Is Japanese Fundraising Taking Off?
If you’ve read my book Winning Gifts (what, not yet), you’ll remember a discussion of a Japanese business executives tour that I helped with in the early 1990s. One of the gentlemen I met with that day questioned me repeatedly about why we had philanthropic causes in the United States. He concluded that in Japan the government took care of all social causes and business supplied jobs. In America everyone had run away from various governments around the world over our 200 year history. Therefore we distrust government and gather together by ourselves to fix societal problems.
At the recent AFP conference in San Diego a Japanese man came to my book signing. We got to talking and he said that he was a fundraising consultant in Japan. I was amazed. I asked him what had changed since the early 90s.
He said the bubble burst of the late 90s in Japan had caused distrust in the government. People were laid off from corporate jobs and all of a sudden philanthropy began to grow.
I need to find out more. If you have information, let me know.
Tom Wilson
Author, Winning Gifts
4.08.2008
Japanese Philanthropy
Posted by Tom Wilson at 11:26 PM
Labels: fundraising, philanthropy
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1 Comment:
Tom, I bumped into your blog and this entry on Japanese philanthropy tonight while trolling the internet in preparation for presentations in Hong Kong in early December. Hope I'm not responding too late! Fundamentally, while giving has been going on in Japan forever, and giving by Japanese companies and foundations has been very strong in the West since the late 80s, the new face of organized philanthropy in Japan is the result of government liberalization following the Hanshin earthquake of 1995. Organizations have been growing steadily since, despite economic hardships along the way, and fundraising is still in an early stage. As fundraising continues to grow and professionalize, you can bet that domestic giving by individuals will rise as well! Cheers, Jay Frost, jay@contactreporter.com
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