Social Media Campaign Becomes the Largest Crowdfunding Effort in YouTube’s History
The Arbor Day Foundation has announced that as of December 19 2019, at 3:28 p.m. CT,  TeamTrees — a viral social media campaign driven by YouTube creators Jimmy Donaldson (aka MrBeast) and Mark Rober — reached its goal of raising $20 million to plant 20 million trees around the globe, beating the initial goal of January 1, 2020. Launched on October 25, the campaign is the largest crowdfunding effort in YouTube’s history and one of the fastest-growing environmental fundraising initiatives to-date.
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The #TeamTrees campaign came to life when the online community challenged 21-year-old YouTuber Jimmy Donaldson – aka MrBeast – to plant 20 million trees to commemorate hitting 20 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. MrBeast’s Gen Z fans then suggested he join forces with other online influencers to drive awareness, including Mark Rober – a fellow YouTuber and former NASA scientist. The duo engaged the Arbor Day Foundation to make this lofty goal a reality, knowing that the organization had recently launched the Time for Trees initiative and is a consistent, trusted leader in tree planting of this scale.
“#TeamTrees is a prime example of youth leadership – especially the Gen Z ‘Change Generation’ – moving beyond retweet activism and harnessing the power of social media to address key societal issues,” said Dan Lambe, president of the Arbor Day Foundation. “The 20 million trees planted through this campaign will absorb and store 1.6 million tons of carbon, the equivalent of taking 1.24 million cars off the road for a year.”
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More than half-a-million individual donations were collected over the course of 56 days. Inspired by this grassroots movement, industry tech leaders, including Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke, donated between 200,000 to 1,000,001 trees each.
“When Mark [Rober] and I started this campaign, we couldn’t have predicted the incredible support #TeamTrees would receive,” said Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, YouTuber and philanthropist. “From hundreds of YouTube creators, to the biggest names in Silicon Valley, to kids holding bake sales, a huge team came together to make this possible. This is a big win for the planet.”
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