On February 24, as KE Holdings and Lianjia approached their 25th anniversary, co-founder, Chairman, and CEO Peng Yongdong and co-founder Shan Yigang issued an internal letter announcing a joint donation of 10 million Class A ordinary shares. Valued at approximately 400 million yuan based on the closing price on February 23, the post-tax proceeds will be used to establish the "Health & Family Guardian Fund." This initiative aims to provide comprehensive health and family safety net protections for employees of KE Holdings and Lianjia, as well as the 500,000 service providers on the platform.
This marks Peng Yongdong's second major donation following his personal contribution of 9 million shares (worth about 440 million yuan) in December 2025. Within a year, the two founders have collectively donated 840 million yuan, demonstrating a long-term commitment to service providers with substantial capital and setting a new benchmark for human-centric governance and social responsibility in the residential services industry.
The donation represents more than a simple philanthropic input; it is an institutionalized, regularized, and comprehensive upgrade of protections for practitioners in the residential services sector. The "Health & Family Guardian Fund" focuses on three critical pain points for workers: health risks, family hardships, and children's education. It establishes three specific programs, creating a two-tiered protection structure of "emergency assistance + long-term safety net." Unlike traditional commercial insurance models that operate on a reimbursement basis, this fund emphasizes immediacy, inclusivity, and foundational support.
Specifically, the "Life Emergency Fund" provides 20,000 yuan, payable within two business days after complete documentation is submitted for a sudden critical illness diagnosis, focusing on urgent financial relief for families. The "Family Warmth Support Fund" offers a one-time 100,000 yuan grant to service providers who have lost working capacity or to eligible families. The "Children's Education Fund" provides a one-time grant ranging from 20,000 to 100,000 yuan based on the child's educational stage, aiming to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty. These three programs address both rapid response to sudden crises and stable, long-term support for enduring difficulties, achieving a dual breakthrough in the scope and strength of protection.
In terms of beneficiary reach, the "Health & Family Guardian Fund" extends beyond corporate employees to include all ecosystem service providers on the platform, covering over 500,000 individuals. Beneficiaries include not only the over 100,000 employees of KE Holdings and Lianjia with at least six months of tenure but also brand owners, store owners, agents registered on the platform for six months or more, as well as frontline workers such as KE Huiju cleaners and maintenance personnel, and KE Zhezhuang project managers and workers. Eligibility is determined based on the date of a critical illness diagnosis, provided tenure requirements are met, ensuring truly comprehensive coverage.
This design transcends the limitations of traditional corporate welfare by extending the protection system from internal staff to partners across the industrial chain, reflecting the overarching responsibility a platform company holds for its entire ecosystem.
KE Holdings' commitment to service providers is not a recent development but a long-term investment spanning nearly two decades. The "Green Plan," launched in 2008, focuses on providing critical illness assistance to service providers and their families. By the end of 2025, it had disbursed over 755 million yuan in aid, assisting more than 54,000 instances, with a maximum single-household grant reaching 1.29 million yuan, tangibly helping tens of thousands of families through difficult times. Concurrently, KE Holdings has established internal support systems like an education fund for employees' children, offering educational support throughout all schooling stages for families in need.
The "Health & Family Guardian Fund" does not start from scratch but expands, enhances, and increases the efficiency of existing protections: offering higher benefit amounts, broader coverage, faster application processing, and more comprehensive aid scenarios. It complements existing corporate welfare, forming a multi-layered safety net comprising "corporate保障 + founder-specific donations + industry philanthropy."
Regarding funding sources and utilization logic, this donation reflects the founders' value orientation of growing together with the company and the industry. Peng Yongdong's December 2025 donation was his first disposal of shares post-IPO, not a market sale, with all proceeds dedicated to service provider health and youth rental assistance. This joint donation with Shan Yigang similarly directs 100% of the post-tax stock proceeds into the special fund, with clear, targeted use and dedicated management throughout the process. This model of "liquidating equity to reinvest in practitioners" transforms personal wealth into a public protection resource for the industry, mitigating risks of fund misallocation and ensuring every cent addresses the most critical needs of service providers, demonstrating a transparent and pragmatic philanthropic approach.
From an objective perspective, this substantial donation also highlights the protection gaps within the residential services industry and the responsibility boundaries of platform companies. Many residential service workers are flexibly employed, commonly facing issues like insufficient health coverage, low risk resilience, and heavy family burdens, which are often inadequately covered by traditional social security and commercial insurance. By addressing these gaps through founder donations coupled with corporate support, KE Holdings is essentially making a protective investment in the industrial chain's workforce. This represents both humanistic care and an inherent requirement for the high-quality development of the industry. However, the philanthropic efforts of a single company cannot replace the need for a systematic industry-wide protection framework. Translating corporate practices into industry standards and promoting a comprehensive protection system for flexible workers remains a long-term challenge.
In the internal letter, Peng Yongdong stated, "Employees and service providers are the professional carriers who create value in residential services for customers. Establishing this guardian fund is to enable service providers to safeguard their own families while also serving millions of others." This statement captures the core logic of KE Holdings' protection system: service providers must have peace of mind for customers to feel assured; practitioners must have dignity for the industry to have a future. Residential services are essential to people's livelihoods, where frontline agents, cleaners, and maintenance workers are crucial links between the platform and households. Their stability and well-being directly impact service quality and industry trust. By directing protection resources toward the frontline, KE Holdings is essentially returning to its original principle of being "service-provider-centric," driving service upgrades through human-centric investment, and strengthening the industry's foundation through responsible action.
Two donations totaling 8.4 billion yuan within a year, covering 500,000 service providers—KE Holdings is redefining the boundaries of social responsibility for internet platform companies through action. From the "Green Plan" to the "Health & Family Guardian Fund," from employee welfare to industry-wide inclusivity, from corporate investment to founders leading by example, the service provider protection system built by KE Holdings is not only a tribute to its 25-year entrepreneurial journey but also an exploration of modern governance for the residential services industry. As the "Health & Family Guardian Fund" is implemented within the year, KE Holdings will further refine the closed-loop protection of service provider rights, allowing more frontline workers to share in the benefits of development.
For the industry, KE Holdings' practices offer a reference model: corporate growth and social responsibility are not opposing forces but mutually reinforcing. Investment in service providers represents both compassion and competitive strength. At this critical juncture where the residential services industry is transitioning from scale expansion to quality enhancement, only by adhering to human-centric principles and reinforcing the baseline of protection can the industry achieve stable, long-term growth and provide warmer, more trustworthy responses to the residential needs of millions of families.