World Wild Fund is encouraging Facebookers to turn from taking care about virtual pigs, chickens and geese playing FarmVille to giving hand to real endangered animals. The new application of WWF allows social-media addicts contribute to the good cause without even leaving Facebook virtual space by adopting a plethora of favourites or less known animals like Amur leopard, red fox, walrus or dugong (there are more than 100 species to select from).
When you click on icon with the animal you like most on the gift catalogue, you’re asked to choose one of the adoption kits, the smallest of which ($25) includes Adoption Certificate and Species Info Card as well as one of the offered items, and the bigger ones ($50, 100 and 250) are made up of a plush toy plus a range of branded gifts and the certificate as well. The kit doesn’t feature the animal itself, of course, so it means that when you adopt the specie, you—bad news for owners of private zoos—don’t actually have it. Still, you get a nice toy reminder of your charitable deed (in case your donation is $50 or more). The proceeds will be spent on supporting the species on-ground and will include a range of actions to battle animal poaching, pollution, climate change and habitat loss.
“We are offering our members and other supporters on Facebook a unique opportunity to support WWF’s conservation work while demonstrating to friends and family their commitment to protecting our planet’s most amazing wildlife and wild places,” commented WWF’s chief marketing officer, Terry Macko. “Our new Facebook Gift Center is an innovative way to educate and fundraise and it allows people to have fun by giving, getting, ‘liking’ and ‘sharing.’”
The Gift Center was first launched on the WWF website www.worldwildlife.org/giving in 2004, and during these six years the Fund managed to collect approximately $12.5 million to support wild animals all around the globe. WWF will soon introduce an interactive feature that will help supporters identify the perfect species to symbolically adopt. This online quiz, called “Find Your Inner Animal,” will be available in WWF’s Gift Center on both Facebook and its own website.