyungsung
Municipal/governments are core actors of revitalizing the society. But working with governments, it
takes time. In terms of time scale, it rarely matches private sectors interest. If you want to scale up
with the government, pretty high threshold of patience is necessary.
Melissa
Private investors/sectors can play a role on innovation because governments resist the idea of
artificially determined outcomes and outputs when their money is on the bet, therefore for the
initial part, philanthropy and private sector can play important part. To bet on something when the
outcome is uncertain it is hard for government to engage.