Tri-Sector Associates

Tri Sector Associates is a not-for-profit social enterprise whose mission is to create systems that enable more effective social innovation. By doing so, we hope to help solve the most complex social problems facing our generation.
We pursue our mission by launching models such as Pay For Success (PFS) across Asia that show how the private, public, and people sectors can play to their strengths in enabling social innovation. Here’s how PFS works:
1. First, private investors invest in a promising non-profit program.
2. Next, the long-term outcomes of the program are rigorously measured by a third-party evaluator.
3. Finally, if and only if the specified outcomes are achieved, then the government repays private funders their capital.
This delivers benefits to each sector: government only funds what works; non-profits have the chance to test new bottom-up solutions; and private funders deploy their capital in a catalytic fashion to stimulate change.
Our collaborators, Third Sector Capital Partners, Inc, are the leading US firm in launching PFS projects, with over 40 engagements to date that are shifting hundreds of millions of dollars into evidence-driven funding systems. We take this deep experience and adapt it to the Asian context to push the frontier of what is possible both here and across the world. We are supported by leading venture philanthropists, the Singtel Future Makers accelerator program, the Philip Yeo Initiative, and the Economic Development Board.
By combining the best of global knowledge and local context, we aim to ignite a profound systems-change that will measurably improve the lives of those in need across Asia.