Improves the lives of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities by reducing suffering and providing opportunities
Division
Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau
15/F, Queensway Government Offices
66 Queensway, Hong Kong
13th March, 2023
The Zubin Foundation’s Response to the Public Consultation on Regulation of Crowdfunding Activities
1.1. The Zubin Foundation (IR: 91/12344) is a registered charity committed to improving the lives of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities by providing opportunities and reducing suffering.
1.2. We conduct outreach projects by providing training, counselling, and other well-being services to our service users, including managing the Call Mira helpline for women and girls and our scholarships programme Ethnic minority children and their parents are one of our key stakeholders, in particular, ethnic minority children in emotional distress, ethnic minority children with special educational needs and their parents, parents who lack parenting skills, parents and children who need immediate safety support, etc.
1.3. We have a team of 24 staff members including half working full-time and half working part-time.
1.4. Our major income sources are project grants and some come from individual and corporate donations.
1.5. We have experience in “donation-based crowdfunding” only and the following responses are drafted based on our experience in this type of crowdfunding:
2. Background
2.1. TZF agrees that setting legislation that protects the public interest in crowdfunding is important.
3. Specific Proposals on the Regulation of Crowdfunding Activities
3.1. Crowdfunding Affairs Office (CAO)
3.1.1. TZF welcomes the idea of setting up a centralised office to handle administrative, regulatory and monitoring crowdfunding-related activities.
3.1.2. TZF Recommendations
3.1.2.1. Often for small charities like us, there is not enough
Improves the lives of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities by reducing suffering and providing opportunities
manpower to handle different administrative tasks, not to mention it could take a long period of time for vetting and checking and often even the officer who handles the process does not know how long it could take because it involves several departments and bureaux. It severely affects the planning of resources of the NGOs. We suggest the CAO be clear on the timeline an application might take – or be clear within a certain period of time, the applicant will be able to get the application result.
3.1.2.2. The consultation document does not give a clear picture of which activities should apply to the CAO. For example, if an overseas Hong Kong students groups contacted us and would like to mobilise their current students and their alumni to help raise fund for our charity through an online crowdfunding platform based overseas, should this initiative be applied? If so, whom should the applicant be? – the charity? Or the overseas student union?
3.1.2.3. One big advantage of crowdfunding is the flexibility it offers to the applicant. However, if the CAO’s application requirement is complicated and involves a lot of procedures, which will defeat the advantages of crowdfunding. Thus, we urge the government to consider simplifying the application as much as possible so as to keep the highest level of flexibility.
3.1.2.4. Applications – it is suggested to have different crowdfunding application requirements apply to different target amounts (HK$5,000 vs HK$1,000,000). Otherwise, it will simply demotivate charities seeking support for the disadvantages with smaller amounts due to the high administrative costs.
3.2. Requirements on people conducting fundraising activities
3.2.1. The document suggested it may mandate donations over a certain amount to be donated in real names. However, please consider the following situations:
3.2.1.1. If it is an online donation, it depends if the platform could release such information to the applicant;
3.2.1.2. if it is an offline donation, such donation box, it will be very difficult for the applicant to trace the donor in their “real names”.
3.2.1.3. Often even donations received through banks, full names may not be revealed in the first place. As a charity, we need to pay an extra HK$50 admin fee to the bank for each transaction to check the name of the donor.
Improves the lives of Hong Kong’s ethnic minorities by reducing suffering and providing opportunities
We urge the government to take into consideration the complexity of the nature when it comes to practice.
3.3. Use of crowdfunding platforms and online media
3.3.1. When it comes to choosing online crowdfunding platforms – often, the organisation would base on:
• (1) its reliability;
• (2) its track history;
• (3) the number of audiences that it can reach;
• (4) the fees it charges.
If we can only consider platforms registered with CAO, it will definitely limit the options that we can choose. We have reservations in this suggestion.
4. Enquiries:
4.1. For further information and discussion, please contact: Shalin Mahtani, Founder and CEO, email at mummy@zubinfoundation.org
Sandy Chan, Operations Director, email at sandy@zubinfoundation.org