Forest First works in land restoration and habitat conservation in alignment with the UN sustainable development goal - Life on Land. Their current programs are in the Wayanad and Kodagu districts, in the primary catchments of rivers Kabini and Kaveri. They have signed an MoU to work on 20,000 acres of degraded forest lands, all year round, splitting into monsoon and summer activities. They also support the livelihoods of 55 restorers. They aim to scale their efforts to be at the fulcrum of spreading these practices across other degraded areas in the Western Ghats, and institutionalize the work with other forest and tribal departments.
This is what drove them to do their first retail fundraising campaign during the ‘Joy of Giving’ week. They understood that environment and land restoration as a cause may not emotionally appeal to the people as other causes do, thus they planned a rigorous outreach to their existing networks, that consisted of employees, ex-employees and volunteers and prominently followed up with anyone who showed even the slightest interest in supporting their campaign. They did it in two forms - social media, and personal reach outs.
On social media, it is essential to be consistently active and engaging to be able to garner support when needed. With LinkedIn and Facebook being their preferences, owing to their active engagements and updates year-on-year, they were able to leverage the relationships built with their followers to motivate them towards their fundraiser.
For personal reach outs, they believe that making a directory of potential donors, well ahead of time, and promptly following up with people who showed interest in supporting works wonders for crowdfunding campaigns. They also feel that a short boost- a few days where everyone involved puts efforts into raising funds- builds greater momentum and works better than a long drawn out campaign. The organization thus ran a targeted fundraiser that has garnered support from over 25 supporters and has raised over ₹3 lakhs this far.
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