SINGAPORE - A new social impact hub that can house up to 24 non-profit organisations is slated to open at the end of November.

Called The Foundry, the hub will be located in the three-storey building at 11 Prinsep Link that served as the Elections Department office building until 2019.

The collective impact hub is being set up by registered charity The Majurity Trust (TMT), in partnership with the Singapore Government Partnerships Office, Singapore Land Authority (SLA) and Tote Board.

Senior Parliamentary Secretary for Law and Health Rahayu Mahzam said in Parliament on March 1 that SLA recognises the role spaces play in promoting social good, and has been repurposing spaces to serve the community.

Other social impact hubs include Temasek Shophouse and Common Ground Civic Centre & Consultancy.

TMT chief executive Martin Tan said it has been piloting a co-working concept with six non-profits in the last three years at its Gateway East office in Beach Road.

TMT and the six non-profits – Impart, KampungKakis, The Tapestry Project SG, VintageRadio.SG, Ray of Hope and Better.sg – are looking to move into The Foundry in November. The non-profits tackle various social issues such as social isolation among seniors and youth mental health.

The first floor of the 17,000 sq ft hub will have an events space which can seat 120 people, a podcast studio and a social enterprise cafe. The second and third storeys will have an open office concept for organisations or individuals, and anchor offices for larger organisations.

Mr Tan said The Foundry’s lease from April 2024 is for five years, with an option to renew for another four years. TMT is working to raise $5 million for The Foundry to be sustainable for the first three years, he added. This includes operational costs that will amount to $2.5 million, and another $2.5 million for renovations.

Non-profits moving into The Foundry will pay a monthly membership fee starting at $250 per seat and around $2,000 for an office space for four, which is about 40 per cent to 50 per cent of market rental rates, he added.

The non-profits have used the co-working space at TMT’s Beach Road office in various ways, with KampungKakis holding volunteer training and discussions on weekends, and Impart running tutoring sessions for youngsters during the exam season.

Mr Tan said the young non-profits can help one another with common practices such as organising a golf tournament and onboarding a new board member. “One of the key things we found is that they don’t feel alone anymore. We think that societal issues are just too complex for charities to navigate on their own.”

TMT hopes to help the non-profits grow to a stage where they are sustainable, with their own pool of donors and volunteers. TMT has set a target to help non-profits to achieve their goals, such as attaining Institution of a Public Character (IPC) status, in around three years, said Mr Tan.

Non-profits in The Foundry will attend quarterly town halls and learning sessions, for instance a visit to Google to learn about technology and organisational culture, as well as annual masterclasses on fund-raising, strategy and business plans.

The Foundry will also house enablers such as charity Better.sg, which helps non-profits build their tech capabilities, and Ray of Hope, which helps small charities with fund-raising. For instance, Better.sg helped Impart create a Telegram bot to schedule timings for volunteers to meet the youth-at-risk whom they serve, allowing them to spend more time with the youngsters rather than on administrative matters.

Non-profits are selected for The Foundry based on their potential for collaboration, said Mr Chew Jing Kai, head of the new social impact hub who has been working on the project since he joined TMT in March 2023.

The six groups currently housed in TMT’s office are recipients of various TMT funds for young non-profits, such as the Lam Soon New Horizon Fund, which provides up to $150,000 over three years in seed funding. Over the past seven years, TMT has disbursed nearly $20 million to 292 organisations through its 11 funds, said Mr Chew.

Ms Ho Kah Yoke, executive director of KampungKakis, a registered charity which connects volunteers with isolated seniors, said the current shared space has provided a lot of support.

“I can easily reach out to executive directors of different charities to have chats about how they have been doing things,” she said, adding that her counterparts share which vendors they get corporate services from.

Ms Ho, who is currently one of two full-time staff at KampungKakis, hopes to raise funds to hire more staff to manage and grow its pool of 700 volunteers. To do this, she hopes to learn from Impart to achieve IPC status, as the 250 per cent tax deduction for donations made to IPCs will help KampungKakis to secure more funding.

The non-profits in TMT’s office have a group chat where they share resources, said Impart executive director Narasimman Tivasiha Mani.

Out of these interactions came a project by Tapestry, Impart and design studio Chokmah to bring narrative group work and crafting to Impart’s teen girls with mental health struggles, introducing another way of helping them to cope by rewriting their stories.

“Some of them are actually quite guarded, but having someone else coming in to do this workshop, the girls were really into telling narratives we didn’t know that they would be telling,” said Mr Narasimman.

Impart’s deputy executive director Joshua Tay said of the trust between the non-profits: “It comes because TMT is here. It helps us organisations to work together, because there is someone that we all commonly trust who is helping to make these connections.”

Mr Narasimman said: “Before TMT came to gather and resource everyone, everyone was in their own flat. The doors were closed. But now, there is a village kind of set-up.

“You will have to talk, and that is when you start caring about others. Is there something else I can do for you, or with you to make an impact together?”

Interested organisations can write in to hello@foundry.sg