The Zhenro Foundation, alongside the Dunhe and Narada Foundations, will launch a new funding project called Hepingtai（和平台）in 2016, in order to promote the growth of start-up NGOs in second and third tier Chinese cities. As an open platform, Hepingtai welcomes more foundations and corporations to join in this effort to strengthen the Chinese NGO ecological chain and empower grassroot NGOs. It will cooperate with regional NGO platforms, providing them with funding (less than 100,000 RMB) and crucial training to support start-up NGOs in their regions. The criteria for its platform partners are to have at least one full-time employee, previous experience in NGO support, and a business scale of over 200,000 RMB. Candidates are currently selected through recommendations and active seeking by the founding foundations. But eventually, open public applications will be available.
Hepingtai is based on Zhenro Microphilanthropy (正荣微公益), which was established by the Zhenro Foundation in 2013. Zhenro Microphilanthropy has a wide range of operations, one of which is to offer micro-grants to platform organizations to support start-up NGOs. The Dunhe Foundation joined the project in 2014. By October 2015, Zhenro Microphilanthropy had supported over 100 start-up NGOs/projects with six provincial level regional platforms and two field-specialized platforms. Due to this success, the foundations involved plan to launch Hepingtai as an independent project to concentrate on promoting the development of NGOs and the NGO sector in less developed regions.
