Why Do You Offer iNaturalist Listings as a Reward?
This is a project and we want to share it. That makes it a potential Kickstarter. It’s not the typical Kickstarter though. We want to give away a major part of what we will be producing. But Kickstarters are more likely to fund successfully if supporters get rewards. That makes the rewards a side project. We want the whole thing to be low impact, and to give back in as many ways as possible. That makes the project and how we think about rewards a little unique and extra challenging.
Because the rewards are a sort of side project, we wanted them to appeal to as may of the people who might be interested in our project as possible. The project is, in part, about bringing the outdoors into the routine lives and minds of people who can’t or wouldn’t get out on days when they would use the video. This reward is for the people who would support us because they are themselves nature lovers like us
It may seem odd, and it’s probably even a first to offer a task up as a reward. It is aimed at like minds. We’re interested in natural history and the future of nature. That’s partly because it’s fascinating, and partly because we’re interested in a thriving planet to support life for our grandchildren and theirs.
We chose iNaturalist as the place to list species because of its association with the Half Earth Project. We chose the price based on the cost of the time and resources we expect the average listing to take. Time was valued at the starting wage at Target, the closest discount department store to our house.
The nature theme will weave throughout the project. Some of our posts will talk about the plant life along the trail, and truth be told, if I could think of a way to get funding to eradicate invasive plants and replace them with natives along the easements of these trails and Big Creek, that would be my (probably our) next project after this. (I have to earn a salary for my next venture though).
As far as the whole funding of the project, this is a small part, but in our hearts, minds it is quite large. I wish we had unlimited time so that we could offer more of this reward.
