Cheng Zhaoxi's Perspective: Taiwan Needs a 'Public Welfare 104' – Stop Letting Donations Disappear into Black Boxes

During the 2021 pandemic, Tzu Chi was defrauded of 1.06 billion NTD by individuals including Chen Yuxuan and Li Yiru. However, political parties remained focused on political attacks rather than substantive issues. The Blue camp emphasized that voters should not forget the DPP's failure in securing vaccines, which forced Tzu Chi to seek alternative channels. The Green camp attempted to reframe the incident as a rebuttal to earlier claims by the Blue and White camps that the government blocked vaccine access. This level of discourse devolves into mere rhetoric, completely ignoring critical questions: Why did Tzu Chi fail to report the fraud or recover the funds for years? (The claim of ignorance is implausible.) How was such a large sum accounted for in Tzu Chi’s finances? Were senior Tzu Chi leaders connected to the fraudsters? Who authorized the commission payments? Once public donations enter charitable organizations, are they truly used effectively? 1.06 billion NTD is no small amount. Tzu Chi’s response is what the public should truly focus on.

Beyond this case, the author argues for a broader systemic reform of how charitable and religious donations are managed. To build public trust, religious and charitable organizations must become transparent and accountable. Genuine, well-intentioned organizations should receive resources, while the public must be able to easily distinguish fraud groups from legitimate charities, enabling confident donations. Taiwan does not lack compassion—it lacks a system that honors compassion without waste.

Taiwan has never lacked goodwill. What it truly lacks is a system that prevents the waste of public generosity. Whenever earthquakes, gas explosions, or major casualty events occur, social donations often surge into the billions within days. Major religious groups have long demonstrated astonishing fundraising capabilities. Meanwhile, small charitable organizations deeply engaged in remote areas—supporting the elderly, vulnerable children, people with disabilities, and low-income families—often struggle to raise just hundreds of thousands or millions of NTD. This creates a deeply absurd situation: organizations capable of raising large sums are not necessarily the most transparent; those that operate efficiently often lack fundraising capacity. The problem is not that Taiwanese people lack compassion, but that we have failed to build an efficient system that channels goodwill accurately to the most trustworthy and effective public welfare organizations.

104 succeeded by reducing the matching cost between companies and job seekers; 591 lowered the search cost between landlords and tenants; Uber allows passengers to compare service quality; Shopee enables consumers to view prices, product details, and buyer reviews simultaneously. If information technology can solve information asymmetry in these markets, why does the public welfare sector remain stuck in the era of 'Trust me, donate to me'? What Taiwan truly needs is a nationwide 'Public Welfare 104'—a platform that consolidates charitable organizations, religious public welfare initiatives, government disaster relief funds, corporate social responsibility programs, and government-commissioned social services under unified information standards, accounting certification, government spot checks, and public evaluation. This is not commercializing charity, but introducing the most valuable aspects of market economics—information transparency and free choice—into a field that desperately needs trust.

Religious freedom must not become a shield for financial opacity. The biggest systemic issue in the religious sector is not belief, but black-box operations. Religious freedom must be protected—governments should not interfere with people’s choice to worship Buddha, Christ, Mazu, or to have no religion. However, 'freedom of belief' must not be equated with 'no need for financial transparency.' The current Public Fundraising Act clearly excludes religious fundraising from full oversight—religious activity funds are subject to weaker regulation than general public fundraising. As a result, the public often has no way of knowing how much incense money, ritual fees, or lamp offerings a large religious organization collects annually, how much land, property, or other assets it holds, how much is spent on administration, how much leaders are paid, whether there are related-party transactions, why large halls are built, or how often these halls are used annually. This is a systemic gap: when politicians receive political donations, the public expects audits, disclosure, and oversight as a matter of course. Yet some religious organizations manage assets and cash flows larger than political parties, and society often stops questioning with just the phrase 'religious freedom.' Governments should not audit doctrines, but they absolutely can—and should—audit finances. Faith belongs to personal freedom; large-scale fundraising from society must carry corresponding public accountability.

Recent religious financial scandals further show this is not alarmist. For example, in 2026, the abbot of Beitou Cihang Temple was indicted by prosecutors for allegedly transferring over 70 million NTD in public donations, ritual fees, columbarium sales, lamp offerings, and incense income into personal accounts over a long period. Whether the charges hold will be decided by the courts, but the problem is clear: if religious organizations had standardized external audits and public disclosure systems for income, expenses, assets, and related-party transactions, could such issues have been detected earlier? What religious organizations truly need is not to evade oversight, but to use transparency to prove their integrity and public value. Well-run religious organizations should theoretically welcome transparency, as it prevents bad actors from hiding behind religious prestige.

The biggest challenge in charity: those who are best at doing good work are often the worst at fundraising. The problems faced by charitable groups are different. Many frontline public welfare organizations lack strong religious appeal, large networks of followers, or the ability to hire professional advertising agencies to produce emotional videos. They may deliver meals to isolated seniors, accompany abandoned children, find scholarships for underprivileged students, assist people with disabilities in employment, support cancer patients’ families, or provide tutoring in remote areas. Yet they often need only a few million NTD annually but must spend significant time writing fundraising appeals, organizing bazaars, and seeking corporate sponsorships. This is a massive waste of social resources. A truly excellent public welfare organization should focus on serving the vulnerable, not on worrying about next month’s payroll. Beyond auditing, the government should use its credibility and information platforms to enhance the fundraising capacity of capable, trustworthy organizations.

Turn public welfare needs into understandable, freely choosable 'charity products.' A mature public welfare platform could allow donors to give as easily as using 104 or an e-commerce site. If I have 1 million NTD to donate, I could select 'New Taipei City,' 'rural education,' 'underprivileged high school students,' 'AAA-level transparent organization,' 'administrative costs under 10%,' 'excellent performance over the past three years,' and the platform would instantly display several projects for comparison. I could use the 1 million NTD to support 20 students’ tuition and living expenses for a year, purchase 25 sets of assistive devices for people with disabilities, or help over a dozen unemployed women complete vocational training, certification, and six months of employment tracking. Donors could choose based on their values—some may want to help children, others the elderly, some their hometowns, others second-chance employment, ex-offenders, or people with disabilities. This is not commodifying compassion, but reducing the search, transaction, and trust costs of doing good.

Charity should not compete on who tells the most moving story, but on who truly changes the most lives. But a public welfare platform must not only compare who makes the most tear-jerking videos—it must compare outcomes. A job placement group should not just say 'we served 500 people this year,' but also report: 500 received services, 410 completed training, 300 secured jobs, 240 remained employed after six months, and the cost per successfully placed individual. If another organization achieves a higher one-year employment rate at a lower cost, donors can objectively judge who deserves support. A mature public welfare system must shift competition from 'who moves people most' to 'who improves more lives with the same 1 million NTD.'

Auditors can check books, but we also need Uber- and Shopee-style public oversight. Auditor reviews are necessary, but not sufficient. Auditors can verify if money was recorded, if invoices exist, and if accounts balance, but they may not know if frontline services are effective, if aid applications are bureaucratically obstructive, if recipients actually receive resources, if volunteers observe serious waste, or if reported outcomes match reality. Therefore, public welfare platforms should establish a 'verified public review system' like Uber and Shopee, where only those who have interacted with the organization can provide feedback—not allowing anonymous accounts to freely manipulate ratings.

Donors can rate transparency, project update speed, receipt processing, quality of impact reports, and adherence to promises; recipients can rate application ease, service attitude, receipt of resources, and respect; volunteers can rate organizational management, resource waste, decision-making culture, and internal governance; cooperating government agencies can leave records of project performance. Thus, a public welfare organization might present a full profile: 'Accounting transparency AAA, government audit A+, donor rating 4.8 stars, recipient rating 4.7 stars, volunteer rating 4.5 stars, administrative cost rate 8%, project on-time completion rate 96%.' This is far more valuable than a signboard labeled 'Love Foundation.' Conversely, if an organization repeatedly delays financial reports, cannot explain fund usage, receives numerous complaints from recipients, and has volunteers consistently exposing waste, even without breaking laws, the market will naturally reduce trust and donations.