Philanthropy as a journey of shared learning

In 2026, three organizations launched the Philanthropic Investing Collective (PIC) – Asia Community Foundation, Asia Philanthropy Circle, and elea – as a new model for accelerating impact entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia. Andreas Kirchschläger spoke with PIC champions Francesco Caruso and Lionel Li about what brought them to this partnership, and what they hope it will become.

Francesco: My first encounter with elea and impact investing was through a co-investment in BagoSphere in the Philippines. I had a conversation with Adrian Ackeret during the pandemic about how philanthropic investing works well in some areas and not others. What struck me was what elea brings beyond the financial contribution: mentoring, support, and deep relationship with entrepreneurs. I started visiting the team in Zurich and became convinced that elea’s model – its discipline, its vision, and its way of staying with ventures through the hard parts – was exactly what Southeast Asia needed.

Lionel: Southeast Asia is a dynamic region with a young population, rapid digital adoption, and a genuine spirit of entrepreneurship. Yet many communities face persistent challenges around education, healthcare, and livelihoods. The PIC wants to bridge this gap, combining the principles of investment with the values of philanthropy, using a collaborative rather than transactional approach. By matching solutions with the right capital, it can help businesses tackle social challenges and grow into real engines of change. What made the decision easy for me personally was a striking alignment: the PIC mirrors the three core values of the Li Foundation – innovation, integration, and impact. Finding a new approach to old challenges, bringing together the right people and organizations, and multiplying the effect of every contribution. When I realized this, I knew that I wanted to be part of it.

Andreas: What makes us particularly happy about the PIC right now is that we have felt, over the last years, that something is changing. We see more entrepreneurs, more ventures emerging with an impact mindset and a purpose-driven focus. And we felt we could not support them alone. That’s why we are so grateful for this unique partnership, and for the many committed people and families behind it.

Francesco: At Firetree Philanthropy, we believe there is a real trade-off between impact and financial returns, at least in the complex environments where we work. Our target return is minus 25%: if we recover 75%, that is a win. We want to take the risks others cannot. When exits are driven by financial returns, my experience is that investees lose much of their social impact, because when commercial investors come in, the extra cost of serving underserved populations gets cut. Philanthropic impact investing is what allows you to stay true to the mission. And I think philanthropic impact investing is critical, particularly in regions like Southeast Asia, where you not always have family and friends that can support the initial very risky stages. On the other hand, some sectors, such as social services, require grants, not investment. The question is always what is the right structure for the challenge at hand.

Lionel: Patient capital is everything. Meaningful impact requires long-term engagement. What resonated with me immediately about elea was the combination of careful venture selection with deep, value-driven partnerships. That approach doesn’t just move fast; it moves well.

Andreas: Success is not the financial return the investor gets, but the impact on the lives of people. What we hope to create with the PIC is the conditions for as many young, growing impact companies as possible to survive, become economically stable, and sustain their impact long into the future. Classical grant-funded projects will always end. The question is how we protect impact beyond the project cycle.

Lionel: The entrepreneurial potential is real, but it needs the right kind of backing: patient, principled, and locally embedded. elea has shown it can identify and support entrepreneurs solving real problems across continents. The underlying principles – patience, partnership, impact-first thinking – can be applied in Southeast Asia too. The context is unique; the approach is transferable.

Francesco: The biggest need that no traditional charity can fully satisfy is the creation of stable, formal jobs. Nonprofits can manage crisis and stabilize situations, but if there is no job at the end of that journey, breaking the poverty cycle becomes very difficult. Southeast Asia has an incredible entrepreneurial spirit – in Thailand, Vietnam, and Cambodia, for example – but informal employment only employs yourself. What is needed are entrepreneurs who can be supported to scale, create other jobs, and solve problems. Southeast Asia has been lagging behind India or Africa in this kind of support, and I honestly don’t understand why, because the entrepreneurial energy is unmistakably there.

Andreas: This is the paradox we also witnessed: a truly entrepreneurial dynamic on one side, but an impact investing space that, for a long time, has not evolved to match it. The tradition of philanthropy in Asia is rich and deep, but the space of creating access to jobs, markets, and services has remained underserved. That is now beginning to change.

Lionel: Philanthropy can sometimes be a lonely journey. But when you invest alongside like-minded people with similar values, you create a space for genuine learning and reflection, where you can hear different viewpoints, challenge your assumptions, and become more thoughtful about how impact actually happens. What convinced me, was when I met Elena Torresani during the Learning Journey in Indonesia last year. I have great respect for elea’s philosophy and approach. In business, everything is competitive. In philanthropy, cooperation is what matters. I find that idea remarkable: philanthropy as a journey of shared learning.

Francesco: Collaboration has always been central to APC, so this felt natural to us. And I should not forget to mention Nan Li, who was a true visionary in understanding elea. Her three-week secondment with elea in Zurich was a formative moment that helped lay the groundwork for everything that followed. What really inspires me is not just that a few of us are collaborating, it is that many people are joining and truly committing. The PIC is growing, and that tells me we have collectively found a topic and a way of working that is genuinely new, understood, and exciting. Collectives are only as strong as the number of people who want to carry them forward – and here, many do.

Andreas: It needs the right people to bring such initiatives to work. From elea’s side, we’re tremendously grateful for your support and how this partnership between the three organizations developed into something truly open, mission-focused, and genuinely creative. Trust takes time to build, and we are deeply grateful for your openness, Francesco and Lionel, to think about new ways of working, and to help integrate three organizations around a common journey. We are very happy how fast we could progress. Every interaction brings us further. This is real co-creation.

Francesco: I haven’t changed my convictions, but I have learned more. I have witnessed elea evolving, staying true to its purpose of solving poverty while also understanding that climate is an increasingly important dimension. The intersection between climate and livelihoods, which elea has been exploring, is to me a sign of an organization that can remain disciplined in its principles and creative in its response to what the world actually needs.

Lionel: I have always been curious about how to balance scale with depth of impact. In impact investing, there is constant pressure to scale quickly, but meaningful impact requires patient, long-term engagement. Through the PIC, I hope to see how we can support ventures to grow well while staying deeply connected to the communities they serve.

Andreas: Patience is something we had to learn. When we started twenty years ago, Peter Wuffli and I came from a world where speed was everything. Learning what takes time, and how to accept that without losing momentum, is one of the most important things we have had to internalize. Being patient but still pushing things forward: that tension never really goes away.

Francesco: I already consider this a personal success, because I genuinely believed this would work, and it does. What I hope for now is that the PIC keeps attracting not just the early believers, but also those who need a little more time. The fact that new people keep joining shows this collective is well-curated and worth committing to.

Lionel: A meaningful impact is when people and the community can maximize their potential and shape their future. In capital markets, success means an initial public offering (IPO) – the moment a model attracts broad recognition, more resources, and becomes replicable at scale. I believe philanthropy can have its own IPO: when a program achieves wide social recognition and becomes common sense. The PIC is currently at angel stage in Southeast Asia. My dream is that in a few years it reaches the venture and pre-IPO stage and eventually, the IPO itself. If the elea model has its IPO in Southeast Asia – and if it does, we will have succeeded.

Francesco: My wish is that in a couple of years, elea will see the strategic reason to open an office in Southeast Asia. Not necessarily Singapore, but a base with a small team and a real foot in the region. That would mean a solid portfolio of Southeast Asian impact ventures, enough momentum, and enough local embeddedness to make elea in the region not just a possibility, but a necessity.

Lionel: My dream is an elea office in Singapore, close to the Li Foundation – so we can meet, build together, and maybe share a Southeast Asian coffee on a Friday afternoon.

Andreas: That alone might be reason enough. But jokes aside, thank you both for this exchange of thoughts, and above all, for your friendship, your collaboration, and your unwavering support in this journey.