Dear Prospective Supporter,
Today, I’m here to introduce to you the 100 Trees Campaign (in short, 100 Trees).
The 100 Trees Campaign
100 Trees is a fundraising campaign to find weMORI’s first 100 monthly donors.
It starts today, and ends on March 21st, World Forest Day − a UN day to celebrate the forests.
In this campaign, for every new monthly donor, we plant 1 tree. 100 people, 100 trees. That’s the goal!
Also, when we reach 100 people, weMORI will plant an additional 100 trees.
The 200 trees will be planted in Borneo, in an area that was cleared for palm oil plantations, to expand the Keruak Wildlife Corridor. The Corridor connects two wildlife reserves, and is an important home to the endangered Orangutan.
With a carbon impact of 23 tons, this campaign’s success will offset 22 London-NY round trip flights, using conservative estimates.
How do we use donations?
Besides the amount used to plant the 100 trees in March, donations will be used to support weMORI operations. Below are five key things (in no particular order) that your monthly support will allow us to do:
Keep the App Free: We don’t touch the donations people make to the projects in the app. Because our goal is to maximize impact, not make a commission on your action.
Grow Our Movement: We’re ramping up digital movement growth with the help of a dedicated social media and events team. That takes time, effort, and money.
Create Great Campaigns: On Earth Day (4/22, 2021), we’re launching the weMORI 1.0 app. Your help will allow us to go all out with the campaign, with new videos and special events.
Maximize Impact: By making it possible for us to spend more time on developing the app, growing the movement, and creating the best possible team, you give us the opportunity to maximize our total forest impact.
Continue the Project: We’re a committed team working together everyday to protect and restore as much forest as possible. Your help will allow us to keep going, but faster.
Monthly calls, and other perks
Together with 100 Trees, we’re kicking off monthly calls inviting recurring donors.
The calls will be a space to connect. I share the most recent progress, answer any of your questions, and we exchange ideas to maximize weMORI’s forest impact.
weMORI believes in the power of community, and we’re really excited for this opportunity to connect with you and others that make our work possible. We also share a monthly impact report with donors. These will get very exciting after we launch weMORI 1.0 on April 22nd.
To those who join 100 Trees, we’re gifting a special gratitude certificate that looks like this, too:
Our $ target
100 Trees also has a $ (dollar) target. It’s to reach $5,000 in monthly donations.
Currently, in the most lean scenario, weMORI’s monthly overhead is on average a total of $8,000 / month. That includes wages for our core team of four, access to grants databases, fixed app development costs, campaign expenses, and everything else.
By raising $5,000 through monthly donations, we place ourselves in a solid position to continue, and expand, weMORI’s operations.
What about the remaining $3000? Our fundraising team is busy applying to grants & foundations, now at the pace of one a week, and we’re actively searching for partnerships with corporations. That is to say: of course, we’re not sitting still.
The Impact!
I can’t leave without sharing the potential impact we can make together.
According to our calculations, in one year, with 10,000 users, our carbon impact will be 70,620 tons. That’s the equivalent of removing 18,000 cars from the streets!
Our forest impact is this: 821 tennis courts worth of carbon rich, biodiverse forests placed under protection, and 18,000 trees planted. Our focus is on rainforests, so these will be in places like Brazil, Kenya, and Borneo.
About weMORI
Before I go, let me share weMORI’s work, in case you’re wondering about us.
weMORI’s mission is to reverse the climate and extinction crisis by building a global grassroots movement that protects & restores forests.
Today, forests are being cut down at the scale of one UK a year. By protecting and restoring forests, you can safeguard habitat for life to thrive and cut avoid / capture carbon.
With weMORI, impact is an app away. It’s a platform where anybody can take meaningful climate & biodiversity action in a tap. We select only the best forest projects from around the world and place them in your hands.
The climate and extinction crisis takes everyone to solve. Our goal is to make weMORI a tool of the ages, used by millions of people around the world to regenerate the planet.
Thank you
For reading to the end. We’re trying to make our work as transparent as possible. This is how we’re experimenting.
Watch out on social media for more posts about 100 Trees, and much more!
If you have any questions, please feel free to write to me at ian@wemori.org.
I’ll meet you on the other side of the campaign!
Ian Shimizu-Pughe on behalf of teaMORI
P.S. MORI means forest in Japanese. It’s written like this: 森