Philanthropy in Việt Nam: A Field Study

This field study aims to show that if Việt Nam’s late 1980s Doi Moi unleashed farmers’ and businesses’ initiative away from the command economy, one significant challenge to Việt Nam’s sustainable development today is to recognize, valorize, and promote the role and contribution of nonprofit/philanthropy actors and society at large toward the country’s social sector. Through 68 in-depth interviews with founders and leaders of nonprofit organizations and influencers—resulting in 17 analytical case profiles—and 5 focus group discussions with over 90 participants, HPDF’s qualitative inquiry provides convincing testimony to this evolving reality, as demonstrated by: the emergence and gradual expansion, diversification, complexification, and maturation of a philanthropy ecosystem in Việt Nam, with internal and international synergies, combining the traditional Vietnamese culture of giving and community solidarity with forward-looking broadly accepted principles and methods of modern philanthropy; the maturation of the domestic business community leading to a growing understanding of and readiness to engage in corporate-related forms of responsibility and contribution toward the social sector; and the modernization of Việt Nam’s social space through growing bottom-up empowerment of its citizens and grassroots entities to complement the top-down systemwide regulatory role of the State toward greater facilitation of all stakeholders’ voice and engagement.