Tencent’s “Little Safflower” Charity Campaign Engages over 125 Million Users

The ten-day 99 Giving Day for 2021 has concluded with success. Through revamping and taking the matching donation mechanism, product system,  the network of enterprises, and charity infrastructure to next level this year, Tencent has connected hundreds of millions of netizens, thousands of charities and caring enterprises to utilize the power of technology for social good.

Data shows that this year’s 99 Giving Day has extended its reach more than ever. As an example, the Tencent charity IP “little safflower” has engaged over 125 million netizens through charity quizzes and other charitable behaviors. During 99 Giving Day, over 68.7 million donors have contributed to a total amount of RMB 3.6 billion. Together with the RMB 600 million support from Tencent Charity Foundation (“Tencent Foundation”), RMB 4.2 billion was raised in total.

99 Giving Day is no longer limited to the initial idea of a fundraising activity but has become a platform for the charity industry to jointly explore solutions to long-term social issues and promote social equity. Tencent will always stay true to our commitment of “Value for Users, Tech for Good”, to help solve challenges and bring positive impact to society.

More than 90 million “little safflowers” are gathered to encourage long-term charitable behavior

This year’s 99 Giving Day attracted more users to participate in charity through diversified engagement, encouraging participants to become lasting volunteers and donors after engaging in internet charity.

The game of “little safflower” has been upgraded this year where contributors could collect “little safflower” by donating money, participating in charity quizzes, steps donation and more. The final number of “little safflower” counted towards the matching donation program.

The positive responses on “little safflowers” demonstrates that that goodwill can overcome physical boundaries through the internet to engage overseas users. For example, a Chinese Indonesian living in Southeast Asia, along with many of his colleagues, has joined the 99 Giving Day through the Internet.

Throughout the campaign period, around 2,600 colleagues in the Indonesian company have collected more than 6,000 books for rural children via “Donate Together.”

All Tencent branches are fully engrossed in unlocking the power of social goodness

Tencent believes that we can inspire others with charitable acts. This year’s 99 Giving Day continued to influence the public with heart-warming stories. With the innovative “Themed Day” (September 1 – 6), all business branches of Tencent are committed to enhancing the formation of social values with its product ecosystem.

Besides the game of “little safflower”, more than 30 products and services such as Tencent Parental Guardian Platform, Tencent Meeting, WeSure, Tencent Video, Tencent News and wealth management platform LiCaiTong are offering special charity programs based on their unique features.

For example, Weixin Pay users can team up for an extra-curricular book donation program for rural children, or join a quiz on carbon neutralization after a Weixin payment and win the low carbon charity fund; QQ Music has launched a low frequency charity album for people with medium or high frequency hearing loss; etc.

Building the path towards sustainable charity with society

In its seventh year, 99 Giving Day has become a charity campaign that spans across charity organizations, enterprises and media, attracting hundreds of millions of donors in the nation while exploring the role of charity in the changing times.

With social issues as grave and unexpected as COVID-19 and heavy rainstorms, the charity sector has to face the imminent pressure to tackle the emergency with resource allocation through technology, connecting various rescue teams and arranging the aid distribution via digital skills to step up the digitalization of charity.

This year, RMB 600 million is used to support different programs on various platforms during the 99 Giving Day, especially in the fields of education, elderly care and rural revitalization.  

Furthermore, RMB 400 million will soon be allocated to support high-quality project execution, management, evaluation, open data development, brand building and more of the charity organizations that have received fundraising and matching donations in the 99 Giving Day.

RMB 20 million of the aforementioned funding will be used to support the offline events of the charity organizations, RMB 50 million for trainings to improve their transparency and compliance, RMB 100 million to encourage sustainable collaboration between enterprises and charity organizations, RMB 80 million to fund small but mature or innovative charity projects and RMB 150 million to enhance the professional capability of project management of these organizations.

It is worth mentioning that the 99 Giving Day will be setting up a fund with tens of millions of dollars to drive project transparency where projects can apply for grants to be used on third-party evaluations. With guidance on charity project professionalism and compliance management, the development capacity of the organizations could be boosted.

Since early this year, Tencent has established the Sustainable Social Value Organization (SVV) and has committed investment of a total of RMB 100 billion on public welfare.