As April drew to a close, the Li Foundation team was honoured to host Alfie and Wei Shan from raiSE for a conversation on the evolving social enterprise landscape in Singapore.
The Singapore Centre for Social Enterprise (raiSE) was established in 2015 to develop and grow the country’s social enterprise ecosystem. As a sector intermediary, raiSE supports social enterprises through a combination of funding, capacity building, and market access, while also shaping public awareness and establishing standards for impact. Over time, it has played a key role in shifting perceptions of social enterprises from grant-dependent entities to mission-driven businesses capable of delivering both financial sustainability and measurable social impact.
raiSE defines a social enterprise based on three criteria: intentionality (a commitment to integrating social impact into the business), additionality (purposeful initiatives and processes implemented to create social value), and proportionality (social impact outcomes relative to the size of the business). Indicative of the success of its efforts, raiSE’s membership grew from 357 members in 2023 to nearly 700 members in 2025, alongside the introduction of tiered membership categories to better support enterprises at different stages of growth.
As the ecosystem has matured, raiSE has increasingly focused on the mobilisation of capital and alignment of stakeholders. To support this, The Purpose Agenda was launched in 2022 to address persistent gaps in the ecosystem, particularly around funders’ differing risk appetites, return expectations, and definitions of impact. The platform brings together funders—including foundations, family offices, and corporates—to explore how different forms of capital can be deployed more effectively in support of social enterprises. Notably, there is also growing emphasis on sharing more mature ecosystem outcomes, including pathways to scale and successful exits.
Looking ahead, raiSE’s work reflects a broader shift from capacity building for individual social enterprises towards ecosystem mobilisation, ensuring that capital, capabilities, and networks are more intentionally aligned. This direction resonates strongly with Li Foundation’s approach to catalytic philanthropy and its philosophy of building systems that enable collaboration. Together, there is strong potential to accelerate the next phase of growth for Singapore’s social enterprise landscape.
The book showcases how the participants challenged their limits and conquered the World Marathon Challenge and North Pole Marathon to inspire people to challenge their own limits and pursue their dreams boldly.
The book tells the stories behind the event which saw the largest number of people in history running 1045km round Taiwan in 19 days.