About One Foundation

One Foundation

The One Foundation, formally the Shenzhen One Foundation Charity Fund, is a Chinese charitable foundation headquartered in Shenzhen, with offices in Beijing and Shanghai, that focuses on disaster relief, children's welfare, the training of public-welfare professionals and the funding of grassroots charities. It was launched on 19 April 2007 by the film actor and martial artist Jet Li as the Red Cross Society of China Jet Li One Foundation Project, and it made Chinese philanthropic history on 3 December 2010, when pilot regulations in the Shenzhen special economic zone allowed it to register as an independent public fundraising foundation — the first Chinese charitable foundation not affiliated with the government or a government-sponsored organisation.

The foundation's founding slogan expressed its model: "1 person + 1 yuan + 1 month = 1 big family" — the idea that very small, regular contributions from very many people could build a large, standing fund for disaster relief and welfare. By the end of 2024 the foundation reported more than 9.87 billion donation participations, over 4.69 billion yuan raised and more than 52 million people helped. Its board has drawn in some of China's best-known entrepreneurs, including Jack Ma of Alibaba, Pony Ma of Tencent, Lenovo's Liu Chuanzhi, Vanke's Wang Shi and Mengniu founder Niu Gensheng.

Jet Li, the 2004 tsunami and the founding idea

The foundation began in personal experience. Li was holidaying in the Maldives with his wife and young daughters when the Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami struck on 26 December 2004. In the account he later gave to Newsweek, the family found themselves in the water; his youngest daughter, then one year old, and her nanny were briefly swept away before being rescued by bystanders. Li wrote that the experience changed his understanding of his own life: he had spent his first 41 years thinking about Jet Li first, and in the hotel lobby he saw people of different colours, speaking different languages, helping each other, putting women, children and the elderly first — and concluded that if everybody does a little, it will make a big difference.

Within days of the disaster Li announced plans to start a foundation, donating 500,000 yuan to tsunami victims and a further 500,000 yuan as its starting fund. The design he settled on was deliberate: rather than a charity that collects money only after a disaster strikes, the One Foundation would hold money ready to disburse, built from the standing contributions of ordinary donors under the "one person, one yuan, one month" formula. Li, who had become a Red Cross ambassador, launched the project under the Red Cross Society of China, whose umbrella gave the new fund legal capacity to raise money publicly.

Launch under the Red Cross, 2007–2010

The Red Cross Society of China Jet Li One Foundation Project was formally launched on 19 April 2007. Its first international cooperation followed within months: in September 2007 Li and Thailand's Princess Ubol Ratana, chairperson of the To Be Number One Foundation, announced a joint project for young people in Beijing, the One Foundation's first link with an international organisation. By its first anniversary, celebrated at the China Millennium Monument in April 2008, the fund had established the partnerships — including with airlines — that let it react quickly when disasters occurred.

Early relief work and the Sichuan earthquake

The foundation's early relief record was built in a year of catastrophes. It raised nearly US$16 million in just over eighteen months and took part in recovery efforts for the Yunnan Pu'er earthquake and the snowstorms that paralysed much of southern China in early 2008, before its defining early test: the Sichuan earthquake of May 2008, for which it raised large sums and to which Li devoted himself full-time, pausing his film career throughout 2008 to build the foundation. Subsequent early work included recovery efforts for Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan in 2009. In October 2010, as its legal position was being resolved, it also registered in Shanghai as a private fund under the name Shanghai Jet Li One Foundation Charity Fund.

The 2010 breakthrough: China's first independent public foundation

The One Foundation's most consequential moment was legal rather than charitable. Chinese rules at the time required foundations to attach themselves to a government sponsor, which is why the fund had operated under the Red Cross. Pilot regulations on public fundraising enacted in the Shenzhen special economic zone changed that: on 3 December 2010 the One Foundation registered in Shenzhen as an independent public fundraising foundation, ending its affiliation with the government-run Chinese Red Cross and becoming the first Chinese non-governmental organisation of its kind — the first Chinese charitable foundation not affiliated with the government or a government-sponsored organisation. It was formally launched in Shenzhen in January 2011.

Scholarship on celebrity philanthropy in China, including the Asian Studies Review's study of the phenomenon, treats the breakthrough as a landmark in the development of Chinese civil society: the foundation's history demonstrated both the possibilities opened by local regulatory experiment in Shenzhen and the model of a professionally governed, publicly accountable charity independent of the state-sponsored foundation system. The new board embodied that ambition, bringing together eleven directors drawn from the top of Chinese business and economics, among them Feng Lun, Jet Li, Liu Chuanzhi, Pony Ma, Ma Weihua, Jack Ma, Niu Gensheng, Wang Shi, Yang Peng, Zhou Qiren and Zhou Weiyan.

Disaster relief as the core mission

Disaster relief remained the foundation's first pillar after independence. Its strategy, as it states it, is one platform focused on three areas — disaster relief, children's welfare and philanthropy development — under a mission to promote philanthropic culture, provide humanitarian aid in natural disasters, and build a platform by which everyone can join philanthropic causes. The standing-fund design meant its response to earthquakes and floods could begin with money already raised, rather than with an appeal.

Its largest single early response as an independent foundation came after the Lushan earthquake in Ya'an, Sichuan, in April 2013, for which it raised over 300 million yuan. The response also brought scrutiny: internet users discovered that the English section of the foundation's website still described a direct link to the Red Cross, from which it had separated in 2010, in the aftermath of the Red Cross's own 2011 credibility scandal. The foundation promptly took down the English site and issued a statement that the information was outdated, representing the situation before 3 December 2010, and that only the Chinese site should be considered correct — an episode that underlined the premium the young foundation placed on demonstrable independence and transparency.

Children's welfare and grassroots funding

The second pillar, children's welfare, grew from the foundation's disaster work into standing programmes for vulnerable children, including work with children affected by autism — a cause Li also dramatised on screen in the film Ocean Heaven, in which he played the terminally ill father of a son with autism; a fund managed by the One Foundation aims to support national-level autism organisations and the families affected. Children's programmes form, with disaster relief, the foundation's main direct-service front.

Funding grassroots charities and training professionals

The third pillar, philanthropy development, makes the foundation a funder and trainer of others. It funds grassroots charities across China, trains public-welfare professionals, and works to professionalise a sector that expanded rapidly after the 2008 earthquake volunteer wave. The model reflects Li's founding conviction that the bottleneck in Chinese charity was not generosity but trustworthy, competent organisations: by the foundation's own account it exists to provide a professional and transparent public-service platform, under the vision that philanthropy starts with every one person.

Scale and record to 2024

By the end of 2024, on the foundation's reported figures, the cumulative record stood at more than 9.87 billion individual donation participations — a count of acts of giving rather than of donors, reflecting the micro-donation model — over 4.69 billion yuan raised, approximately US$686 million, and more than 52 million people helped. On the GlobalGiving platform, where the foundation has raised funds internationally since its early years, its listing records a 2007 founding and millions of dollars raised through that channel for its projects.

Those numbers place the One Foundation among the most widely participated-in charities in China, and they rest on the same formula announced in 2007. The foundation's historical significance, however, is usually located earlier: in the December 2010 registration that made it the first independent public fundraising foundation in the People's Republic, and in the demonstration — studied by scholars of Chinese philanthropy and covered extensively in English-language news media — that a celebrity-founded, professionally governed, publicly funded charity could operate outside the government-sponsored foundation system. For a directory of Chinese organisations, it is the defining entry in modern Chinese private philanthropy.