Nature Conservancy Receives Multimillion-Dollar Gift From Moviegoers

The Nature Conservancy’s Plant a Billion campaign, to raise $1 donations—each dollar covering the cost of planting a tree in Brazil’s rainforest—has been among the most successful online fund-raising efforts to date, raising more than $830,000 in its first year.

Now the campaign has just received a big lift from an arrangement with Disney Studios, which has produced $2.7-million, enough to plant 2.7 million more trees.

The charity got the money after Disney offered to pay the Nature Conservancy a portion of the ticket price for every moviegoer who saw its new nature documentary, Earth in its first week.

Because theaters report ticket sales, not the number of moviegoers, back to filmmakers, Disney officials based the company’s donation on a figure they obtained by dividing the film’s gross profit in its first week—$16.1-million—by an average ticket price.