New Model of Corporate Philanthropy: BYD Partners with Dongrun to Assist Youth Campus Football

Partnering with Dongrun Public Welfare Foundation, BYD brings youth football support down to grassroots arenas

September 17, Beijing. BYD completes cooperation agreement signing with Dongrun Public Welfare Foundation. Li Yunfei, General Manager of BYD Brand and Public Relations, and Kong Dongmei, Founder and Chairman of Dongrun Public Welfare Foundation, attended along with guests and youth football student representatives. Contract signing, plaque awarding, and gift exchange were completed on site, and the two parties formally established a cooperative relationship. According to plans, BYD will support the Dongrun Cup National Youth High School Football Tournament, directing resources towards a broader campus football landscape.

In the automotive industry, sports marketing is far from new. Sponsoring top clubs and appearing at international tournaments are routine moves for many Chinese brands heading global. However, what is most noteworthy about this cooperation between BYD and Dongrun Public Welfare Foundation is not another football label, but the flow of resources: county-level middle schools, regular high school students, grassroots coaches, campus teams. These names rarely appear under the spotlight, yet they are exactly the foundation that Chinese football most needs to be seen.

The Dongrun Cup is not a competition belonging only to a few elites. It covers more than 20 provinces (regions, municipalities) nationwide, benefiting 352 schools, 4864 players and coaches this session, gathering 20 teams from 20 provinces for the finals. As a national 5A-level non-public foundation supervised by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, Dongrun Public Welfare Foundation has long deepened its work in youth education assistance, having won the China Charity Award twice, with projects covering 31 provinces and regions nationwide, 324 counties, benefiting over 100,000 youths. Since the Dongrun Cup was launched in 2022 and officially started in 2023, it has attracted over 1000 campus teams, over 10,000 players and coaches participating, and more than 30 participating players entered the national youth team, middle school national team and U-series elite training camps. The 2nd Finals landing at Beijing Workers' Stadium gave youth competitions influence beyond traditional school matches.

Kong Dongmei expressed a sentiment at the event: Football is a global sport, youth are the future; the Dongrun Cup is not only for selecting football talent, but more about shaping character, nurturing souls, and helping children grow in the long term. In my view, this sentence points out the true value of campus football. While the pinnacle of professional football is undoubtedly dazzling, the thickness of the base determines the upper limit of a country's football ecosystem. Without enough grassroots matches, coach training, and equipment support, talent often cannot leave the mountains, and passion is hard to turn into a path of continuous growth.

The complementarity between BYD and Dongrun lies here. Dongrun has a mature county-level implementation network and public welfare project experience, while BYD can bring corporate resources, brand communication, owner volunteer systems, and overseas football resources. After the cooperation, the implementation of Dongrun Cup provincial leagues and finals will receive more support, and tournament incentive grants will continue to be used for school team construction. Equipment donations, grassroots coach public welfare training and other supporting actions are filling the most realistic shortcomings of grassroots campus football.

This is also not BYD's first move in the football field. In the past few years, BYD's football layout has presented a clear "dual-track logic": Overseas, it cooperates with giants like Manchester City, Inter Milan, PSG, and appeared at international tournaments like the European Cup and Copa America, where the "BYD Derby" once gained global fan attention; Domestically, it directs its attention to youth, especially remote areas and grassroots campuses. Since 2024, BYD has organized over 200 youth football players to go to Germany, Japan, Spain, Thailand, Italy, Brazil, Mexico, etc., to exchange with top overseas clubs, and brought children into top venues like the European Cup and World Cup. Meanwhile, BYD also organized owner volunteers to go to places like Ili, Xinjiang, and Yuanbao, Guizhou, sending equipment, courses, and companionship to children who love football. The Ili youth football team going to Japan for exchange and the Yuanbao women's football team receiving public welfare classes and material support are both extensions of this thinking.

If viewed from the coordinates of corporate public welfare, BYD established its charity foundation as early as 2010, deeply cultivating fields such as education support, poverty alleviation, and disaster relief. On the 30th anniversary, BYD established a 3 billion yuan education charity fund, which has already covered 127 universities nationwide, inspiring over 6,000 students. This partnership with Dongrun can be seen as a systematic downscaling in youth football public welfare: not only supporting a few talented players, not only pursuing brand exposure on international stages, but balancing elite promotion and campus popularization, injecting corporate power into the daily life of grassroots football.

Li Yunfei said on site that enterprises cannot play on behalf of children, but they can help them reach larger stages. This sentence is quite significant when applied to current Chinese car brands. Chinese automakers are accelerating globalization, football is a universal language; but truly substantial brands cannot only be seen on international stages, but must also be remembered in the local society. Partnering with giants overseas is brand height; deeply cultivating campuses domestically is brand warmth and also the thickness of the soil.

Of course, signing is just the beginning. Public welfare fears a one-time storm; campus football needs long-termism more. Whether the Dongrun Cup can continue to be held, whether grassroots coaches can receive stable training, whether equipment and incentives can truly reach school teams, these are more important than the ceremony itself. But at least, BYD did not just keep its eyes on the billboards of top stadiums this time, but chose to walk into county high schools and ordinary campuses. For Chinese youth football, this effort of "bringing them to the scene" might be more valuable than a lively press conference. For Chinese car brands undergoing globalization, this is also a path worth observing: using commercial capabilities to support public welfare, and using public welfare patience to feed back the brand.