In 2011, the Alibaba group founded the “Alibaba Philanthropic Foundation” and registered it with Civil Affairs with a base capital of fifty million yuan. Since then, the Alibaba group transfers a certain percentage of its annual profit to its foundation.
The foundation has chosen environment protection as its main area of intervention and uses the internet platform business model to develop its projects. It has for example implemented a rural development project in Sichuan which goal is to provide internet access to farmers so that they could sell their produce online.
The Alibaba foundation has also developed a philanthropic action linked to its online platform Taobao. The vendors participating in the “philanthropic baby ((宝贝, baby is the term used on Taobao to designate the products sold on the platform)) ” program agree to transfer a certain percentage of a product’s cost to one of the charity funds participating in the project (such as China-Doll’s medical treatment aid program “Steel Warrior” or Love save Pneumoconiosis…). In 2014 over one billion products were sold and over 70 million yuan were raised for the various public interest actions linked to the program.
