"They often take for granted that rich people should contribute their wealth."

The Internet has enabled ordinary net users to regard charity as an everyday part of their life.

Through e-tree, an online tree-planting system funded by China Green Foundation, a public foundation under State Forestry Administration, 1 million trees have been sold since July 1 last year, raising 5 million yuan.

Before that, there was skepticism about a tree-planting program for Gansu Province, Zhou said, as people couldn't know for sure if their tree was actually planted.

Zhou's team initiated a popular online tree planting day on March 12: The e-tree website connected urban netizens willing to plant trees with villagers living in poverty-stricken areas affected by Gansu's climate change.

In collaboration with charity channels from Tencent, Taobao and the Climate Group, the program proved successful, gaining hits and getting more people and enterprises involved.

The website also attempted to offer a virtual experience, involving watering an animated tree on the page.

"Few people think of it only as a virtual game," Zhou said. "Some of them asked me if their trees were destroyed by drought, sandstorms or mud slides."

The whole project raised awareness by first visiting the area where not a single tree was visible for miles, so that users could gain a deeper understanding of the real value of five yuan: one tree, she explained.

Money, money, money

How their money is spent is of course a critical issue for donors.

Named after the Kelsang flower of the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, Gesanghua Student Aid is an NGO based in Xining that supports education in Tibetan communities.

What makes Gesanghua almost unique is its development of advanced online systems for managing project donations and direct sponsorship of students, both of which are fully open and searchable via the Web.

Such rare transparency - displaying accounts to the general public - has won the organization valuable credibility.

The website received more than 10 million yuan in donations and has supported 20,300 students since 2005.

After the April 14 Yushu earthquake, Zhou Shuguang, an IT engineer mentioned on Twitter he had donated via Gesanghua's online payment system.

After his tweet was retweeted by Web users, some 200,000 yuan was raised in emergency rescue funds that same day. Three days later, five trucks of relief materials worth 800,000 yuan were sent to the disaster area.

By May 31, Gesanghua had received a total 2.6 million yuan, 860,000 through the Alipay online payment system.

"Event participants that adopted integrated social media tools increased their fundraising by as much as 40 percent compared to their peers who weren't using the available online tools," according to Making Event Participants More Successful with Social Media Tools, a white paper issued by Charity Dynamics.

Between 1988 and 2009, the number of social organizations in China has increased 100-fold from 4,446 to 431,000, including annual growth of 10 percent during the last decade.

Lacking government support, legal identity and funds, some NGOs have struggled to survive even while helping the disadvantaged.

"It's high time grass-roots NGOs teamed up with each other and replicate successful models using information technology," said Wan of NetEasy.