Small firms taking on charity work
Print Edition
The concept of corporate social responsibility is growing as companies and workers contribute money and effort. Yao Minji gives us some insight.
Andy Chen, 31, heads a small Shanghai investment company of seven others, all under 35. The eight take a trip to poor, mountainous Guizhou Province in southwest China twice a year — in two groups — to take clothes, books and stationery to help four children they sponsor stay in school.
As China’s rapid economic development has created greater disparities of wealth and several large-scale natural disasters have been in the public eye, many Chinese billionaires have been blamed for lagging behind in philanthropy compared with their Western peers.
But young Chinese like Chen and his employees have started to gain awareness about the fairly new concept of corporate social responsibility, even when their companies are still small.
The company’s donations and the cost of the gifts and the trips are not tax deductible since they handled it themselves rather than going through official channels. Chen asked that the company’s name not be used.
“We didn’t do it for tax deduction in the first place, and we prefer to carry on by ourselves due to the Chinese Red Cross scandal and also because we want to get involved more than just giving money,” says Chen.
China’s Red Cross has been rocked by a series of scandals over how donations are used since the devastating Sichuan Province earthquake in 2008.
The warm project helps build teamwork at Chen’s small, young company, which is not always easy when “the eight people are already spending 80 hours a week squeezing their brains in the same office,” Chen says.
“Such charity projects, so different from our everyday work and so meaningful, really make everyone feel good and motivated, more than just making and spending money, hanging out in a bar or playing tennis together. It really feels good to be able to help out and to carry on some social responsibilities, as an individual and as a company,” he adds.
Canadian Marie-Lucie Spoke agrees. She says she has seen a great increase in awareness of corporate social responsibility among Chinese during her seven years of helping children in rural China.
Community Roots China (CRC), where Spoke is managing director, is a social enterprise that helps bridge the gap between companies in the cities and children in rural areas. CRC has a network of volunteers and children in remote areas in 13 provinces.
Spoke previously worked only with foreign corporations, but Chinese companies have started coming to her since last year, even though all the program’s information is still only in English. Almost all of the volunteers are young Chinese, she says.
“They want to help,” Spoke says. “We are getting contacted by more Chinese companies and volunteers than ever before. Often, we have a Chinese volunteer who wants to bring her colleagues with her, and she ends up bringing her whole office.”
Due to the potential and increasing demand, Spoke plans on making her projects fully bilingual, but will take these steps gradually as she is worried that interest from Chinese companies might overwhelm their growing team.
The idea for CRC started after Spoke and her husband lived in Beijing in the late 1980s, where he worked for the Canadian foreign office. They always wanted to return to China, which became possible when he accepted a job in Shanghai in 2003.
Spoke settled here three years later and began working with migrant children in the city. Later she expanded her efforts by sending care gift bags to children in rural areas, a project now known as the “One Heart” program and a popular employee engagement option.
“At first, it was really about sending warm clothes to these kids for the winter, so we decided to aim for Christmas rather than Chinese New Year as it would be too late and too cold,” Spoke says.
Gradually, school supplies, books and toys were added to the bags, and the program expanded to twice a year, adding the International Children’s Day on June 1. This year, Spoke expects to see 11,000 gift bags reach vulnerable children, many of them handicapped, in the rural areas of 13 provinces.
Each bag costs about 200 yuan (US$33) and one can either just donate the money or help with the packing of the bags.
“Some companies are so busy that they can only make a donation, but many organize their employees for a company-packing party, and this becomes a real good team-building event,” Spoke says. “Some companies also travel to the rural areas with their managers or employees and visit the children. This program has developed very quickly.”
She was impressed when Chinese company Shuei Wu Modern Kitchen of Shanghai contacted CRC shortly after the company was established last year and sponsored and packed 300 bags for children in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.
“We organized our own packing party and everyone stayed late, until almost midnight, but everyone was cheerful about being able to contribute, whether financially or physically,” says Xu Li, a company manager.
“We are a small, private company, but we want to change the stereotype about private companies only taking advantage of the labor of their employees,” Xu says. “We care more about sustainability of the company and corporate culture than just the pure bottom-line profit. We want to give back to society. We want the employees to feel happy and to feel engaged. Charity projects like this are an effective way to do so.”
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