Our Mission
As a community of donors, we inspire others to join us in alleviating poverty in East Asia by empowering small, but high-impact NGOs to be sustainable and transparent.

Who We Are
Transparent Fish Fund is a 501(c)(3) US nonprofit organization founded in 2011 in Palo Alto, California. We partner with hand-selected NGOs that effectively focus on poverty alleviation in East Asia. With financial support from our board members, who cover all our administrative costs, we are able to provide these NGOs with financial aid, capacity building resources, and reporting requirements to increase transparency and sustainability. We connect donors in the West with these credible NGOs to spread a global spirit of philanthropy. 
 
What We Do
Empowering East Asian NGOs: We identify the most promising NGOs to partner with and develop them by:

• Providing capacity building resources and fundraising support from the West
• Facilitating financial accountability and transparency, even to the level of ensuring the recipient uses the contributions properly
• Serving programs run by members of the Asian American community and/or focus on work in Asia or the Asian American community
• Focus areas: basic needs, direct needs, poverty relief, medical intervention, health, education in underserved areas of rural China and Southeast Asia

 
Engaging Western Donors: We handpick excellent projects to recommend to donors and prove their impact by:

• Tracking donations to verify 100% arrives in the right hands

Educating donors on how they support a sustainable NGO infrastructure and help impoverished families abroad

Background

Philanthropy Multiplied
It all started with one Asian American couple, Ping and Amy Chao, donating to one significant cause—congenital heart disease surgery for poor families in rural China.
The Chaos saw the life-saving impact of their original donation. And they saw the great need of many more families in the same desperate situation. Hundreds of children were dying because of the heart disease, even though they could have been saved with surgery. Sadly, their peasant families couldn’t afford the necessary treatment.

Wanting to save more lives, the Chaos invited their friends to join the cause. The donor community started to grow, and so did their impact.

In 2011, Transparent Fish Fund became a 501(c)(3) US nonprofit organization, founded in Palo Alto, California. We were born out of a spirit of philanthropy that has spread internationally. Even many of our beneficiaries have developed a desire to give back to society, after experiencing the help we’ve given them. What began as one couple donating to one cause has now expanded into a network of donors supporting multiple poverty alleviation projects in East Asia.

Impact Verified
We confidently invite others to join our cause, especially because we can prove the impact of all donations. We’re unique in that we match each donation with a specific beneficiary, so you know that 100% of your contribution is going to people in need.

We know from personal experience how prevalent corruption is in Asia, even when organizations seem trustworthy. Transparent Fish Fund was created out of the need for establishing credible nonprofits in this region.

The transparency practices that we and our NGO partners follow ensure that you get proof of impact. We don’t just give out grants and financial aid. We follow up with due diligence to make sure donations are fully used as intended.
Try donating with us, and we’ll show you the impact you made.

Asian Charity Revived
Generally speaking, Asians tend to be less charitable than other ethnicities. Perhaps the engrained traditions from generations who suffered through hardships have instilled a cultural value of saving for self-preservation, not giving to help others. Yet over the decades, Asians who have immigrated to the West have prospered, giving them the means to donate—although many don’t.
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We want to turn the tides and inspire Asian Americans to give, like our founding couple has done themselves. We challenge our peers not only to give in general, but especially to give back to people in their ancestral homelands who still suffer from poverty. Our goal is to connect donors from the West to credible NGOs in East Asia.

Charity Personalized
Our field staff and partners meet personally with the local people we help, discovering their unique needs and situations. This level of interaction with beneficiaries enables us to provide our donors with customized, hand-crafted impact reports that show stories and photos of the particular recipients.

Come catch our spirit of philanthropy. Be part of our efforts to change lives and restore hope in East Asia, by helping one impoverished family at a time. 

Public Charity Status
 An organization that receives funding from diverse and public sources is considered to be responsive to the general public, rather than the private interests of a limited number of donors. In order to maintain our status as a public nonprofit charity, at least 33 1/3 % of our support over the previous 5 years has to come from the general public.