Tencent’s 99 Giving Day Becomes a Charity Phenomenon in China
Shenzhen, China–(Newsfile Corp. – September 1, 2022) – This year’s Tencent Charity Foundation Giving Day is set to kick off in early September. It is now in its 6th installment and helps donors quickly and easily support thousands of projects across China using simple, effective, and easy-to-use apps.
When Tencent’s 99 Giving Day first launched the “Children’s Gallery” charity project for the Shanghai Yitu Public Welfare Foundation (WABC) five years ago, few expected the outpouring of support that the project received. Within a few hours, 15 million people donated, forever changing the charity landscape in China. Since then, over 13,000 children at WABC have benefited from the program. Tencent has now taken the project a step further by providing the little artists at the school with AI painting tools, allowing these artistic dreamers to become teachers of art, and helping them give back to society.
How Tencent’s 99 Giving Day Works
The way donations work on Tencent’s platform is simple. Using WeChat – Tencent’s instant messaging, social, and mobile payments app for a billion users – donors can browse charitable causes and donate any amount they wish, all with a few swipes of their fingers. Within the app, they can make micro-donations via WeChat Pay, set up project pages and storefronts, customize posters and branding, and socially share projects, achievements, and fundraising goals with their friends and social circles.
Thanks to the gamification of giving and incentivization via “Little Safflower” rewards that donors receive for contributing to causes, 99 Giving Day helps encourage active participation in charitable causes. In 2021 alone, the Little Safflower charity campaign engaged 125 million people. Since its inception, 99 Giving Day’s formula has proven to be revolutionary for mobilizing individuals and organizations toward beneficial charity projects across the country.
Building on Social and Community Ties
In a recent interview, Ge Yan, the Secretary General of the Tencent Charity Foundation, said that the concept of your hometown is extremely important in Chinese culture. “The same can be said about your family, friends, and neighbors,” she continued. Ge Yan says that, by tapping into these connections, 99 Giving Day encourages people to donate to projects, programs, and initiatives that they are interested in or hold dear to heart. Using WeChat and being active on 99 Giving Day, they are also better able to spread awareness about specific projects and encourage others in their social, personal, and professional circles to raise money for worthy causes.
The Power of the Tencent Model
One of the more successful 99 Giving Day projects has been the WABC case study mentioned earlier, but many other projects in the country operate in the same spirit, such as the Happy Homeland project, which is operated by the Hubei Charity Federation. This project has helped impoverished farmers in the Guidan region sell sweet potatoes online, and it generated over one million RMB and subsequently lifted over 500 individuals out of poverty since its inception in 2018.
While there are many charitable causes and events to choose from in China, Tencent’s 99 Giving Day stands alone as the model that others aspire to. Since it first started in 2015, the 99 Giving Day event has generated approximately $1.45 billion in charitable donations from over 224 million users. During this time, the number of donors grew over 30-fold, from roughly two million in 2015 to over 68 million last year. Donations grew by almost the same amount, multiplying by a factor of 27 to grow from RMB 127 million in 2015 to almost RMB 3.5 billion in 2021. Tencent also contributed matching donations of between RMB 99 million and RMB 399 million to selected projects every year for 99 Giving Day.
Expert Views on 99 Giving Day
99 Giving Day brings together digital transformation, social engagement, effective branding, and gamified and tokenized charity to drive powerful results. According to Jin Jinping, Director of the Law Research Institute at Peking University Law School, 99 Giving Day is a welcome game-changer for global philanthropy. He cited the widespread public participation in charity, the effective and efficient redistribution of resources via digital apps, and the decentralization of charity powered by the festival as reasons it has been so successful.
These sentiments were echoed by Wang Zhenyao, head of the China Philanthropy Research Institute of Beijing Normal University. He said that 99 Giving Day is “an excellent social project” and that 99 Giving Day brings individual passions and group enthusiasm to the charity space. He also said that 99 Giving Day has turned simple donations and fundraising into an effective process that builds more awareness and engagement across wide sectors of society – something that was perhaps not possible and certainly never was done before on such a grand scale.
Going back to Ge Yan of the Tencent Charity Foundation, these are exactly the goals of 99 Giving Day. “Our platform is designed to connect quality organizations and quality projects with caring netizens,” she says, and charitable giving can then become a habit. “It allows large populations to, at any time of the day, donate to projects that they are interested in. While the charity culture in China has developed rapidly, there are now more people willing to donate their compassion. When you buy a cup of coffee or watch the news and want to donate something, we make it easy and convenient for people to do this.”
“Many small acts of love create great love,” says Ge Yan. “If everyone contributes a little, it will combine and make a great movement: a country full of devotion, a society full of love.”
For more stories on how charitable donations are changing lives in China and for more information on Tencent’s upcoming 99 Giving Festival, please reach out to Jasmine Wang at jasmine@worldviewglobal.com.
Resources:
“Children’s Gallery” charity project: http://www.cmovip.com/mobile/detail/21670.html
Tencent’s “Little Safflower” Charity Campaign: http://www.tencent.com/en-us/articles/2201215.html
The Secretary General of the Tencent Charity Foundation’s interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LD0IrWxaTY
Making charity a habit: http://chinadevelopmentbrief.org/reports/the-tencent-example-making-charity-a-habit/
To view the source version of this press release, please visit http://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/135194
