From purchased to planted: Turning your funding into Ecologi trees

If you have supported tree planting with Ecologi, you may have wondered how the virtual tree tiles on your profile turn into physical trees planted in one of our partners’ planting sites. 

Read on for an overview of the process that begins the moment you click ‘buy’ and ends in a tree being planted by our fantastic reforestation partners in one of our supported sites.

Ecologi works alongside our brilliant reforestation partners to turn our community’s funding into trees planted all around the world. For every project we support, we have a contract in place that outlines the payment methodology and a schedule that allows our partners to do their work, planting healthy trees in a timely manner.

For some of our projects, we send a fixed amount of funding each month for the duration of the contract, while for others the payments are quarterly. Often the payments are larger towards the beginning of the contract in order to cover project implementation costs, such as setting up nurseries.

We make payments to these partners on behalf of our community, regardless of how much funding comes in each month. To commit to funding projects, we need to forecast accurately how much funding we expect to collect over the next few years.

For other projects, the amount of funding we send to partners each month is directly tied to the funding we receive from our community each month. We contact the relevant partners each month to report the number of trees for which we’d like an invoice. We usually agree to a minimum monthly payment amount for these partners to ensure that the projects have a reliable source of funding and can be run sustainably.

Remember, all our tree purchasing evidence is publicly available. We encourage you to take a peek at our Public Impact Ledger. 👀

You can also learn more about how the tiles on your profile relate to the location of real trees here.

Our partners decide when to plant the trees, with local weather as the key determinant. To maximise survival rates of the trees, it’s crucial to plant the trees at the right time of year. Weather conditions greatly influence when our partners plant the trees, and most trees are planted during the rainy season to give the trees enough water to survive. While we know the planting seasons for each project, we cannot guarantee exactly when each tree you fund will be planted.

The maximum amount of time it will take from when our partners receive our funding to when the trees are planted is 18 months. This means we can guarantee that the trees you fund will be planted within 18 months of your purchase.

It is important to remember that this is the absolute maximum timeframe for planting. When it was established, it was heavily influenced by external factors such as COVID-19. This wide commitment window is still useful for planting sites that may experience hazards such as fires or floods, as these can delay planting. However, since Ecologi was founded, we have never come close to reaching the maximum timeframe.

When you fund trees through Ecologi, they will always be planted. As we outlined above, planting trees is not an instantaneous process. That’s why we report on the total number of trees funded by the Ecologi community, as this is the metric we have the best access to.

Of course, our partners do provide us with information about the number of trees they have planted. We share this information with our community in the project updates tab on your Ecologi profile.

When our partners are not planting trees, they are still working hard to ensure that your funding is used effectively. While some of the funding goes towards the physical act of planting trees, other funds are used for essential activities that will help the project succeed in the long term. These activities include: 

• Ensuring that the nurseries have irrigation systems in place.
• Conducting workshops with local people to raise awareness about the project and the importance of protecting trees and biodiversity.
• Gathering seeds and cuttings.
• Nurturing seedlings so that they are ready for planting when the rainy season begins.

The trees our community funds for planting will provide a wide range of benefits to local people and biodiversity. These benefits include food, shelter, and ecosystem services such as regulating water levels, and creating cooler, wetter microclimates in places where the climate is getting hotter and drier. The benefits of trees are truly incredible.