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Nigel Jackett (left) and Jaime Hall are hoping to catalogue as many as 400 bird species as they cycle across Canada

’Til the Last Tree duo going the extra mile for B.C.’s old growth forest

Sep 13 2011/in News Coverage

While most cross-Canada cyclists are wrapping up their journeys right about now, the curious duo of a musician and a wildlife biologist find themselves smack in the centre of the country, shivering in an uncharacteristically chilly early September evening.

If simple distance were the aim of Nigel Jackett and Jaime Hall, the 8,000 kilometres they’ve already travelled since April would have already have delivered them to the coast of British Columbia. On a mission to sight as many bird species as possible in their travels as way to raise money and awareness for The Ancient Forest Alliance, they expect to travel 11,000 kilometres before they’re finished.

Jackett, a wildlife biologist from Western Australia and his partner Hall, originally from B.C. are young, fit and passionate advocates of preserving B.C.’s remaining old growth rainforest habitat and advocating for sustainable logging practices in those areas.

“We’re the first people to ever ride across Canada bird-watching,” said Jackett. “Most people are finished in three months or less. We’ve already been going for four months.”

“You have to get into all sorts of habitat in order to get your bird list,” adds Hall.

So far the list consists of 239 species, the most recent of which, a black-billed magpie, was spotted near Wabigoon. They say they hope to reach 400 species before finishing their journey.

“We still can if we get to B.C. before a lot of the birds that summer over there head south in the fall migration,” said Jackett. “Manitoba holds a lot of different birds, so it’s conceivable that we can get to 400.”

While in northern Ontario, Jackett says they are ever on the lookout for a Great Grey Owl and the American Three-Toed Woodpecker.

A singer-songwriter, music has been helpful in helping Hall communicate their mission to others.

“We did a living room concert in Thunder Bay, which was really cool,” said Hall. “We got to talk to people about what we’re doing. They played a bit of one of my tunes on CBC (radio). There’s sprinklings of it here and there, but my music is definitely not the focus of the ride.”

Hall has put some of her songs on the duo’s website, offering downloads for donations.

Check out Nigell Jackett and Jaime Hall’s website, or donate to their cause at www.tilthelasttree.com.

Link to original article: https://thedrydenobserver.ca/2011/09/7308/

You can try out the new online game to help benefit the AFA while having some fun at www.wordraiser.com

Saanich company launches online game that aids ancient forests

Sep 12 2011/in News Coverage

A Saanich-based company has set out to revolutionize non-profit fundraising, and they’ve turned to Facebook to do it.

On Sept. 8, Donate2Play Media launched its first social media game, a collaboration with local protectors of old growth forests, the Ancient Forest Alliance. The anagram game for Facebook, Wordraiser, combines images, facts and a petition related to the organization’s work, while prompting players for small donations to continue playing.

“Over beers we stumbled upon a concept where we use online gaming to generate funds,” said Adrian Pereira, one third of the team behind Donate2Play, along with his wife Kelly Pereira and friend Tomas Ernst. “It hadn’t actually been done before where we take a charity’s brand and make a game around the brand, integrating donating into the actual game.”

Donate2Play intends to continue covering the initial start up costs of developing games as they did for the Ancient Forest Alliance, while splitting revenue with non-profits in what Pereira describes as a no-risk business model.
“Essentially, Donate2Play is about trying to free (Ancient Forest Alliance) up from the headaches of traditional fundraising, so they can go out and do the work that they do really well, which is discovering new old growth forests,” Ernst said.

While the concept was in development, Ernst went on a nature walk with Ken Wu and TJ Watt, founders of the Ancient Forest Alliance.

“This is an non-profit that’s already thinking outside the box,” Ernst said. “They’re already forming alliances with typically untraditional partners for a non-profit.”

While players unscramble words in Wordfinder, they’ll be shown images of some of B.C.’s biggest trees, but if they lose, they’ll be subject to viewing images of some of B.C.’s biggest stumps, photographed by Watt for the tricky and challenging anagrams, he said.

“People have been quite generous so far, but it’s nice any time you can create a new and innovative avenue to bring in funds, especially if it involves entertainment,” Watt added.

Donate2Play hopes to tailor games to organizations globally across the non-profit sector. The company can be found at www.donate2play.com. Visit www.ancientforestalliance.org for more information on the Ancient Forest Alliance.

Link to original article: https://www.bclocalnews.com/vancouver_island_south/saanichnews/news/129632158.html

Victoria firm taps into social gaming for fundraising

Sep 9 2011/in News Coverage

Determined to remove or at least reduce the cap-in-hand approach to fundraising used by charities and notfor-profit organizations, a new Victoria company is taking the fundraising campaign to social games on Facebook.

Donate2Play Media, founded by Tomas Ernst, Adrian Pereira and Kelly Pereira, has launched a program to help not-for-profit organizations raise money by tapping into the massive online social-gaming scene.

The company launched the first of those games Thursday – Wordraiser on Facebook – customized for the Victoria-based Ancient Forest Alliance.

According to Ernst, Donate2Play is about “empowering organizations like the AFA to spend less time chasing money and more time doing what they do best.”

“It’s a new channel to raise funds. Online social games are a billion-dollar industry,” he said, noting they hope to funnel a small fraction of that to organizations like the AFA. “Our goal is to create fresh, online social games that are fun and exciting to help them grow their revenue stream and activate their membership base.”

The Wordraiser game challenges players to create words from a jumble of letters. Players graduate through levels by finding a word that uses all of the letters provided. The game also offers facts and images to raise awareness of the province’s old-growth forests.

The money is raised when players are prompted to donate at certain levels.

The donations start at $1 and can go up to $20. The money donated is split 50-50 between the organization – in the case of Wordraiser that’s the Ancient Forest Alliance – and Donate2Play.

“We don’t want to cannibalize their other donation avenues, this is about augmenting the traditional fundraising channels,” said Ernst who suggested this kind of donating is a lot like dropping spare change into a box at any retail outlet. “We want to tap into the high volume of online users and tap into micropayments, as not everyone has $1,000 to give.”

“This is a great way to reach a new demographic of people, especially ones who may not be aware of the threat to our old growth,” said TJ Watt, one of the co-founders of the AFA, which works to protect old growth forest in the province. “And there’s a powerful ability to share the game with Facebook friends.”

Neither the AFA nor Donate2Play could estimate what kind of money they expect to raise through the game.

“We hope to scale to multiple charities across many causes, we expect big things out of it,” said Adrian Pereira, who noted it’s not all about money. “This is also about building awareness and increasing the support base for the charity.”

Ken Wu, co-founder of the AFA, said the organization is acting like a bit of a guinea pig.

“We don’t know what this will mean for us, but the beauty of it is we don’t have to pay anything, they put in all the risk,” he said, adding the AFA raised about $60,000 last year through traditional channels and expects to raise as much as $90,000 this year. “And hopefully this helps with that, this is a new revenue stream.”

Donate2Play would not divulge what it paid to create the game, other than saying it was costly.

In a 2009 article, Gamepro.com estimated the cost of developing a Facebook game at anywhere between $30,000 and $300,000 over a six-month cycle.

“But we think it’s worth it when you look at the explosive growth online, when you look at games right now,” said Ernst

Link to Times Colonist article not available anymore.