Ecologyfund.com

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Ecologyfund.com is a click-to-donate site which is owned and operated by the Hunger Site Network and which was originally founded by Tim Kunin and Greg Hesterberg. It gives money to "save" natural habitats in South America (Ecuador, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina), Central America (Mexico), Scotland, Tanzania, Canada, and the United States, by allowing sponsors to buy the land. Money is also donated towards various other plans, such as the reduction of pollution. As of January 2008, the fund claims to have bought 48,690.3 acres (197.04 km²) of land and removed 25,417,988 pounds (11,529,405.4 kg) of carbon dioxide.

[edit] History

During the late 1990s and early 2000s there were many click-to-donate sites, but due to the dot-com crash of early 2000, most of them were closed down. EcologyFund.com was one of the survivors, and as of 2006 is still a very popular way to "save" land for free with thousands of people clicking each day.

[edit] Operation

Ecologyfund.com works by means of advertisements for various companies which act as sponsor, as well as being in partnership with a number of conservation charities with differing goals, mostly the buying of land with an endangered ecosystem around the world, as well as tree planting initiatives and various other plans. There are 3 buttons on the Web site which one can click to "save" a certain amount of land in various locations (e.g., "save 35 square feet of rainforest land"). After having clicked one of such buttons, the user is redirected to a page which thanks him for his participation while showing the sponsor advertisements. The advertisers are charged based on the number of "unique hits" (the number of unique page visits) that the site receives per day, and directly send the payment to the featured conservation charities — Ecologyfund.com itself does not directly receive any funds. The amount of money sent to the charity organizations with which to buy endangered land is thus parallel to the number of people using the site. Given the nature of the scheme, the Web site's advertisers tend to be environmentally friendly or even directly based on sustainable business practices.

The Web site also has a number of interactive features for the end users, with the intent to make its operation more interesting for returning visitors. For example, there are counters which chart the collective amount of land bought thus far, as well as specific ones that show a user how much land he personally has allowed to be bought. It is also possible for specific users to join "groups", which can, for example, be formal environmental organizations or institutions such as colleges or universities, or simply informal clubs or groups of people. Thus, the member will be able to contribute to a total amount of land bought by members of the group. Joining and clicking in groups can generate increased feelings of satisfaction with the visible evidence (as group totals climb each day) of what a large number of people can do when they are working towards a common goal. The groups also tend to compete with each other. An individual may also be rewarded with an "honor roll", which provides recognition of the work that he has done thus far, by listing his name in accordance to the amount of land that he has allowed to be bought so far.