ACCOUNTABILITY
EXAMPLE 1
At The Majurity Trust, we believe in being open with our donors — not just sharing the successes and progress, but also the challenges and failures.
We believe that honest reporting builds trust and helps everyone learn together.
- We use data meaningfully to paint a holistic picture of impact, combining quantitative results with qualitative stories that reflect the realities on the ground.
- We go beyond reports — creating opportunities for donors to learn, visit initiatives first-hand, and connect with the partners whose work they make possible.
EXAMPLE 2
In working with our grantee partners, rigorous due diligence is at the heart of each grant call at Majurity. We go beyond simply assessing applications.
Each grant applicant goes through a staged process of clarifications, site visits, and reference checks — to ensure we make informed and responsible decisions.
During the 2025 Maybank Momentum Grant Call, we invested an average of 4–5 hours per serious applicant in conversations with applicants and referees, as well as site visits – on top of our desk-based evaluation.
HEART
EXAMPLE 1
At Majurity, grants are never just transactions — they are relationships.
Within the New Horizon Fund, we meet with founders and leaders around once a month. Sometimes these meetings focus on project milestones; other times, they are simply honest conversations about what has been going well, and what has not. These regular touchpoints build trust and strengthen relationships, grounding us especially in difficult times.
In those instances, output numbers alone cannot capture the complex realities our partners face. It is the trust and empathy built through these relationships that allow us to walk alongside them more meaningfully.
EXAMPLE 2
We try to understand the challenges that grantee partners are facing and provide tailored support along the way.
This differs from grantee partner to grantee partner. For example, we have a new Scaffold 2025 grantee partner (Colours Global Foundation) that is new to receiving grants.
Even though calls are set up with all Scaffold grantee partners to discuss the Grant Agreement Form (GAF), additional effort was taken to contact Colours to explain the GAF process.
EXAMPLE 3
Being flexible in enabling and supporting groundups through community changes
When groundup leader Mdm Sarimah applied for a grant for Project Pencil, her plan was simple: run academic mentoring sessions for kids in her neighbourhood paired with a Silat programme. But as the grant was approved and the programme got underway, things changed. Some activities got folded into other community efforts, and new needs popped up that weren’t in the original proposal.
We could have asked her to stick to the script. Instead, we sat down with her and worked out how the grant could be reallocated — so her team could keep doing what mattered most without being tied to what was written months before.
That’s the reality for many groundup leaders. They’re responding to what’s in front of them, not operating in a controlled environment. Our role is to listen, ask “What feels doable now?”, and support them to make the adjustments.
In the end, Project Pencil’s activities didn’t look exactly like what was proposed, but the heart of it was intact. Kids were connected with others, residents and neighbours pitched in, and Sarimah felt like she had someone supporting her.
This is what “heart” looks like for us: being flexible enough to meet our partners where they are, and walking with them through the ups and downs of community work.
“We (Project Pencil) started all these with 0 knowledge and 0 fund, and as we go along all these years, we have results and good feedback, but no one support.
Having more support is important so we can reach out to more people in the community…Asking fund here and here is not easy, everyone with different protocol, and I’m really touched you believe in us.
Majurity is a big organisation, you know more people. You all follow up, feature us, and like the support is solid. I want to do something I enjoy, this is passion. It’s lighter that way, not a job. To be in the community that loves you back”
– Mdm Sarimah
INTENTIONALITY
EXAMPLE 1
Intentionality looks like equipping leaders with fit-for-purpose — not random — tools they can carry forward in their own journeys, and eventually share with others.
Saleemah from New Life Stories (NLS) shared that her experience with our 2023 Masterclass was pivotal. The Masterclass and its strategic planning framework proved so useful that she now applies it annually at NLS. In 2025, she will be returning to the Masterclass – this time to share her own experience and to learn with new participants.
We are tuned in to the needs of early-stage nonprofits, and are intentional about curating targeted programmes such as our Masterclasses year-on-year.
EXAMPLE 2
Intentionality also looks like designing capacity building initiatives with care, so that grantee partners (GPs) are set up to thrive.
Within the New Horizon Fund, we have refined and structured our incubation journey over the years to better support early-stage nonprofits. Through our learnings, we introduced:
- More frequent consultations and milestones to scaffold GPs’ learning and balance immediate operations with long-term strategic planning.
- A stronger focus on Board and management dynamics, as well as early prioritisation of impact measurement frameworks, to strengthen governance and decision-making.
- A transition phase after the three-year incubation to give new charities more runway to stabilise financially, while reflecting together on lessons learned and identifying future funding opportunities.
- On a broader level, Majurity is also undergoing a strategic review of our capacity-building strategy to ensure that GPs across our ecosystem can access the right support at the right time.
INTEGRATION
Every one of our donor and grantee partners gets access to the Majurity ecosystem. Our team journeys with them while also connecting them to our network of partners.
Hatch is a recent example of a grantee partner who has grown along with us.
EXAMPLE
The founders of Kita run a for-profit enterprise called Hatch Technologies, which received a grant from Majurity’s partnership fund — Movements For Health with MOHT in early 2022. Through this relationship, Majurity learned more about their nonprofit entity, Kita (formerly known as Hatch Youth Services).
At the end of 2022, Kita applied for the Maybank Momentum Grant (MMG) from Majurity’s Venture Building team, and received a $150K recyclable grant to grow and strengthen their organisation.
By the end of 2023, as part of their MMG grant, Kita consulted with our Insights and Strategy Team to refine their impact measurement approach and learnt how to better frame and communicate the outcomes and impact of the work that Kita had been doing in the previous 5 years. This was all part of Kita’s 2024 efforts to work towards charity status and eventually IPC status.
Now in 2025, at the start of the year, Kita rebranded from Hatch Youth Services and now Kita is working towards applying for charity status.
We have also shared about Kita to 2 potential donors in our network to enable them to secure additional organisational funding for this next phase of growth.
INSIGHTS
EXAMPLE 1
Our Insights and Strategy team conducted 3 research studies and produced a series of reports, which informed our Scaffold Fund strategy since 2020 [verify].
Building Bridges: Improving the Lives and Livelihoods of Migrant Construction Workers in Singapore was on understanding public perceptions towards migrant workers, and Building Better Together: Understanding the Needs & Aspirations of Migrant Workers in Singapore and “I Want to Improve My Family’s Economy” was on understanding the needs and aspirations of migrant workers and migrant domestic workers, from their voices.
Read the reports here.[link]
EXAMPLE 2
For our Wonder Arc Fund, we worked closely with our grantee partners to collect and apply formative evaluation learnings from our end-users and stakeholders involved in the programme (children, parents, volunteers and ground-ups).
The data collected helped to iterate and improve the pilot programme design.
This was shared with donors at a roundtable engagement session and grant panel.
SUSTAINABILITY
At Majurity, we are intentional in ensuring social impact organisations thrive.
Through Maybank Momentum Grant’s unrestricted recyclable funding for organisational growth, impact organisations have the flexibility to strengthen governance, invest in their people, and build resilient systems.
To sustain long-term growth, organisations must develop both their internal structures and programmes in tandem.
We also know creating meaningful change takes time. Partnerships, when resourced adequately, can be an effective strategy to expand programme reach without overstretching internal capacity.
We’ve designed the NHF’s 3-year incubation journey with this in mind – which adapts to the pace of the grantee partners’ speed of growth.
Through our Venture Building funds, we are also encouraging enterprising organisations to grow diverse revenue streams – from donations and grants to earned income – and building reserves for resilience and confidence to plan long-term.
COMMUNITY
Community can mean many things. For some, it’s the neighbours who live next door. For others, it is a network of peers, a familiar place, or a cause they hold dear.
At The Majurity Trust, community is not simply a gathering of people. Community is the ecosystem that makes our work possible. We believe communities are built at the speed of trust. This is why we invest in building relationships, not just programmes. It is an intentional practice of deepening understanding, and shared ownership, with more being able to contribute in small and big ways.
EXAMPLE 1
Through the Thriving Communities Initiative, our place-based philanthropic approach, we have seen how neighbours in Chong Pang come together to care for one another from the ground up. From food distributions and community libraries to festive celebrations, what may look like individual projects are really neighbours stepping up and enabling a sense of belonging that no single initiative alone can deliver.
INNOVATION
As social needs evolve, there is a greater need to nurture innovative approaches to address the emerging complexities.
However, there aren’t enough grantmakers out there willing to fund and absorb risks that come along with new ideas.
At Majurity, we embrace innovation by funding social impact organisations and connecting diverse partners to test, refine and grow different models of change.
For instance, we convene edtech providers and the non-profit learning sector to explore how technology can be leveraged to improve learning outcomes for children from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Another example is the Wonder Arc Fund. We introduced prototype grants to provide grantee partners with the initial funding to develop and test key components of their new ideas to establish a proof of concept for further funding.
Each prototype grant also has specified learning objectives to facilitate understanding of the factors of success and key areas of improvements for future iterations.
SCALABILITY
We recognise that a single non-profit will unlikely be able to reach an organisational scale where they can catalyse sectoral change independently.
Instead, we focus on supporting organisations to achieve their intended impact, accounting for organisational ambition at an appropriate timing for growth.
Most non-profits will face high structural barriers that will limit their ability to grow in a sustainable and significant way.
For example, an organisation’s core capabilities such as leadership, HR, finance, and IT, often need to develop in tandem with its ambition to scale. Operational funding for non-profits, however, is scarce.
Another barrier is that one size doesn’t fit all – a solution that works in one context for a community may be incompatible with the challenges experienced by a different community.
“Scaling doesn’t happen by just doing more of what you do.”
Scaling can mean strengthening capacity and building resilience within organisations; and extending reach, connecting with more communities, and sharing what works.
CATALYTIC
In Singapore’s social sector, most major funders such as Government agencies and larger Foundations tend to incline towards funding more established charities with IPC status and longer track record.
That’s where we see philanthropy playing a catalytic role, acting in complementary fashion to government. When we deploy seed funding to early-stage ventures, we give these organisations the time and capacity to develop, test, and refine their ideas.
When these ideas prove successful, these organisations can more easily attract funders or generate greater revenue down the line. Our philanthropic dollars thus strengthen the long-term sustainability of these organisations and their programmes.
Seeing philanthropy as risk capital is why we intentionally support non-IPC charities and smaller organisations. These groups often address overlooked or emerging issues, but face greater fundraising challenges due to a limited track record.
By backing them first, we de-risk their work and uplift their credibility in the sector. Ultimately, this helps to crowd in other funders for additional support.
ECOSYSTEM
For us at Majurity, an ecosystem is not just a network. It is a living web of people and organisations bound by trust and a shared purpose: to build a Singapore where everyone can thrive.
An ecosystem brings together diverse and relevant stakeholders, each contributing their unique strengths.
Together, they create something greater than what any could achieve on their own. Every part of the ecosystem has a role to play; whether it is giving, enabling, supporting, connecting, or carrying out the work on the ground.
We’re part of something interdependent — something that flourishes not because of any one player, but because of how all the parts connect and support one another.
Every unseen need is met by a collective of donors who believe in committing resources to allow us to tackle unseen needs together with social impact organisations on the ground.
The Foundry, an initiative by The Majurity Trust, was a vision that was made possible because of our ecosystem of partners and donors who stepped up to contribute in ways that they could.
Together, we built a home base for social impact organisations to work in, to be inspired and to collaborate with one another to build a Singapore where more of us can thrive.
IMPACT
We are mindful that impact is both quantitative and qualitative — numbers tell part of the story, but so do voices, experiences, and narratives.
Impact can be positive or negative, and good intentions alone are not enough — we take care to avoid unintended harm or outcomes that may set communities back. This means funding responsibly, learning from mistakes, and refining our approach continuously.
Through our funds, we focus on outcomes that matter: better wellbeing for youth and caregivers, stronger communities, and solutions that address root causes, not just symptoms. Impact requires both evidence and empathy — we draw on data, research, and lived experience to inform decisions, measure progress, and adapt along the way. Where possible, we amplify what works and share insights to help the whole sector raise its game.
PARTNERSHIPS
With donors, we co-create grant programmes that address pressing social needs while ensuring accountability for impact.
With charities and ground-up initiatives, we walk alongside them — providing not just funding, but also insights, connections, and collective strength. With sector peers and community stakeholders, often our goal is to multiply rather than duplicate our efforts.
Partnerships are relational and enduring. They reflect our role as ecosystem builders: drawing together different capacities, investing in one another, and creating the conditions for growth and resilience across the sector.