I stared at my supervisor, surprised at the lifeline that she was offering. As a single working mother, and a Permanent Resident in Singapore, my client needed money to support her children’s studies, but couldn’t find any help.

Now, my supervisor was suggesting Lee Foundation, who had frequently donated to various causes in Singapore.

I quickly grasped the opportunity, and wrote the social report that would get us the funds. Because of that money, my client was able to help her children to buy the necessary books and items for school.

I’m not exactly sure why you’re here, but I’d hazard a guess.

You want to donate, but you don’t know where best to donate to. After all, there are numerous causes. And if you look at the donation numbers, it’s rising, isn’t it? And in a slow economy, you’d naturally want to preserve some of your hard-earned cash.

Why do you need to donate?

Many, complex needs, rather than one simple need that can be solved by money

Of course, one of the first reasons is because needs have grown increasingly more complex over the years. When I was working in the Family Service Centre during COVID, I suddenly realised that many clients came with multifarious needs.

It wasn’t just one single need.

But it was many.

It used to be that if you were low-income, the quickest way seemed to be donating money, so that you could get what you needed. But it’s no longer that simple. The low-income family I dealt with had issues such as:

1. 2 children with special needs
2. A cramped 1-room rental flat for the family of 7
3. Difficulties for the mother in securing remote employment, so she could raise the family’s income whilst still caring for her children.

When I first started with them, I had to end up partnering preschools to pick up the child occasionally when the mum needed to care for the sick boy. And an employer who was willing to give the dad a chance to work.

And even if you’d like to donate, with 2398 charities today, who should you donate to?

Today’s article is different from most others that give a laundry list of charities. Rather, we start from what change you’d like to impact, and how we can make that happen.

Social ROI?

More importantly, it looks at how you can donate so your dollar goes the furthest.

In investment terms, you may want ROI. And here’s how you can get better social ROI for your dollar.

But how should you donate so you help as much as possible?

Donate unrestricted funds

Many donors have specified that they want funds that are ring fenced for a certain need. But that often restricts the other work that needs to be done to ensure the right programmes are run, such as the finance department, or the HR that even hires the right people.

So if you can, donate unrestrictedly.

You want to address unmet needs

One often unmet need is within the ex-offender community.

Many broad brush them and think of them as one amorphous community who deserve the punishment they get.

Like many others, when I first started working at The Helping Hand, I had some stigma towards ex-offenders. After all, didn’t they seem to be personally responsible for their actions? Why should we help them?

But The Helping Hand works specifically with those who have had substance abuse issues. The road into drug addiction is not linear, and can often be complex.

It may not always be their fault.

The Helping Hand

One elderly man started abusing drugs from a young age. He had been from a broken family, and ended up doing drugs to feed the void within him. What has been even more worrying is how these drugs were pushed to him from a young age.

When you’re 13, and your friends are playing Pokemon, and it looks cooler to be doing drugs, no one wants to stop. You end up hooked, for life.

If you were pushed drugs at 13, can it really be considered your fault? Yes, some of it is, but a large part can be due to the environmental factors, and that isn’t necessarily something people can control.

With the recent laws around vaping being:

Second-time offenders: Mandatory three-month rehabilitation programme.
Third or subsequent offences: Prosecution under TCASA with fines up to $2,000

This means that many more will come into contact with the famed Drug Rehabilitation Centre (DRC), which aims to help drug abusers go cold turkey, and eventually wean off their addiction.

Even Singapore’s Government has come to see the dangers of drugs, and vapes, and to address them through strong measures. That’s why charities like The Helping Hand, which function as a halfway house for people who’ve struggled with drugs and alcohol, help.

The Helping Hand focuses on change through the 4-Fold Therapy, which has ultimately helped in giving ex-offenders a more structured method for change. Through work such as the removals business and a bakery, this creates a structure for change, so that our residents can change for the better.

Donating to The Helping Hand supports dignified work.

You want to help families

A larger trend happening in the sector is the shift away from single service organisations (like those just doing family service centres), into larger, multi-service centers. One example is Care Corner, which has recognized the complexity of needs and tried increasingly to serve more and more of them.

Today, Care Corner spans the whole island, and is headed by one of the best organizational development gurus in the business, Christian Chao.

Care Corner

Why donate to them?

I used to do low bono marketing for them, running their Google Ads. Working with Petrina and Jia Ying, the communications executive, I realised that they both had a strong vision for what the work was. They saw Care Corner as spreading care to every corner of Singapore, in a holistic and timely manner.

Similarly, many times, we may struggle to see what exactly the work entails at the other charities. Places like Care Corner deserve our donations, because they’ve got it figured out.

They wrote in their 2024 Annual Report,

we are taking a more holistic and systemic approach to uplift lives.

This means looking beyond the immediate, and placing greater emphasis on preventive and developmental work, recognising that early and upstream interventions can create lasting impact across lifespans and generations.

South Central FSC

Another SSA I deeply respect, and I think you should look at, is called South Central. For years, they have done engaging, innovative work.

Like Jio-ing (inviting) you to go lepak (relax) with them.

Or the “I Wish You Enough” vision, where the most recent 2021 event was about beneficiaries encouraging neighbors to hang towels on doors.

Their innovation at wanting to build “Poverty Transformation With-In Empowered Communities” have helped them to really grow lasting change within the communities they are a part of.

Beyond Social Services

Beyond is another that has pioneered and trailblazer the way forward. For example, one thing I’ve admired is how they have done the Tabung initiative, where they found the problem with the the initial matched savings CDA account from the government. They realised many of the low-income families were not able to access it because they didn’t even have the spare cash to save. So they found donors who could match it too.

And if you’d like to help these young families, give to Beyond.

They have also been pioneers in other formats like community theatre, where they have helped youths to express their deep traumatic energies in a different way.

They have been really, really instrumental in their change.

You can just start with a dollar

Over my past 3 years working in fundraising, I’ve come to realise a quick thought.

You only need to donate a dollar to help. No one is expecting big amounts. Simply a dollar would help.

And yes, some of these charities might not always give you the clearest indication of how they used your money, but I think you’d know this.

They work day and night to help these clients, often for less than what they’d get elsewhere.

I recall 24 December 2020, because it was the time I was called back to the hospital. It was the time when I had been deeply traumatized by how a wife hit her husband, and how he landed up there. That Boxing Day, I didn’t have a break.

And the day after too.

I’m not the only one. Many other social workers and charity workers work tirelessly to make things possible for our clients. Why? Because we see their lives as inherently worth the effort.