Impact Report
2022/23–2024/25

It is my great pleasure to share with you the very first edition of The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust Impact Report.

Inside you will find details of the many ways in which the Club has touched lives for the better, starting with our earliest recorded donation in 1915. It is a journey which has seen our Charities Trust become one of the world’s leading philanthropic foundations, approving HK$26.5 billion (US$3.4 billion) in donations in the 2022/23–2024/25 triennium.

All of this is made possible by the Club’s unique value creation model. The Club is not-for-profit, has no shareholders and is limited by guarantee. Its sole purpose is the betterment of society. Through the success of its world-class racing and having been entrusted by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region with providing licensed and regulated wagering services to channel gaming demand, the Club is able to create significant economic and social value via employment opportunities, tax contributions and charity donations.

In 2024/25, the Club returned HK$39.1 billion (US$5.0 billion) to the community, comprising HK$30.1 billion (US$3.9 billion) to the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region in duty, profits tax and Lotteries Fund contributions and HK$9.0 billion (US$1.1 billion) in approved charity donations through its Charities Trust.

As this report makes clear, it is not just the scale of our giving that has grown over the years but also its scope. From an essentially passive funder of grantee-initiated projects, the Trust has become a proactive community partner, launching projects which seek to move the needle across a wide range of social issues. Details of key projects, and their outputs, outcomes and impacts are elaborated in this report.

Also included are two case studies highlighting the Club’s response to the Sichuan Wenchuan earthquake of 2008 as well as to the outbreaks of SARS in 2003 and COVID-19 during 2020–2023. As they underline, the Club and the Trust have always been flexible and agile, and nowhere more so than when responding to emergency and crisis.

But as the scope and scale of the Trust’s giving have increased, so too has the imperative to measure the impact of our philanthropy. With this in mind we have developed a new three-tier hierarchical measurement framework, evaluating impact at the project, programme and Trust level.

The aim is not only to evaluate the impact of individual projects, but also to determine the collective success of multiple projects in bringing about needle-moving change at the system level. Above all we want to ensure the Charities Trust continues to fulfil the Club’s ultimate purpose: the betterment of our society.

This is a new and experimental framework. Currently we are applying it at the project level, specifically to projects approved since late 2022. As these projects mature and we accrue more data, we aim to report impact across all three levels.

Aside from helping the Trust measure and report its own impact, we hope the new framework will provide useful input to the evolving field of impact measurement, benefiting both regional and global peers. Most of all we hope grantees will be better able to evaluate their own performance, to the ultimate benefit of the people we collectively serve. We very much welcome feedback on the framework’s effectiveness and utility.

I do hope you find this report a useful insight into the many ways the Club, its Charities Trust and our partners are bringing about positive change in the community. It is to our partners, and above all the people whose lives they make brighter and better, that we dedicate this report. 

The Hon Martin Liao

Chairman