The future of philanthropy is in the Global South.
Because the future is in the Global South. Goldman Sachs and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) both project that, by 2050, China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Egypt, and Nigeria will be amongst the world’s top economies with an estimated combined real GDP of $86.4 trillion/€81 trillion. The Emerging 7 (E7) — China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, and South Korea — are projected to grow almost twice as fast as the G7 during this time and Indonesia will have supplanted Germany as the world’s fourth largest economy.
Meanwhile, the United Nations projects that the world’s population will be 9.7 billion by 2050, with nearly half of that growth coming from only seven countries: India, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Pakistan, Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Indonesia. By then, Nigeria will have surpassed the United States as the world’s third most populous nation and 80% of the world’s population will live in either Asia or Africa.
More than a billion people — mostly from Africa, South Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean — are expected to join the working-age population by 2050, supplying the migrant workers the Global North will need to support their aging populations and economies. This diaspora will not only fuel economic growth but wield political and social influence at home and abroad — and they will need to.
Putting aside the “known unknown” humanitarian disasters like wars and earthquakes that are seemingly becoming all too common, climate change alone is likely to cause 14.5 million deaths and $12.5 trillion in economic losses worldwide by 2050, according to the World Economic Forum, with floods and droughts identified as the leading causes of climate-related deaths in addition to a rise in climate-sensitive diseases like malaria and dengue. The World Food Programme warns that hunger and malnutrition could rise by 20% due to climate change, with undernutrition being a leading cause in climate-related child deaths.
Luckily the Global South is incredibly generous. According to the Charities Aid Foundation’s (CAF) World Giving Index, six of the ten most generous countries in the world are in Asia and Africa. Indonesians ranked as the most generous in the world for the sixth year in a row, although slipping to second in percentage of adults who donate money to Myanmar (83% vs. 82%) and Liberia for volunteering time (65% vs. 61%).
On average, immigrants have a higher overall generosity index score than nationals particularly in the Middle East and North Africa (41 vs. 33) and Europe (44 vs. 37).1 Nigeria raised $300 million via diaspora bonds in 2017 and India has similarly tapped its diaspora for almost $10 billion as well.2 Global remittances — the money over 200 million migrants sent back home to support their 800 million+ family members — reached a record $669 billion in 2023, three times official development assistance.3 4
In fact, remittances are worth more than that because many people send money through informal channels not captured by official statistics. Egypt’s remittance receipts are greater than revenue from the Suez Canal; Sri Lanka’s exceed(s) tea exports; Morocco’s are larger than tourism earnings.
— Dilip Ratha, World Bank
And, most interestingly for me, these countries and their diasporas have their own unique digital cultures and experiences with technology. There are more Indian nationals on Facebook than there are United States citizens (378 million)5 and India, Brazil, Indonesia, and the Philippines are among WhatsApp’s most active countries.6 Most of the world’s top platforms may have started in the United States but apps like WeChat and Douyin in China have achieved near market saturation (plus we shouldn’t forget that Douyin’s national popularity led to the creation of an international version: TikTok).
Meanwhile, digital wallets like Apple Pay, PayPal, and Alipay are becoming the fastest growing payment method in the world due to their ease of convenience. Notably, the countries with the highest adoption rates are in the Global South, where mobile wallets originally emerged as a solution to unbanked populations with access to cell phones. China’s Alipay and WeChat, Gojek in Indonesia and PromptPay in Thailand were all developed when no other digital payment options were available7 and I personally witnessed a similar rise currently taking place in Africa when in Dakar earlier this year.
The future is shifting towards the Global South – and in some ways is already there. The question now is which organizations have the future sight – and resources – needed to invest in developing sustainable fundraising operations flexible enough to grow alongside the country’s population and incomes.
Many emerging markets and diasporas have extensive histories with the nonprofit sector: Médecins Sans Frontières (aka Doctors Without Borders) was founded by doctors and journalists responding to the Nigerian Civil/Biafran War and the United Nations’ global constellation of funds, programmes and specialized agencies is too extensive for words (although the sector’s hands are far from clean). When I lived in DC, the easiest way to strike up a friendly chat with a foreign-born taxi driver was to mention working for SOS Children’s Villages: 9 times out of 10 they knew of a SOS Village (usually a relative attended a school) and spoke glowingly of the organization every time. For-profit companies would kill for that level of positive word of mouth brand association on a global scale.
Again, there are an unfortunate number of reasons why nonprofit organizations must be thoughtful when expanding their marketing operations globally (and trust when I say white saviorism is a whole other article). But those leaders with the foresight and savvy to start organizing now – even if it starts as simply as highlighting the need and interacting with supporters on social media with an occasional donation link – will eventually see their investment pay dividends via the heightened brand awareness and loyalty amongst the population’s ascendant middle and donor classes alone.
The continued revenue growth needed by the humanitarian sector to meet the overwhelming funding needs requires, in part, finding new audiences to appeal to. Grassroots and institutional fundraisers alike know that your most loyal donors are former participants and their loved ones. They are the ones that will not only donate but advocate and sing your praises while driving taxis in DC. The question is which organizations can rise to the challenge of (sustainably) marketing and fundraising at the same global scale as its programmatic reach.
- “CAF World Giving Index 2023,” Charities Aid Foundation, https://www.cafonline.org/about-us/research/caf-world-giving-index. ↩︎
- Dilip Ratha, “Resilient Remittances,” F&D: Finance & Development, September 2023, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2023/09/B2B-resilient-remittances-dilip-ratha. ↩︎
- International Day of Family Remittances, International Fund for Agricultural Development, https://familyremittances.org/. ↩︎
- “2023 Global Philanthropy Tracker,” Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, https://globalindices.iupui.edu/tracker/index.html. ↩︎
- Stacy Jo Dixon, “Leading countries based on Facebook audience size as of April 2024,” statista, April 29, 2024, https://www.statista.com/statistics/268136/top-15-countries-based-on-number-of-facebook-users. ↩︎
- Rohit Shewale, WhatsApp Statistics In 2024 (User Demographics & Revenue), Demandsage, January 16, 2024, https://www.demandsage.com/whatsapp-statistics/. ↩︎
- Raynor de Best, “Mobile payments with digital wallets - statistics & facts,” statista, April 16, 2024, https://www.statista.com/topics/4872/mobile-payments-worldwide/#topicOverview. ↩︎
