Climate Subscriptions: How ForTomorrow Buys Carbon Credits with the Help of the FundraisingBox
Climate protection has been an important topic not only since Fridays for Future. Although various measures are already being taken, too little is still being done to combat global warming. “If we continue like this, our earth will already be 1.5 degrees hotter in seven years,” explains Ruth von Heusinger. That’s why she founded ForTomorrow gGmbH in December 2019, venturing into an area previously reserved for industry: emissions certificate trading.
How private individuals can get involved in certificate trading
“There are many offset providers, but none that force the EU to operate in a more climate-friendly way and take CO2 out of the air via new trees in the EU,” says von Heusinger, explaining her innovative concept. It works like this: private individuals can make regular donations via ForTomorrow’s climate subscriptions and thus compensate for their own CO2 emissions. Because with the donation one half of the CO2 output is balanced over new tree plantings in Germany, the other half over purchase and retiring of European emission certificates. These certificates entitle companies in the EU to emit CO2. They put a price on pollution, and the amount available is continually reduced in line with climate targets.
ForTomorrow thus withdraws these certificates from the market with the help of donations and makes them more expensive. This increases the operating costs of polluting industries unless they invest in more climate-friendly production methods. This process is described in detail in this article from Basic Thinking.
Implementation: Climate subscriptions with the FundraisingBox
Ruth von Heusinger is guided by the lean start-up method and Professor Faltin’s component model. The idea behind this is to use resources that are already on the market to save time and money. “Thanks to the FundraisingBox, we were able to get started right away with the climate subscriptions and test whether people even like our concept without a large initial investment,” she says. They do: the climate subscriptions have been bookable since March 2020 and after only half a year ForTomorrow already counts around 100 climate subscribers.
“The beauty of the FundraisingBox is that you can scale with it. We pay for exactly what we really need at each stage of development and thus have more money for the purpose of our company – climate protection,” says von Heusinger, explaining her decision to use our product. ForTomorrow uses our online donation form for the three different climate subscriptions and for individual donations. These donations can then be managed directly in the connected CRM. The forms are available at ForTomorrow in German and English and have been individually adapted to the corporate design:
Ruth von Heusinger particularly appreciates this flexibility in the FundraisingBox forms: “Many things are possible with these forms. Even individual variables with which we can, for example, assign exactly how many trees have been planted by a certain donation and how many emission rights have been set aside.” This is displayed using a simple slider that allows donors to immediately see the impact of their donation:
Easy and fast start
The FundraisingBox donation forms can be quickly and easily integrated into a website. When asked where there were challenges in the technical implementation, Ruth von Heusinger says: “The integration of payment service providers was a bit of a challenge. What worked immediately and without problems was credit card payment via Stripe. Direct debit was more difficult to implement. And since we have monthly recurring payments due to the subscription model, PayPal was also more cumbersome. Through all of this, however, we received great support from the FundraisingBox customer support and were able to implement the payment processes much faster than it would have worked without FundraisingBox. This is where the FundraisingBox supports´ wealth of experience and network helps.”
ForTomorrow relies on digital fundraising – for the environment
Since the earth has already heated up so much, it is no longer enough to compensate for just one flight, says von Heusinger. Every single person has to live climate-neutrally as quickly as possible. But this is not so easy: After all, we are all dependent on public infrastructure and thus emit CO2. This is exactly where climate subscriptions come in, because donations can be used to reduce one’s own footprint. ForTomorrow relies on a purely digital fundraising strategy with the FundraisingBox, because: “Every sheet of paper was once a tree,” as von Heusinger puts it in a nutshell.
We think that ForTomorrow has not only pursued a great idea and implemented it optimally – the gGmbH also uses our online donation forms creatively and efficiently. We are happy and grateful to be part of this important initiative!
ForTomorrow website: http://www.fortomorrow.eu/
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