As Singapore pushes to become a hub for philanthropy, the paucity of research on the sector is becoming a challenge for the growing number of donors who want to make informed decisions and track the impact of their choices. Industry sources told PhilanthropyAsia that Singapore is well behind developed Western countries when it comes to available data on the social sector and that it can be difficult to do even basic compilations and collations, let alone in-depth analyses. For example, information to assess an individual charity should cover aspects such as its financial efficiency, accountability, governance, fundraising, the input and output of its programmes as well as best practices for the group. But such details are hard to come by in Singapore, say players. The dearth of data is evident also in Hong Kong, the other Asian hot spot for private wealth. “In North America, especially in the United States, there has been a big push to be transparent about your data and statistics,” said Sangeetha Watson, senior manager for insights at AVPN, an Asia-based funders’ network headquartered in Singapore. “However, that level of reporting doesn’t yet exist in Asia,” she said. Singapore...