As a global investor, our social licence to operate depends on our ability to create value for all stakeholders, including our communities. We believe in seeding social capital to foster a more inclusive and resilient world, so every generation prospers.
Our journey in building social capital started over 20 years ago, when we adopted a deliberate and structured approach, anchored on the twin pillars of governance and sustainability, to give back to communities.
Since 2003, we have been setting aside a portion of our net positive returns above our risk-adjusted cost of capital for community gifts. These are approved by the Temasek Board and then donated to partners to achieve our community objectives of Connecting People, Uplifting Communities, Protecting our Planet, and Advancing Capabilities.
Temasek Trust (TT) has been the primary beneficiary of our gifts. TT disburses grants for programmes to be developed and delivered by our non-profit ecosystem, including Temasek Foundation (TF), Temasek Life Sciences Laboratory (TLL), Stewardship Asia Centre, and Mandai Nature. Our non-profit ecosystem has evolved over the years to better handle multi-faceted and complex social challenges.
To date, Temasek’s gifts to TT have impacted about 4.4 million lives across Singapore and beyond.
TT continues to build on its vision of being a responsible steward of philanthropic assets. It aims to catalyse positive impact aligned to Temasek’s community objectives.
Among TT’s new initiatives were the acquisition of MoneyOwl, a financial advisor with a social mission to empower people to improve their financial security, and the establishment of TT Foundation Advisors which provides philanthropy advisory and management services.
TF implemented about 150 community programmes over the last financial year. One of these was the Temasek Foundation – Autism Resource Centre (Singapore) Supported Living and Training Programme for individuals aged 18 and above who are on the autism spectrum with low to moderate needs. The programme aims to support them in community living through independent skills training.
TLL’s Decarbonising Rice Project was recognised as a Breakthrough Scientific Contribution and won the World Economic Forum’s Giving to Amplify Earth Action Award. The project aims to mitigate the effects of climate change and meet the growing global demand for rice by reducing methane emissions, conserving water, and enhancing yields. The project has attracted funding from global funders via Philanthropy Asia Alliance, and large acreage trials are ongoing in Laos, India, and Indonesia.
Beyond our non-profit ecosystem, Temasek works with partners from the Public, Private, and People sectors to advance our community objectives, where our philanthropic capital, network, and industry insights can make the most impact.
Last year, we announced T-Spring, a S$150 million gift to advance capabilities in Singapore and build a resilient and future-ready workforce. Over the year, Temasek partnered local universities to award scholarships to Singaporeans who wish to pursue tertiary degrees in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics at the undergraduate to PhD level.
T-Spring also seeded the Temasek Fellowship programme which aims to attract best-in-class industry leaders to collaborate with Temasek and its partners to drive innovation in data science and blockchain, sustainable solutions, and life sciences. In April 2025, the programme’s inaugural Temasek Fellow, Professor Henrik Christensen, was appointed. He is a leading figure in Artificial Intelligence and robotics from the University of California, San Diego, and will help deepen Singapore’s expertise in these two areas.
Under T-Spring, Temasek is supporting the President’s Challenge Springboard Fellowship, which empowers individuals who have faced setbacks in life to pursue new pathways through education and skills or entrepreneurship training. Temasek staff will also provide mentorship to these individuals.
Finally, our T-Spring gift has committed to supporting the Employment and Employability Institute’s new employment platform. The platform matches age-friendly employers and senior jobseekers and provides training, career coaching, and job redesign support.
We have set aside S$100 million of our community gifts as Concessional Capital for Climate Action (CCCA) to support marginally bankable climate action initiatives. CCCA represents a novel way of advancing Temasek’s deployment of philanthropic capital, going beyond conventional grantmaking, and a deepened commitment towards the climate agenda.
As a responsible corporate citizen, we support local charities with donations and staff volunteerism across all our offices. When staff decide to launch a fundraising effort for a charity or cause, Temasek will provide matching grants.
Our programme reach and partnerships continue to widen. As such, we must ensure that our gifts are truly making a difference to communities. We have developed an impact framework for community gifts to guide the measurement of their impact against our community objectives. This framework allows us to evaluate, refine, and maximise the effectiveness of initiatives we support. We see impact measurement as an essential part of good governance in our philanthropic journey. We are working with our non-profit entities and community partners to apply the framework to more programmes. We recognise that impact measurement is an iterative process, and we will continue to refine the framework as more data becomes available.
Lim Boon Heng, Chairman, participating in a mural painting activity on Temasek’s 50th anniversary.
