Interview dates: April 14-20, 2020
The unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic has rapidly swept the globe, impacting economies, healthcare systems, and daily life. The challenges it presents are real and significant.
To help policymakers and donors better understand the impact of the pandemic on China’s social sector, Lin Zhuomin, former Deputy Director of Consulting Services, and Zhang Jiawei, Research Manager, of the Centre for Asian Philanthropy and Society ( CAPS ) , conducted interviews between April 14 and 20 with Liu Lei, Secretary-General of the TCL Charity Foundation and Huameng Foundation; Li Beiwei, Secretary-General of the Yifang Charity Foundation; Li Jin*, Secretary-General of the Sany Foundation; and Tao Ze, Founder and President of Yishan Philanthropy Data Center .
CAPS : How has the pandemic affected your work? How have you responded?
Liu Lei: As TCL’s corporate social responsibility department, the TCL Charity Foundation, together with our parent company, responded quickly. First and foremost, we needed to protect the health and safety of our employees. We have over 10,000 employees in Wuhan. In the early stages of the outbreak, in late January, before the Lunar New Year, some employees went home for the holiday; however, approximately six or seven thousand remained at the factory. We quickly took the necessary measures to protect their health, and as a result, our employees had zero infections.
Secondly, we began discussing external donations as early as January 24, just before the Spring Festival, and quickly made the donations on January 26. We donated a total of 20 million RMB, including cash and supplies such as electrical appliances to the two temporary hospitals in Wuhan, Leishenshan and Huoshenshan.
Li Jin: The pandemic has had two direct impacts on the work of the Sany Foundation.
First, the inability to meet in person has impacted communication within our team and with our partners. This has affected the progress of our work and the building of relationships, especially with new partners.
Secondly, some of our offline training and outreach activities had to be cancelled. For example, our flagship 3ESPACE, which was originally positioned as an incubation project, is now primarily a project providing community building space for NGOs. To my knowledge, we are probably the only organization in Beijing that openly provides public event space for NGOs. Regrettably, the operation of 3ESPACE has been greatly affected during the pandemic.
The Sany Foundation twice allocated 500,000 yuan to support charitable organizations in their pandemic response, once before and once after the Chinese New Year. We are a relatively small, hybrid foundation with our own strengths and limitations (there are two types of foundations in China: grant-making foundations and executive foundations). Therefore, we strive to support the most effective pandemic response measures with our limited funds. Rather than mobilizing resources to donate medical supplies (where a significant amount has already been allocated), we decided to use the funds to support other unmet needs but with a significant future impact on community services, such as psychological support, community prevention and control, online doctor consultations, the operation of a nationwide collaborative network among foundations, and related research in these areas. I believe that the needs we focus on are particularly important for community reconstruction in the next phase of the pandemic.
On the other hand, for our existing partners, such as a community optimization and management project, because they have put a lot of effort into the community response, we will give them a three-month grace period to extend their original projects.
Li Beiwei: The impact of this epidemic on us is not significant. The children’s education, social enterprise development, and elderly care innovation research projects funded by the Yifang Charity Foundation will not be greatly affected. However, two social enterprises we have invested in have been affected: one is a small-to-medium-sized enterprise providing elderly care services, and the other is a second-hand clothing recycling business. We have been actively communicating with them and providing assistance as needed.
Tao Ze: The pandemic has brought us both positive and negative impacts, but the positives have outweighed the negatives. As a data platform, YiShan aims to promote transparency in China’s philanthropic sector. YiShan’s platform has already collected donation information from over 50,000 companies and fundraising information from 6,000 charitable organizations. The large-scale donations resulting from major social events like the COVID-19 pandemic have made the public, donors, and charitable organizations more focused on information transparency. This aligns with YiShan’s long-standing advocacy for data transparency, and it also plays a positive role in promoting this principle.
The relatively negative impact was that the additional human resources required to process the large amount of donation data consumed a significant amount of cash flow. We basically started working from the 29th day of the Lunar New Year, when the government began mobilizing donations, and the community also began donating. YiShan operated for more than 15 hours a day on average, like in a “wartime state,” to build a data platform, collect data, release data in a timely manner, and provide detailed lists of donations related to China’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
CAPS : So what’s next? Will you change the way you do these things?
Liu Lei: Our main project, the TCL Hope Project Candlelight Award, has been severely affected. This award aims to recognize and reward outstanding teachers in rural areas. Normally, around this time of year, we need to visit villages across China for field research; we also convene selected teachers for training and to attend the award ceremony. During this period, these in-person activities are simply impossible to conduct. Therefore, we have decided to postpone the selection process until next year (2021).
In general, about 80% of the projects need to be postponed or adjusted, while the 20% of online activities can continue. However, due to the TCL Charity Foundation’s strong corporate culture and practices, we will adjust the strict KPIs set in the early stages and innovate our existing projects. We will move existing projects online where possible, and launch new projects that do not require frequent business trips for those that cannot be moved online. In fact, we have just established new KPIs based on these new activities.
CAPS : Do you think this crisis will prompt more local collaboration?
Li Jin: We have witnessed the participation of various social forces in helping people get through this pandemic. This includes government community support measures, corporate donations, and the various efforts of social organizations and volunteers. Currently, there is no unified coordination mechanism, but in the words of Academician Wang Chen, President of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, the organization of Chinese society has reached a certain level, which can be understood as laying the foundation for successfully mitigating the pandemic.
In the later stages of the pandemic, the “Social Organization Collaboration Network for Combating COVID-19” was established in February to coordinate efforts between foundations and social organizations. The Sany Foundation also supported this network, although it was difficult to assess the platform’s effectiveness in the early stages.
Tao Ze: I can give two examples, one is the Nandu Charity Foundation, and the other is the Beijing Chunmiao Foundation.
The Nandu Charity Foundation places great emphasis on building an industry ecosystem, establishing networks, and forging partnerships. It immediately launched the “COVID-19 Pandemic Social Organization Collaboration Network” to coordinate donors and charitable organizations in responding to the pandemic. Let me give you an example: an organization received masks and ventilators, but they couldn’t get them to Wuhan. An organization that knew how to transport them helped get the supplies there.
This platform also serves as an information sharing and facilitation hub. Through this collaborative platform, participants can organize discussions in WeChat groups, translate international disaster relief documents, and conduct online training to enhance the capacity of frontline public welfare organizations. The long-term goal is to establish a disaster relief and emergency management coordination mechanism and strengthen cooperation among Chinese social sectors.
The Beijing Chunmiao Foundation has also established a strong collaborative network. Its founder is quite interesting. She holds degrees from three business schools, and all her classmates were business owners. When the pandemic hit, these entrepreneurs wanted to contribute but didn’t know how. Therefore, they donated money to Chunmiao, asking it to help coordinate and allocate resources effectively.
The Spring Seedling Foundation thus became a coordinating platform, utilizing the founders’ network to handle the procurement and logistics of medical supplies and their delivery to hospitals in Wuhan.
Spring Sprouts essentially acts as a hub, playing a crucial role from founder-led fundraising to the organization of distribution. In contrast, Southern Metropolis Daily has established a coordination mechanism to promote collaboration among social organizations through a collaborative network.
CAPS : It’s great to hear that some of you support collaborative work. Do you foresee any other long-term impacts of this pandemic on the social sector?
Li Beiwei: My personal view is that for businesses in society, we should follow the PPP (Public-Private Partnership) model, where stakeholders include the government, businesses, and employees. Everyone should work together to get through this difficult period.
The government can reduce taxes, lower loan interest rates, waive rent, and so on. Companies should expect some revenue reduction during this period. For example, they should also lower prices for services provided to vulnerable groups. Employees should be aware of the business difficulties during this time and work together to overcome them. To me, this idea of mutual assistance captures the essence of PPPs that benefit society. This is one direction for persuading the government to provide special support to social enterprises among the vast number of SMEs.
For the broader social sector, if we take the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake as a precedent, the government might allocate more funds to this sector to provide services at the community level. Due to the economic downturn, the government’s influence as the primary purchaser would further increase as other funding sources for the social sector decrease. However, if the social sector can fully utilize these new resources, it could very well be the catalyst for another period of explosive growth.
Tao Ze: The level of informatization in China’s philanthropic sector is constantly improving. The scandals that have occurred over the years have made everyone realize the importance of transparency. Many stakeholders also want to know the actual donations received by charitable organizations, as this disclosure will help them make decisions about donating to specific social issues.
I will also pay attention to the roles and interactions between government-run and privately-run public welfare organizations. Understanding this is important because it allows us to understand the direction of Chinese civil society.
These two types of institutions represent different approaches: non-governmental organizations represent a bottom-up model, while government-run institutions represent a top-down model. If government-run institutions receive more resources, it means that the top-down model will dominate the social sector, while the bottom-up model will be overshadowed, and vice versa. Even so, we do not see this as a zero-sum game, but rather a need to find a balance among all parties to shape the future direction of Chinese civil society.
The final balance will be influenced by the perspectives of government officials, business leaders, and leaders of NGOs. Choosing the wrong balance would be disastrous. This year and next year present a significant opportunity to reshape the direction of China’s civil society development.
Liu Lei: Actually, I had discussed the topic of “self-redemption” in the social sector with some colleagues before (I am a member of the board of directors of the Shenzhen Social Welfare Foundation).
I believe the social sector may not receive much financial assistance from the government, as the government’s primary task is to support the survival of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). On the other hand, it’s not surprising that some businesses go bankrupt during an economic downturn, thus impacting grassroots social organizations that heavily rely on corporate donations. Furthermore, encouraging these NGOs to explore alternative fundraising models, such as crowdfunding on platforms like Tencent or Alibaba, is both difficult and costly for them. As I mentioned earlier, business acumen and skills are indeed crucial for the social sector. NGOs that are not flexible enough to adapt to change will face survival challenges.
While most social organizations focus on domestic social issues, large corporate foundations like ours, when expanding our overseas philanthropic efforts, have always paid attention to the needs of different groups abroad. We will continue to do so more strategically. This is a major trend, and I personally believe it’s something that should be done.
Li Jin: It’s difficult to predict any trend in China, so I’ll just share some personal observations and thoughts. For most of us, the private sector, social sectors, and individual volunteers outside the government have mobilized a tremendous amount of power during this pandemic. Whether the government fully recognizes this enormous power of serving society, and how to recognize and assess this power, remains a question.
We are very grateful to Li Beiwei, Li Jin, Tao Ze, and Liu Lei for taking the time to conduct this interview. While continuing to address the COVID-19 pandemic, we will remain in close contact with our partners in China and other parts of Asia.
Mr. Li Jin, a seasoned philanthropist, conducted this interview with us.
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