Bitcoin Fundraising for Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust

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I have been a long-standing donor and adopter at Durrell Wildlife conservation Trust. I have newly updated my membership to lifetime and increased my adoption level to Silver (Mr S Sokolov – Norway). Still, there is much more that can and should be done for the conservation of wildlife on our fragile planet.

The famous naturalist and the founder of the first zoo (on Jersey), aimed at study and conservation of endangered species, Gerald Durrell once wrote: “Animals and plants have nobody to speak for them except us, the human beings who share the world with them but do not own it.”

When I was first introduced to Bitcoins, I thought that they would be an ideal medium for micro-donations, especially with the growing user- and miner base of the new global currency.

This is a fund-raising campaign that I would like to start, using Bitcoins as the base currency. Please make your micro-donations to the address below or scan the address QR code in the upper right corner of the post

1DodoExzsNPvVRXFrgkKw6E259VjfUW8Kh

If you don’t have Bitcoins, please donate or otherwise help Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in any way you can, by proceeding to their site.

At the end of each month, if at least 1 Bitcoin is raised, I will convert BTC to GBP and transfer them to the Trust as a Donation from my account there. I will then update this post stating how much was transferred to the Trust in terms of GBP.

For the hall of fame, you are welcome to leave comments, stating how much you donated, or embed messages in the blockchain.

Disclaimer: This fund-raising drive is my personal initiative and is not endorsed by Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.

This topic at Bitcointalk forum

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5 thoughts on “Bitcoin Fundraising for Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust”

  1. It is the end of the month.

    Not much activity was noticed on 1DodoExzsNPvVRXFrgkKw6E259VjfUW8Kh
    I made an initial deposit of 0.1 BTC, I was also sending out free bitcoin requests to this address
    Total accumulated sum over the last month is thus 0.10730912BTC = £10.24 at today’s MtGox rate.

    To minimise the costs, I am going to absorb any conversion rates. This means that I am transferring the BTC funds to my account, while sending Durrell Wildlife conservation trust a donation in British Pounds at today’s conversion rate, rounded up to the nearest GBP = £11.

    The donation of £11 with Reference No: 130430-9097 was sent and marked with the following note:

    This is a donation, converted from Bitcoins, collected as the result of my Bitcoin Fundraising for Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust
    https://stanislavs.org/bitcoin-fundraising-for-durrell-wildlife-conservation-trust/
    https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167416.msg1742875#msg1742875

    The campaign continues. Please donate anything between 0.1 BTC and 0.001 BTC to 1DodoExzsNPvVRXFrgkKw6E259VjfUW8Kh Every little helps!

    Two weeks ago I wrote the following letter to Anne-Marie Neal, an assistant fundraiser at the Trust. As I am still awaiting their answer, I decided to make the letter open to the public.

    Dear Anne-Marie.

    I have, on multiple occasions, performed donations and adoptions at Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, having recently increased my level of adoptions to Silver. As such, I am always on the look-out for fund-raising opportunities for the Trust.

    About 6 months ago I became aware of the growing new global cryptographic electronic currency: Bitcoins. I have since been mining Bitcoins myself and using them in transactions in on-line shops. At the same time I had a thought that Bitcoins, unlike Visa-payments, are ideal for micro-transaction. I wrote then a short letter, suggesting Durrell create a Bitcoin wallet and start accepting donations in Bitcoins. The letter was posted through durrell.org feed-back form, but surprisingly never received any form of reply.

    Bitcoins are freely convertible to traditional currencies and have at the moment a conversion rate of approximately USD120 (€93) for 1 BTC.

    I have newly started my own Bitcoin-based fund-raising campaign here:
    https://stanislavs.org/bitcoin-fundraising-for-durrell-wildlife-conservation-trust/
    This is also published on the main Bitcoin-related Forum, Bitcointalk:
    https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=167416

    Thus far 0.10403102 BTC are collected. The main problem for my private campaign, is trust. There are several other charity projects running, but they are supported by entities, who are well-known, whereas I can be considered a new and unknown entity on the scene.

    I am sure that if the Trust has their own, official, Bitcoin collection drive, it would attract many more micro-donations, which would amount to a substantial sum.

    As you might have noticed, it is possible to customise the beginning of the receiving address to make it more striking. The one I use for my drive is 1DodoExzsNPvVRXFrgkKw6E259VjfUW8Kh It is also possible to use QR code for the ease of making payments – there are smartphone applications, for example from BlockChain.info (https://blockchain.info/) which make it easy to just scan the code on a phone and perform a payment. BlockChain.info also have ready-made solutions for creating custom donation buttons/interfaces on a web-site.

    As it was mentioned by Phinnaeus Gage on the forums, he runs a generic charity fund-raising, which is rather successful, Bitcoin 100: http://bitcoin100.org/ You can alternatively implement donation redirect to that generic charity and get payouts as fractions of the common amount.

    In the long run, however, I think it is best for the Wildlife Conservation Trust to have their own address and a dedicated page on the site, geared to donations in Bitcoins.
    The currency is growing in popularity, especially with the near-collapse of the traditional currencies, and Bitcoins collected and stored now will represent a substantial fortune in the near future, which would be used for what the Trust does best, saving species from extinction.

    Thank you for your attention.

    Kind regards,
    Stanislav Sokolov.
    A life-time member.

  2. It so happens that I received a reply from the Trust on the same day as I transferred the donation. Here it is:

    Dear Mr Sokolov,

    First of all, thank you! It is wonderful that you, as a life member and supporter of Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust and the work we undertake, have explored an area of fundraising that is entirely new to us.

    At present, we have no experience of Bitcoins and therefore no immediate plans to venture into this area ourselves. We do however greatly appreciate the efforts you are making on our behalf and look forward to updates as to how this initiative is progressing.

    I hope to hear from you again soon.

    Regards
    Anne-Marie

    The answer is slightly non-committal, but it is still a positive start.

    Now, let us show the world that Bitcoins, like any other currency has many uses, and charity is one of them!

  3. I have received a thank-you communique from Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust today:

    Dear Mr Sokolov,

    I am delighted to see that we have now received the first £11 converted from bitcoins! Every donation is very gratefully received and makes a real difference to the work we are able to undertake in our efforts to save species from extinction.

    Our wildlife park, field programmes and academy come together to deliver a unique approach to tackling today’s conservation problems, with skills and experience in each area allowing us to stop declines of threatened species in the short term, as well as building necessary skills and capacity around the world to protect species and habitats into the future.

    Thank you again for your continuing support.

    Best wishes

    Anne-Marie

    Anne-Marie Neale
    Fundraising Assistant

    It is wonderful and gratifying to know that we are making a difference.

    With this month’s economic developments and the general hedging of the Bitcoin economy, not many donations were sent so far.
    The account currently holds 0.0039925 BTC
    Still, a slower economy dies not mean that a small donation to the good cause will make you broke, on the contrary, it will make you feel much better.

    Send your donations to 1DodoExzsNPvVRXFrgkKw6E259VjfUW8Kh or scan the QR code in my profile. Let’s make more headlines and show that Bitcoin economy is here to stay.

    As for my part, I am committed to absorbing all conversion fees and rounding the resulting GBP value up before it is sent to the Trust.

    Now, let’s try to reach that 0.1 BTC before the month’s end! 🙂

  4. The status report from 31st of May:

    It’s time for the end-of-month status report.

    First of all, big thank you to Philj for donating BTC0.05 (~ £4,5) as a response to my squirrel story at the Economy speculations sub-forum. This is the second major donation coming from the community.

    The current balance is BTC0.05808127.

    The amount is a bit small to make a payout to the Trust, so I am carrying it over to the next month, in the hope that we will make at least that BTC0.1 Also, if BTC price continues to crawl up, the Trust will receive a slightly larger sum next month than today.

    Despite the hight BTC price, the economy can be described as cautious. In the current climate day-trading is boring at best, and lossy at worst. But a small donation to a good cause, will always make you feel good. Just see for yourself what Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust is achieving: http://www.durrell.org/Conservation

  5. The end of June saw BTC0.05943466 accumulated in the charity wallet, which corresponds to just £3.84 at today’s conversion rate

    So, no payout again this month, while waiting for the people to become more conscientious about the natural environment and its conservation.

    Maybe soon, once the post-bubble events calm down…

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