Operation Santa Claus: Chasing Targets of Goodwill in Hong Kong

Operation Santa Claus is a big event in Hong Kong – and one that has been keeping a team of MBA students from CUHK Business School as busy as some of Santa’s elves over the festive period, as part of the initiative’s MBA challenge.

Not to be confused with the US Postal Services’ efforts of the same name aiming to help the man himself respond to 'Dear Santa' letters, this Operation Santa Claus is an annual fundraiser organized by the South China Morning Post and Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), and one that has become a fixture in the region’s calendar by raising more than HK$211 million (c. US$27 million) for charity over the past 26 years. 

Past events from some big-name donors have included a Citibank employee jumping from Macau Tower (now home to the world’s highest commercial bungee jump) and staff at Credit Suisse engaging in some costume sumo fighting.

To give a sense of the sheer scale of Operation Santa Claus (OSC) - last year’s MBA challenge raised the impressive sum of HK$190k (c. US$25k), but one that was still dwarfed by the overall event’s total of HK$21.1 million (c. US$2.7 million).

This year, OSC’s MBA challenge involves taking a seed fund from one of the event’s principal sponsors and – by investing in social enterprises – generating as much profit as possible for the initiative’s charity causes. Meaning that students must utilize all the business acumen they can muster in the name of Santa Claus during the process. 

“That went pretty well,” says Jason Yeung, one of the six MBA students in the CUHK Business School team: “The most important thing is the ornaments are prepared by disadvantaged Cambodian people and, by selling them, we hope the money raised can help people around the region.”

Of course, the home-baked cookies the team had to offer might also have helped in attracting people to their booth.

The fair, together with a charity run and an auction that gets CUHK faculty involved, represent a few of the festively-themed activities devised by Santa Rocks when they first drew up a business plan for their OSC campaign, which runs until the end of the year.

Jason says the team signed up for this year’s MBA challenge because of the opportunity it provided to combine experiential learning with meaningful work that channels the Christmas spirit of goodwill towards the community – in Hong Kong and beyond. Collaborating with one of OSC’s chosen nonprofit beneficiaries on the Cambodian decorations, for instance, was a key objective for Santa Rocks in furthering their understanding of Hong Kong’s social enterprise industry. 

The events themselves, meanwhile, have allowed the MBA students to interact with the community and spread some Christmas spirit, as Jason explains:

“During the sales we wore Santa hats to spread the message that it’s Christmas time and we want to share our love and caring to the poor people in need and hope that they will better understand what we’re doing and why.”