About The Community Chest of Hong Kong

The Community Chest of Hong Kong

The Community Chest of Hong Kong is the territory's centralised community fundraising organisation: an independent, non-profit body that raises money from the public on behalf of Hong Kong's social welfare agencies and allocates the donations to those agencies so that they can concentrate on delivering services. Established on 8 November 1968, the Chest is neither funded nor operated by the government. Its defining promise is that 100 percent of donations are allocated to member agencies without deduction of administration costs, which are covered separately by an annual grant from the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust and by investment returns — a model that has made it one of the few fundraising bodies able to guarantee that every donated dollar reaches front-line services.

The Chest funds more than 160 member social welfare agencies, whose services reach millions of beneficiaries a year across six major areas: children and youth services, elderly services, family and child welfare, medical and health services, rehabilitation and aftercare, and community development. Its signature fundraising events — the Walks for Millions, Dress Casual Day and Flag Day — are fixtures of Hong Kong's civic calendar, and its official website is commchest.org. By its fiftieth anniversary in 2018, cumulative donations to the Chest had exceeded HK$6.8 billion, against HK$6.8 million received in its first year.

Establishment in 1968

The Community Chest was established on 8 November 1968 by a group of enthusiastic and visionary volunteers who proposed a simple reform of Hong Kong charity: instead of every welfare agency appealing separately to the public, funds would be raised centrally on behalf of all of them, leaving the agencies free to focus on delivering their services. The idea followed the community chest model used in North America, adapted to a Hong Kong in which dozens of small charities competed for the attention of the same donors.

The Chest began its fundraising work with three staff members and a target of HK$6 million. Forty-three member agencies were funded in its first year, and donations received in that first year of operation came to about HK$6.8 million. The number of member agencies rose to 60 in the second year, and early allocations already showed the breadth of the model: beneficiaries in 1969/70 included 1,000 households who had lost their homes in two squatter fires, assisted through the Salvation Army with an allocation from the Chest.

The 100 percent allocation model

The Chest's best-known feature is its funding model. Every dollar donated by the public is allocated to member agencies; none is deducted for administration. The organisation's administrative costs are subsidised by a generous annual grant from the Hong Kong Jockey Club — which describes itself as the Chest's partner in charity — together with prudent investment returns. The Chest presents this as a point of pride, and it is central to its public appeal: donors are told that the whole of their gift, not a fraction of it, funds services.

Allocations are decided through the Chest's committee structure. Under its Board sit four main committees, including the Executive Committee, the Campaign Committee, the Public Relations Committee and the Admissions, Budgets and Allocations Committee, which assesses member agencies and recommends how funds are distributed among them and among the six service areas. Member agencies operate thousands of service units between them — over 2,400 units in recent descriptions — serving more than two million beneficiaries in Hong Kong each year.

Walks for Millions

The Walks for Millions, launched in 1971, is the Chest's flagship fundraising event and one of Hong Kong's most recognisable charity traditions. Participants solicit donations from friends and relatives and then take part in a mass sponsored walk; a distinctive feature of the event's history is that many walks have been held along major new infrastructure — bridges, tunnels and expressways — immediately before their official opening to the public, giving walkers a once-only chance to cross on foot.

The first Hong Kong Island Walk and the Kowloon and New Territories Walk were held on 7 and 21 February 1971 respectively, attracting 4,622 and 7,937 participants and together raising nearly HK$1 million. The event then set records in two categories in the Guinness Book of Records: the most participants, 57,000 at the Kowloon Walk for Millions in 1977, and the most money raised, nearly HK$2 million at the Kowloon walk in 1979. The Island Eastern Corridor Walk on 3 June 1984 broke previous records with over 98,000 participants, and more than 180,000 people took part in Walks for Millions that year. By the 2009/2010 campaign year, over three million participants had joined the event across 160 walks organised by the Chest.

Dress Casual Day, Flag Day and other campaigns

Alongside the Walks, the Chest organises more than twenty fundraising events and campaigns each year. Dress Casual Day invites employees across Hong Kong to wear casual clothes to work in return for a donation, turning an ordinary working day into a territory-wide collection. Flag Day sends volunteers onto the streets with flag stickers and collection bags in the traditional Hong Kong format. The Corporate and Employee Contribution Programme channels workplace giving, and events such as the Swim for Millions add sporting fundraisers to the calendar.

Earlier campaigns show the same inventiveness. In 1970/71 the Chest launched Dollar-a-Month, a campaign targeted at factory workers that asked for a small regular contribution — an early form of the monthly giving that now underpins much charity fundraising. Donor numbers rose to 80,000 that year. The long-running television show produced jointly with Television Broadcasts Limited, and a stream of gala banquets, charity sales and sponsored challenges over the decades, kept the Chest's appeals in front of the public between its flagship events.

Member agencies and the six service areas

The Chest does not deliver services itself; it funds the agencies that do. Its member agencies provide services in six major areas: children and youth, the elderly, family and child welfare, medical and health, rehabilitation and aftercare, and community development. The membership has grown from 43 agencies in the first year to more than 160 today — 161 welfare agencies were being funded at the fiftieth anniversary, benefiting around two million beneficiaries, compared with under one million service users in 1968.

The range of members illustrates the model's purpose. Large multi-service organisations and small specialist charities alike receive Chest allocations, and because fundraising is centralised, a small agency with no public profile can still be funded on the quality of its work as assessed by the Chest's allocations process. Agencies such as Caritas Hong Kong and Helping Hand are among those that have worked with the Chest in areas such as elderly services, and the Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups lists the Community Chest among its principal funding sources alongside government subvention and the Jockey Club.

Growth and milestones

The Chest's milestones chronicle tracks steady growth across five decades. Donations passed HK$200 million in a single year in 1985/86, the year its website later joined its fundraising tools, and annual totals continued to climb: over HK$314 million was raised in 2015/16, the third highest amount since the organisation's founding. Through the 1970s and 1980s the Chest's events set participation records, and its donor base broadened from businesses and wealthy individuals to the mass public reached by the Walks and Dress Casual Day.

The fiftieth anniversary, marked on 8 November 2018 with a public celebration at Statue Square in Central, summarised the trajectory: from HK$6.8 million in donations in the first year to a cumulative figure of over HK$6.8 billion by 2017/18, and from 43 funded agencies to 161. Anniversary projects included a social innovation competition for tertiary students and an oral-history book, reflecting the Chest's own awareness that its history is intertwined with the history of Hong Kong's voluntary welfare sector itself.

Governance and independence

The Chest is governed by a Board, supported by its Executive, Campaign, Public Relations and Admissions, Budgets and Allocations committees, and staffed by a small professional team — a deliberately lean structure consistent with its promise on administration costs. Its founding chairman was Dr Samson Sun, and its leadership has drawn on Hong Kong's business and professional community; at the fiftieth anniversary the Executive Committee chairman was Peter T. Wong, who used the occasion to thank the public for their generosity and trust since 1968.

Independence is structural as well as financial. The Chest is an independent, non-profit making organisation neither funded nor operated by the government; its funds come from the public, and its one major institutional subsidy — the Jockey Club's grant toward administration — exists precisely to protect the 100 percent allocation principle rather than to direct its choices. Its office is in Wan Chai, and it reports to donors through annual award presentations and published accounts of funds raised and allocated.

The Chest in Hong Kong's welfare landscape

Within Hong Kong's social welfare system, the Chest occupies a unique middle position. Government subvention funds the statutory core of welfare services, while the Chest's community-raised funds give agencies flexibility — seed money for new services, top-ups for underfunded work, and support for agencies outside the subvention system. Its goal, as it states it, is to work for the betterment of Hong Kong through the support of millions, and to build a caring society through greater participation and giving by the Hong Kong community.

For a directory of Hong Kong organisations, the Community Chest is an essential entry: it is the territory's central community fundraising body, it touches — through its member agencies and their thousands of service units — more than two million beneficiaries a year, and its events, from the record-breaking Walks for Millions of the 1970s to Dress Casual Day, are part of Hong Kong's shared civic memory. Founded with three staff and a HK$6 million target in 1968, it had passed HK$6.8 billion in cumulative donations by its fiftieth year, while holding to the founding bargain that every donated dollar goes to services.