Since its launch in 2019, DBS QR Gift has been well-received by customers with around SGD 2.8 million loaded onto QR gift cards during CNY last year. It allows customers to preserve and continue the CNY tradition of giving and receiving red packets, and at the same time, contributes to a more sustainable environment. Partner with DBS Foundation to champion the causes of social enterprises across Asia.The DBS QR Gift (popularly known as ‘QR Ang Bao’) enables customers to load cash values onto unique QR codes, and is Singapore’s only ‘phygital’ alternative to gifting. We also have an active volunteerism programme, DBS People of Purpose, with employees contributing 100,000 volunteering hours and reaching out to over 390,000 beneficiaries in 2021 alone. As the fight against Covid-19 raged on in 2021, the bank donated 1,000 oxygen concentrators to Indonesia, and three cryogenic oxygen tanks and 300 oxygen concentrators to India.
The Community Impact chapter will bolster the bank’s contributions to the community via giving and volunteerism efforts in the areas of education, elderly, and the environment, as well as addressing the region’s increasingly pressing societal issues.Īt the onset of the pandemic in 2020, we created the SGD 10.5 million DBS Stronger Together Fund and provided 4.5 million meals and care packs, as well as medical supplies, to help communities hard-hit by Covid-19. We support social enterprises engaged in various social and environmental causes, such as children and youth, women and girls, elderly, disabilities and special needs, rural communities, healthcare, urban poor, environment, capacity building, and heritage and culture.
With a ‘One Bank’ approach to working with these businesses, we leverage and channel the bank’s resources to provide wide-ranging support in the form of skills-training, capacity-building, and opening doors to business and networking opportunities, among others. To date, DBS Foundation has given out over SGD 10 million in grants to more than 90 businesses, and nurtured 800 others in Singapore, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Taiwan and China through its development programmes. In recognition of its efforts to nurture social enterprises in Singapore and the region, DBS was named the inaugural winner of the “Social Enterprise Champion of the Year (Corporation)” award at the President’s Challenge Social Enterprise Awards (PCSEA) 2019. The additional funds will deepen DBS Foundation’s work with social enterprises through its “Business for Impact” chapter, as well as create a new “Community Impact” chapter through which to bolster the bank’s contributions to the community via giving and volunteerism efforts. With the pandemic upending livelihoods and casting a spotlight on a wide range of social and environmental issues, the bank announced in Feb 2022 an additional SGD 100 million commitment to further DBS Foundation’s efforts to improving lives in Asia and creating impact beyond banking, as well as support other philanthropic and crisis relief measures by the bank.
In 2014, DBS Foundation was launched with SGD 50 million fund, in conjunction with Singapore’s 50th birthday, to mark the bank’s commitment to championing social entrepreneurship in Asia. DBS Foundation is Singapore’s first foundation dedicated to growing innovative social enterprises / businesses for impact.