Converting donation to transaction: how platform capitalism exploits relational labor in non-profit fundraising.

The article examines how platform capitalism transforms civic engagement by analyzing a major Chinese tech company's online charity event, S Charity Day, which mobilizes non-governmental organization (NGO) workers to perform relational labor—efforts to leverage personal social networks for fundraising via the platform's social media app, S-Chat. Drawing on ethnographic research with two Chinese NGOs, the study reveals that the platform's design and governance shift fundraising from targeting strangers to pressuring NGO workers to solicit donations from friends and acquaintances, a practice termed "friendfunding" that conflicts with traditional Chinese gift-giving norms and imposes emotional, social, and financial costs on workers. The platform exercises "permissive power" by setting rules, providing technological infrastructure, and partnering with brokers to govern participation while invisibly extracting surplus value from users' relational labor and social capital. This case highlights the complex socio-economic consequences of platform expansion into the non-profit sector, showing that despite the civic framing, corporate interests and market logics shape and benefit from these digital fundraising practices.