Olga Alexeeva travels the world tirelessly with a short but powerful list. In her search for a new generation of fledgling philanthropists, she uses the Forbes rankings of non-western billionaires. Of the 176 names it contains, she estimates that she has already got to know about one-fifth of them in recent months. “There is a hunger for philanthropy,” she says. “The interest is huge.”

After a career in her native Russia, where she helped steer the emergence of post-Soviet philanthropy, Ms Alexeeva is now based in London, where she is applying her skills more globally for her employer, the Charities Aid Foundation.

On behalf of CAF’s recently created Global Trustees operation, she embodies one of several different models in the expanding world of philanthropic advisory services. As wealth has exploded and an appetite to spend it responsibly has emerged during the past decade, intermediaries of all sorts have quickly followed.

At one extreme are organisations such as CAF, a registered charity motivated by its mandate to boost effective giving. It advises on the establishment of foundations, helping their donors to run them and “doing the boring bits”, as Ms Alexeeva puts it. “We are cause-neutral but not indifferent,” she says. Its “business” model is philanthropic, to the point that its commitment to the creation of local community foundations to stimulate further giving may reduce the need for the parent organisation itself.

At the other extreme among philanthropic intermediaries are those mainstream financial institutions with wealthy clients, such as HSBC – particularly strong in Asia ­– and UBS, from its Swiss base. Banks may provide such advice as loss-leaders for other services, though they often make money through one-off fees or charges on trust management and investment.

“We have a more than 50-year tradition of helping clients,” says Lisa Philp, head of philanthropic services at JPMorgan Private Bank in New York. “There is more and more of a need for services as they increasingly think about their legacy, engaging their family, having an impact on the world and giving something back while in the prime of their life.”

Ms Philp’s 11-strong team handles about 65 donors representing more than $100m in annual giving. “It’s a new golden age in philanthropy,” she says. “There is such a high degree of wealth creation and transfers that we are constantly pulled in with our colleagues to meet their clients, who want to figure out how to be effective, engage their families and be strategic in their giving.”

Heather Maizels, head of Client Life at Barclays Wealth, which advises families on philanthropy, says that requests to her team typically follow the sale of a family business. “A main concern is how much and when to give to the children, and how to use their money as a tool to leave a legacy,” she says.

Some endowed foundations find themselves reluctantly giving advice. The $33bn-strong Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, for example, received a number of offers of financial assistance after Warren Buffett pledged in 2006 to give it much of his own fortune. The foundation urged potential donors instead to directly support organisations that it had funded.

Other specially created intermediaries have proved more enthusiastic about offering advice and services. A range of venture philanthropy “funds” has been established in recent years precisely to offer a portfolio of different organisations into which wealthy donors can “invest”, and then scrutinise “performance” on a range of social targets or other objectives.

Give2Asia, for example, offers an extensive network of local staff across the continent to advise on and channel donations, with assistance including helping to ensure those from the US receive tax exemptions.

Geneva Global was initially created in 1999 by an anonymous donor with the aim of providing support to projects in the developing world often neglected in comparison to the parochial concerns supported by traditional western philanthropists. The organisation hopes its fees will allow it to break even within two years.

Steve Beck, its chief executive, says he will have helped give out $83m by the end of this year. That sum is rising fast, with $25m provided during 2007 alone from 85 clients. Most are “individuals who have made their money entrepeneurially or through investing,” he says. “They are not taking their business hat off when investing in philanthropy.”

New Philanthropy Capital, based in London and founded by two former Goldman Sachs partners, takes a different slant on this “investment” approach. It hopes at least to recover its costs through one of its activities: bespoke consultancy advice to particular clients.

But it has mirrored the City financial institutions from which many of its staff and trustees came, by producing and widely circulating free analysts’ reports. These identify and scrutinise important but frequently neglected causes such as autism, and the organisations involved in them. They use a rigorous methodology developed in-house.

Between the extremes of the for-profit and the charitable intermediaries are a range of specialist entities that seek to advise philanthropists while generating at least sufficient profits to be self-sustaining, such as Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisers, based in New York, or FSG Social Impact Advisers, in Boston, San Francisco and Seattle.

The good news for this multitude of players is that giving seems to be growing in depth and breadth alike. Some argue that philanthropy went through three stages in the past century: from initial support from robber-barons for large-scale infrastructure projects such as healthcare systems; through the establishment of leading foundations such as Ford and MacArthur with systematic grant-making; and into the modern era of “social investment” and personal engagement.

But Ms Alexeeva suggests that today there is a still fresher evolution into “philanthropy 4.0”. “Countries that were traditionally seen as recipients are now producing their own philanthropists,” she says.

One reason is the breathtaking economic growth of the emerging economies in the past few years, which has created enormous fortunes very quickly, notably in the Bric nations – Brazil, Russia, India and China. A second factor is the emergence of philanthropic role models who have stimulated a “demonstration effect”. “[Bill] Gates is huge,” she says. “They all want to be Gateses.”

The pattern varies in different parts of the world. In Latin America, long-standing approaches are being reworked. Since China first permitted the establishment of non-public foundations in 2004, the number registered has soared to more than 1,000. In Russia, some foundations now rank among Europe’s 50 largest.

That creates an important new “market” for the intermediaries. “It’s a really dynamic space right now,” says Mr Beck. “It seems like there’s a new entrant every week.” It also brings considerable challenges in recruitment, values and effective delivery.