According to its neo-philanthropy venture capital, YouChange provides financial support and allocate resources in its cooperation with other charity organizations to jointly implement YouChange’s projects, or provide venture capital and guidance to other organizations to implement their projects consistent with YouChange’s philosophy.
In selecting candidate projects, YouChange stresses the following points:
1. The project should pay equal attention to material and spiritual poverty reduction, and stresses the role of humanitarianism such as character education and “passing on love and compassion”;
2. The project should be innovative;
3. YouChange’s financial support will produce a leveraging effect;
4. The project is influential and can be emulated;
5. The project is consistent with YouChange’s mission and ongoing projects;
6. The project emphasizes the participation of vulnerable groups, and enhances their awareness and capability of self-help and independence;
7. The project can integrate cross-sector resources;
8. The project can be copied;
9. The project is sustainable; and
10. The project can sustain itself.
In addition to finance, YouChange wishes to maximize the project’s benefits through capacity building, resource allocation and channel sharing.
This model not only helps YouChange make its resources more available to its partners, but also helps grassroots Chinese organizations grow healthily. YouChange hopes this open and interactive model will integrate social resources to meet China’s needs in philanthropy and promote its development.
Each year, we will hold a tender on neo-philanthropy venture capital projects. Basic information is as follows:
I. Purpose
1. We want to improve the capacity of grassroots charity organizations in institutional administration, project operation and financing, better serve the community, promote the healthy and sound development of philanthropy in China, and cultivate and identify neo-philanthropy leaders;
2. We want to collect lessons and experiences at the community level, and share successful community development strategies and innovative methods with community and charity organizations, government departments and other organizations in the region; and
3. We want to establish partnership and network with stakeholders, improve the capacity of community and charity organizations as well as government departments in poverty-stricken community development, and ensure they have correct understanding and practice of preservation and sustainable development strategy and project implementation.
II. Fields
Fields directly related to community development with the following priorities:
Chinese-style civic education;
Rural and urban community development and sustainable development;
Social innovation models to empower vulnerable groups and create opportunities of social integration for them.
III. Funding
Venture capital investment on each project will be 100,000 yuan, 50,000 yuan or 20,000 yuan.
IV. Qualification
1. Applying organizations should be social organizations with independent juridical person status formally registered with civil affairs departments in the People’s Republic of China;
2. Applying organizations should support the vision, neo-philanthropy philosophy and basic values of YouChange;
3. Applying organizations should be directly responsible for project design, preparation, management and implementation;
4. Organizations applying for 100,000 yuan should provide matching funds of no less than 100,000 yuan in cash, and provide a recommendation letter from a previous community development project partner (with whom it had a project which had a budget of no less than 200,000 yuan);
5. Applying organizations should have a stable project implementation team and necessary project supervisors;
Should there is any conflict between the above requirements and the tender notice released every year, the latter will prevail.