EcologyFund.com, a click-to-donate Web site, said yesterday that users have made donations that will save more than 100 million square feet of rain forest and wilderness.
The site, launched in February by the Internet shopping mall CharityMall.com, offers nonprofit land preservation organizations the opportunity to post their most urgent projects in the United States, Canada and South America on a page listing six available projects.
Visitors raise funds by clicking on the “donate” button for the project of their choice. After each click, sponsors pay the selected project the number of square feet shown by each project. These sponsors, who pay a monthly fee, appear on a banner ad page that appears immediately after visitors click to donate. The 100 million square feet cost sponsors $25,000, EcologyFund President Greg Hesterberg said.
Visitors also can click on the Rainforest Rewards page, where sponsors on that banner ad page contribute when visitors take the required action (register, subscribe to a newsletter, etc.). Or they can click on the Special Donations page, where sponsors contribute on a per-view basis.
When visitors register with EcologyFund, CharityMall makes a one-time donation of 500 square feet in the visitor's name and keeps a running tally of all the land that visitor has preserved. A direct link to CharityMall.com allows visitors to make additional donations by purchasing from sponsors whose contributions are split evenly among EcologyFund.com projects.
“It's working,” said EcologyFund CEO Tim Kunin. “People are finding EcologyFund, and they are clicking to save wilderness every day.”
