The fourth session of Tencent’s annual philanthropic campaign “99 Charity Day” came to a close on September 9. Rational charity, transparency and public participation in diverse programs have become the highlights of this year’s campaign.

According to data from Tencent, during the three-day event from September 7 to 9, more than 28 million individual donations were made by loving netizens, who raised 830 million yuan through Tencent’s public platform, and more than 2,000 enterprises donated 185 million yuan to support 5,498 charity projects. The Tencent Charity Foundation provided 299.99 million yuan in matching funds, and another 100 million to a growth fund for charity organizations. The total amount of donations exceeds 1.414 billion yuan.

Although the standards and requirements for the public and social enterprises to participate in the event, as well as for information disclosure have been greatly enhanced, the fourth session of the “99 Charity Day” continues to achieve steady growth in the amount of donations and a comprehensive upgrade of social impact. Not only have the number of participants doubled compared to last year, but the amount of public interaction has increased significantly to 300 million, hitting a record high. Through a series of new efforts such as the introduction of new rules, product transparency upgrades and the “Review Plan”, the “99 Charity Day” endeavors to turn every bit of kindness from hundreds of millions of users into the love for others.

 

Tencent co-founder Chen Yidan, also founder and honorary Chairman of Tencent Charity Foundation, said that “rational charity” advocated in this year’s fundraising event is the inheritance and evolution of the “fingertip public welfare” concept of previous campaigns. Our compassion and donations start from the fingertips and gradually evolve into the rational wisdom. The mission of Tencent is to make people share their compassion, donations and accountability from the heart and, more importantly, from the trust in the event.

“After the ‘99 Charity Day’, Tencent Charity will treat the end as a new starting point and continue to promote transparent and open Internet ecosystem with all parties in society”, said Mr. Chen Yidan, “rationality” will be the key to the next wave of Internet-based public welfare.

A record high: 28 million individual donations were made to support 5,498 public welfare projects.

The data shows that in the three days of the event from September 7 to 9, a total of 28 million individual donations were made to 5,498 public welfare projects. All of these donations will go to the account of the public-raising fund and be subject to social supervision through transparent and open operational processes and information disclosure.

Among these projects, educational projects were most supported and concerned, receiving 35.2% of all the funds raised. Following that, healthcare projects received 34.5%, “anti-poverty/comprehensive” projects received 26.1%, and environmental and animal protection projects received 4.2%. All projects have benefited from Tencent’s hugely successful fundraising event, whether it is a well-known established project or a small one. Soon, Tencent Charity will donate another 100 million yuan to support the long-term growth of public welfare organizations.

As a phenomenon in online public welfare action with the largest number of participants, strongest impact and the most diverse activities, this year’s “99 Charity Day” advocates a rational approach to charity. Hence, year 2018 is dubbed by the industry as the first year of “rational charity”.

According to Zhai Hongxin, the secretary-general of the Tencent Charity Foundation, the most stringent entry and review standards in history have been issued before this year’s event, and more than 1,000 charitable organizations had been rejected due to their unqualified financial disclosure and annual reporting. However, as the data shows, the total funds raised by the “99 Charity Day” this year still increase steadily. This also proves the rapidly growing influence of the event on the whole industry.

Furthermore, there were more than 28 million individual donations this year, which double the number of last year. As the total amount of donations is close to that of last year, the doubling of the number of participants means that the amount of single contribution has decreased, but it also shows that more people are being influenced by the online charity event, indicating that it has gained a bigger social impact. This is in line with the original slogan of the event: “Little sparks of kindness light up LOVE”. (积小善, 成大爱).

The success of this year’s event is also inseparable from the participation of charitable organizations and businesses. As already mentioned, more than 2,000 enterprises were also involved in the event, including Cadillac, China FAW Group, SF Express, Jordan, 58 Group, Anta, Coca-cola, L’Oreal, Vipshop, etc., and they have been important platforms for boosting public welfare.

Among them, 500,000 Cadillac car owners and staff from more than 300 Cadillac dealerships nationwide took part in the protection of environment along the G7 highway; Anta Sports Products, with 3,434 stores nationwide, organized consumers and thousands of front-line teachers to support education of children in remote areas; Ping An Insurance, with its more than 40,000 employers and agents from 45 branches nationwide, kicked off the Mu Tian Book Donation Program; over 200 outlets of Thermos carried out publicity activities during the “99 Charity Day”, contributing their efforts to the protection of water source for 700 million people.

Zhang Xiaofeng, coauthor of the book Internet Plus: The Roadmap for the National Strategy, believes that through new rules, strengthen charitable ethics and social supervision, this year’s fundraising event has created a lot of efficiency, performance and effectiveness, giving full play to the advantages of Internet Plus, social mobilization of the sharing economy and precise matching. “That’s one small step for the innovation of corporate social responsibility, and one giant leap for the creation of a public welfare ecosystem in China. It is making philanthropic more empowering, collaborative and credit-based”, said Zhang Xiaofeng.

Full connection: “99 Charity Day” covers “all” online and offline scenes.

From online fundraisers to the full penetration into offline life scenes, this year’s “99 Charity Day” has advanced rapidly on the road to include “the entire population”. During its three-day run, the event was launched in main business districts, transportation hubs and communities of more than one hundred cities across the country. Meanwhile, it was on dozens of apps with hundreds of millions of registered users. Nearly 100 artists and celebrities participated in the event, hundreds of mainstream media issued in-depth coverage, and more than a thousand philanthropic companies got on board. This year’s fundraising event covered almost all online and offline scenes.。

More than 100,000 neighborhoods, 580 business districts, and nearly 60,000 stores in about 60 major cities across the country joined offline events of the “99 Charity Day”, allowing it to reach the daily lives of millions of people. At places including airports and city landmarks in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, as well as nearly 500 supermarkets of CR Mixc World and CR Vanguard, 3,300 stores of Watson, and nearly 500 stores of Innisfree, citizens could participate in the campaign at any time to do good in their daily life.

 

 2018 “99 Charity Day” offline event

Online, more than 20 Tencent products joined the “99 Charity Day”, including WeChat Payment, QQ, King of Glory, WeChat mini games, Weishi, QQ browser, etc., calling on more and more netizens to participate in public welfare through intriguing interactive online activities. More than 50 prominent internet companies such as 58 Group, VIPKID, MaMa.cn, ke.com, Kuaishou, Sogou Search, Meili Inc., Tongcheng, Zhong An Insurance, etc., also partook in the event, attracting public participation through messages for CEOs and their products.

At the same time, in order to make this year’s “99 Charity Day” event more appealing and absorbing, new means for interaction had been introduced, such as Hometown Charity, Donation Doubling Card, Collection of Small Red Flowers, Donating Behaviors, interaction with celebrities through short videos, etc. During the three days, a large number of users posted photos of them joining the event on social media. As topics about the “99 Charity Day” went viral on WeChat Moments, the event’s page views on Sina Weibo also reached 990 million.

Over 18 million people participated in the “Collection of Small Red Flowers” activity, and many users used Tiantian P Tu, a photo editing app, to add the red flower on their WeChat profile photos to express their support for the “99 Charity Day”. In addition, the “Donation Doubling Card”, which can increase the amount of a single donation up to 10 times larger, has become a new channel for businesses to participate in internet-based public welfare as a great many users also joined and forwarded the activity on social media. Soon, calling on friends to participate in public welfare on social media and using social networks to influence more people have become a kind of “fashion of engaging in public welfare” among a multitude of users during the “99 Charity Day” event.

 

Picture: “Collection of Small Red Flowers” and “Donation Doubling Card” became an internet meme on WeChat Moments.

At the same time, a large number of celebrities also participated in the event, setting off a positive “public welfare trend” among their tens of millions of fans. This year’s event brought together 43 stars, including Zhao Wei, Wang Kai, Wang Junkai, Wang Yuan, Yi Yangqianxi, Zhou Dongyu, Zhang Yishan, Su Bingtian, Huang Zikai, etc. They launched the “A Push for Love” charity behavior on Weibo. With a total of 664 million Weibo followers joining the activity and 77.53 million video views, their efforts have brought the public and charity much closer.

With its diverse forms and scenes, the influence of this year’s “99 Charity Day” event has extended from online to offline, from charitable organizations to the public, and from charitable platforms to neighborhoods, turning the event itself into a huge wave in which tens of millions of people gave their support for public welfare from the bottom of their heart.

Back to original aspiration: Promoting public welfare with “rational charity”.

People have been crazy about the “99 Charity Day”, but Tencent has been advocating rational participation this year. Chen Yidan expressed that Tencent Charity, with all the capabilities it has gained over the years, will continue to serve the evolution and transformation of China’s charity industry, while ensuring that every decision regarding charitable donations can be made from rational consideration, and charitable participation can be sustained by improving transparency, so that a transparent and sustainable charity ecosystem could be established in China.

Wang Lin, chairman of the China Charities Aid Foundation for Children, expressed that transparency and openness are the root of the credibility of charity. And from the view of the vice general secretary of China Women’s Development Foundation Zhang Jianmin, “99 Charity Day” has played an active role in advocating the concept of public participation, fostering public awareness of charity, and leading social organizations to support targeted poverty reduction and alleviation.

In order to make the public more rational when making donations, this year’s event has launched many innovations and upgrades on products. For example, on the eve of the “99 Charity Day” this year, Tencent Charity added a prompt page dubbed “cooler” (冷静器), which is intended to encourage users to think twice and check related information carefully before they make donations.

 

The prompt page (or “cooler”), created to encourage rational consideration, appears after users have chosen the project to which they want to make donations.

In addition to significant improvements on products, in order to continuously promote the transparent and open system construction of the charity industry, Tencent Charity has been continuously promoted transparency and openness through a variety of initiative, including new rules, product transparency upgrades, the “Review Plan” (回响计划) of project disclosure, etc. Hence the public welfare ecosystem will become healthier and more sustainable as new technologies are being used and trust is being built.

This year’s “99 Charity Day” highlights joint participation and encourages participants from all walks of life to work together in developing rules which aim to promote the healthy development of the internet-based public welfare. Over 3 months, nearly 80 participants, including scholars, experts, media professionals, lawyers, put forward their opinions and suggestions. After the review of experts, the rules of the 2018 “99 Charity Day” were finally established. The process which features pubic participation was widely welcomed by users.

In the view of some industry observers, if the first and second editions of the “99 Charity Day” are the wave-breaker and pioneer, and the third gives the leverage effect on the charity industry, then the “99 Charity Day” in its four edition has established the milestone of “rational charity” on the foundation of “participation by all people”, which has made charitable activities more rational in the process of promoting the internet-based wave of public welfare to public welfare participated by the whole society.

In response to the social effects brought by this year’s “99 Charity Day”, Qiu Zeqi, professor of sociology at Peking University, pointed out that this year’s event has drawn on rules co-established by various parties to boost participation and make little sparks of kindness light up love. It also employed new technologies to promote fairness and encouraged participants of the whole society to offer their support, while focusing on hometown, the disadvantaged, individuals, enterprises, and communities. These are precious signals that the charity industry is returning to its original aspiration.

Chen Yidan once said that there is a law in the internet industry: every new step added in the interaction chain often leads to the inevitable loss of users. Some people even said that the “cooler” is the “first creation to stop you from donating”. Although the donation rate on the platform has declined over the six months after the “cooler” was launched, it’s still the only way to “promote the transparency of charity”.

“The process from emotional contagion to rational sustainability is inevitable for the charity industry. For all those who participate in charity, they are not pursuing the numbers, but should focus on the rational cycle of public welfare”, said Chen Yidan.

Ushering in the future: Turning the “99 Charity Day” into a permanent action.

At 9:19 am on September 9, Tencent’s Chairman and CEO Pony Ma, President Lau Chi Ping Martin and all the President’s Office members sent a “99 Charity Day” email to all Tencent employees. The email goes: ...hope to make the “99 Charity Day” evolve into a more normalized and “permanent action”, thus enabling donors to experience the joy of participating in public welfare, practitioners to harvest the value of trust, and participants to create a diverse ecosystem.

“If internet-based public welfare is a product, then its KPI and value never lie in the amount of raised funds, but in how to inspire people’s kindness and their willingness to lend a helping hand. While offering transparent, smooth and engaging product experience, it gathers the kindness of every individual into a vast ocean, so that the users themselves can also make a difference and make the world a better place”. The email said that this is the original aspiration behind the “99 Charity Day”, and the good news is that we are getting closer to the goal every year.

As the man behind the “99 Charity Day” for four consecutive years, Chen Yidan expressed that the fundraising event is not only a thrilling three-day climax of the charity industry, but a starting point on a new journey.

“Through every “99 Charity Day” activity, we continue to fill in our gaps and solidify achievements. By making it an institutional rule, we endeavor to turn every bit of kindness from hundreds of millions of users into the love for others.” Said Chen Yidan. She hopes to use the power of science and technology to bring out the best of every warm heart, and to make charity a habit of everyone instead of impulsive sporadic donations.

Chen Yidan believes that in the next wave of “rational charity”, the charity industry will shift the focus from “charity scale” to “charity sustainability”. The mission of Tencent Charity is to help non-profit partners to enrich the dimensions of transparent disclosure and display personalized institutional information through continuous platform optimization, so as to win the support of loving users based on their deeper understanding. At the same time, Tencent Charity aims to promote the application of information technology among these institutions and the growth of users. Through the co-built ecosystem, we can create a prospect of rational charity with greater social values.