Giving Compass' Take:

• Barron's explores the millennial face of philanthropy in China, highlighting individuals including Dee Dee Chan. 

• How can experienced donors work to support millennials entering the world of philanthropy?

• Learn about China's growing influence in the Pacific


In Hong Kong, home to some of the richest people in the world, philanthropist Dee Dee Chan is making sure her generation learns how to give back.

In 2014, Chan, who is in her 30s, started a group for her peers—young people from families with at least US$500 million in assets who play an active role in their families’ businesses—to learn about philanthropy and to put it into practice. The hope is to “raise the ‘future generals’ who will make a huge impact on society through their own charitable efforts,” she says.

Chan is the granddaughter of billionaire Chan Chak Fu, who ran a global hotel and real estate business. Today, she’s managing director at Park Lane Capital Holdings, formed in 2007 from the fortune made by her father, Lawrence Chan, who developed and operated hotels and real estate projects.

She’s also director of the Seal of Love Charitable Foundation, a foundation started by her father in 2010, which donated 80 million Hong Kong dollars (US$10.2 million) in 2017 to the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University to support an industry that has become a growing employment sector for the underprivileged in Southeast Asia.

The six or seven core members in each of the two chapters of Chan’s Next Generational Organization (NGO, for short) contribute to a collective pot that they allocate as a group, traveling twice a year for field visits to grassroots nonprofits in Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. “The point is really to make mistakes early together and also have a forum in which we can actually do this together,” Chan says.

Lawrence Chan, 65, says his daughter’s NGO chapters will redefine philanthropy, as his generation—including Hong Kong’s wealthiest man and philanthropist, Li Ka-shing—is “starting to fade away.”

Read the full article about millennial Chinese philanthropy at Barron's.