Unable to afford next month’s rent, Kathy Gong was aghast when her boyfriend donated Rmb100 (US$15) each week to his church in Beijing. “Even though rationally I understood the need to be kind, when it came to real actions it was hard,” she recalls. “So that year I set a goal to train myself to let go.” Life is vastly different today for the 30-year-old entrepreneur who runs investment and business advisory companies with a technology start-up in the works. But she has not forgotten that earlier lesson: Ms Gong donates 10% of her personal dividends each year. “Giving makes your life much happier. That’s a benefit that can’t be measured.”

As China’s economic presence has swelled on the world stage, so has its number of wealthy citizens. China had 596 billionaires in 2015, edging ahead of the US—with 537—for the first time, according to the Hurun Rich List. And Asia’s seriously wealthy are starting to get serious about their giving, too. While the US retains the top spot, China ranked second for donations of at least US$1m to philanthropic causes in 2014, worth US$3.61bn in total, according to the Coutts Million Dollar Donors Report. Hong Kong came third with US$2.67bn. And there is room for growth: giving as a proportion of China’s GDP was 0.1% in 2014, compared with 2% in the US.

In China, philanthropy is still the preserve of an older generation looking to establish a legacy. According to the China Philanthropy Project—a research programme of Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center, which tracks China’s top 100 donors—the average Chinese philanthropist is a 54-year-old male real-estate mogul.

But Asia’s wealth is getting younger: six of those on the 2015 Hurun Rich List were born in the 1980s. Among Asia’s younger generation of entrepreneurs there are signs that they are starting to think about giving it away—and forging their own causes and methods for doing so.

For Ms Gong, inspiration came from studying in the US on a scholarship at Columbia University. There she met Peggy Dulany Rockefeller, who encouraged her to “pay it forward”, or invest in the needy, rather than give back to communities that had helped her, such as an alma mater. Back in China Ms Gong set up a fund through her company, Seeway Investment, to help construction workers’ children go to college and convinced her father—whom she describes as “stingy”—to contribute 60% from his construction company. Last year the fund totalled Rmb4m (US$616,000), on top of Ms Gong’s personal contribution of US$40,000.

Support for vulnerable populations reflects the different priorities of younger donors. Education—mainly big donations to elite institutions such as Harvard University—has dominated giving to date, receiving 57% of gifts tracked by the China Philanthropy Project (CPP) in 2015. As the younger generation takes over, however, there is a trend towards supporting public goods and services, notes Edward Cunningham, director of China programmes at the Ash Center. This shift reflects the evolving relationship between people and state, which cannot provide the full range of services citizens demand, according to Mr Cunningham. “We’re seeing the resurgence of interest in traditional causes such as orphanages and elderly care, the latter because of demographic changes,” he says.

The approach to giving is changing too, beyond just signing a cheque. Younger philanthropists are more hands-on, in part the result of wariness from charity scandals, says Edward Man, 34. That distrust led the young investor to set up the ChickenSoup Foundation with HK$1m (US$129,000) of his own funds. The foundation provides education and support services for 1,100 at-risk children in Hong Kong. “If you look at it from an investment perspective, what is the most worthwhile thing to invest in? It’s the future, and children are our future,” he says.

Appetite for more control has piqued interest in different instruments, such as trusts and donor-advised funds. Nearly one-fifth of those on the 2015 CPP list have their own foundations, and more are starting to ask how to set missions, recruit staff and codify values, observes Mr Cunningham. “In the younger generation there is more focus on how to build lasting institutions rather than immediate philanthropy,” he says. “As the ecosystem matures, they’re looking to long-term stability, professionalisation and independence.”

Choice is also an important factor for younger givers, according to Doris Leung, CEO of Diamond Cab, a Hong Kong-based social enterprise that operates specially converted taxis for wheelchair users. The company charges US$38 an hour to take customers to hospital appointments or to see friends, but the real impact is the improvement in elderly people’s quality of life. Diamond Cab has made more than 97,000 trips since 2011.

“Contributing means more than just donations, but also to have more involvement,” notes Quincy Wong, chairman of Hong Kong’s Convoy Financial Group and one of Diamond Cab’s investors. He bought their seventh cab at a cost of US$1m. Impact investing is still very new, he says, “but I believe with the new social service models adopted by young philanthropists, it will grow in popularity. Someone needs to make the first move.”

Technology is also helping to broaden the donor base for younger would-be philanthropists. In Beijing, the non-profit Philanthropy in Motion (PIM) organisation takes around 40 young people through a model foundation programme, where they decide how to spend a US$20,000 fund. Half of the funding pot comes from crowdfunding, with the rest matched by a foundation or company. PIM’s first crowdfunding campaign in 2013 linked up with a selfie app that makes the user look 30 years older. PIM urged supporters to share their photos with the post “Why wait? I want to give today”. “Our mission is to make philanthropy acceptable,” says PIM co-founder Jasmine Lau. “Young people in China are open-minded, and with more information and more transparency they can take more risks in their giving.”

Asia’s profile of a philanthropist is in flux, as is the source of their wealth. In 2014 four of China’s technology titans—all in their 40s and including the founders of search engine Qihoo and phone maker Xiaomi—filmed themselves doing the virally successful ALS ice-bucket challenge. Technology leaders accounted for 10% of China’s top 100 givers last year, according to the CPP study. Still, given the global outlook of many IT moguls, this figure was much lower than expected. One reason may be the reluctance to compete with the outsize donation made by Jack Ma in 2014—some 2% of e-commerce giant Alibaba’s shares—as philanthropy in China is not yet evolved enough for such “healthy competition”, suggests CPP’s Mr Cunningham. He is confident, however, that this will change as China’s economy—and with it philanthropy—diversifies.

But China’s millennial-led philanthropy is still waiting for its own pioneer to emerge. As Philip Chow, CEO of Humanitas, which aims to be a global database on philanthropy, explains: “We don’t really have the equivalent of a Mark Zuckerberg here,” after the 31-year-old Facebook founder pledged 99% of his shares to philanthropic causes in 2015. “It’s not yet a cool thing to do.” Entrepreneurs such as Ms Gong are hoping to change this. “Within my circle of friends I’m not unusual. The number of young philanthropists is increasing in China,” she says. “But we still need more voices and action, especially among my generation.”