Transparency of online donations gains public's trust

Works painted by autistic people are sold via Tencent's charitable platform, Aug 29, 2017. [Photo/IC]

It is the popularization of smartphones and social media networks since 2010 that has made it possible to donate via online platforms. Before that, it was mainly wealthy entrepreneurs who donated to charitable causes.

This has fundamentally changed the landscape of China's charity sector. Just as a senior official from the Ministry of Civil Affairs said at a recent news conference, online donations now account for more than 80 percent of the revenue of certain charity organizations.

Another statistic shows how popular online donating is now. People have made more than a billion donations online since September 2016. That would be impossible without modern information technology.

Although many online donations involve quite small amounts of money, they add up.

However, with the popularity of donating online, the problem of regulation emerges. How to check the donation information released online? How to supervise the charities?

The answer is another advantage of online charity programs: transparency. On Sept 4, Charity in China, an information-sharing platform for charity organizations nationwide, was launched. By Tuesday, all the 1,676 online charity programs had published their information on it.

On Sept 9, when there were reports about certain accounts falsifying information in a charity activity organized by domestic internet giant Tencent, the organizers checked immediately and found 25,000, or about 1 percent of the deals, were abnormal. The abnormal accounts were frozen for further investigation.

It is such strict supervision and regulatory measures that has helped online charitable giving gain the public's trust.