E-donations give charities a boost
An NGO said on Tuesday that a transition to holding electronic flag days has boosted donations to charities.  Speaking on RTHK's Hong Kong Today programme, Anthea Lee, the chief executive of SideBySide, which helps former inmates, said a lot of donors prefer the electronic option over the physical bag collection commonly seen on Saturdays in the territory.  Lee said people want to support good causes, but find traditional flag selling payment methods to be limiting. "For electronic means, we can recruit people to do online donations, and also all the steps are through the same platform. It is easier and more user-friendly for people to make donations," she said. Lee added that volunteers also welcomed the electronic method. She said it is now easier to recruit student volunteers, since many did not want to work in the hot weather.  "On flag day selling, the electronic means really help people who do not want to donate by cash and it helps the volunteers because they don't need to carry the heavy bags," she said.  Lee said donors in their recent drive also donated higher amounts of more than HK$100 electronically, in order to qualify for a tax reduction. But she said the NGO did flag a problem with attracting new donors through online means. "I think the most challenging part is that some mobile, firewalls, and security is higher so when we send the donation message, they may think that it is fake," she said.