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Indybay Feature

Helping the Environment through Email

by Richard Gill (richgill [at] andearth.com)
AndEarth.com sends out a free email newsletter to raise money for conservation and restoration projects in the Bay Area.
If you have never seen it, the San Bruno Mountain is one of the Bay Area’s hidden treasures. The wild grass and scrub on the mountain provide a habitat to more than twenty rare and endangered species, and it survives as one of the last wild areas on the north peninsula. Subscribers to AndEarth.com helped to preserve this rare unspoiled area by receiving the free AndEarthToday email newsletter. Each email arrived with pictures from the mountain ranging from wildflowers to the elusive grey fox which prowls the mountain. Every email comes with a ‘support button’ button, which helps to generate advertising dollars to fund necessary conservation work for the native plants which provide a habitat for the endangered species on the mountain. AndEarth.com donates more than 80% of its revenues to completing this type of environmental project. The initiative continues as the company is currently working with Save Our Shores to arrange a full year of cleanups along the California coast throughout the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary.

The San Bruno Restoration represents the company’s second straight success, following soon after the Huddart Park Planting, which involved planting coastal redwoods in partnership with the San Mateo County Parks and Recreation Foundation. By sending out an email twice a week, the company tries to involve all of their subscribers in the ongoing project and convey a sense of participation in the environmental work that is accomplished. It is the enthusiastic interest of subscribers that enables AndEarth.com to attract advertisers and raise the necessary money. "Congratulations on finishing the San Bruno Restoration. I like watching the projects develop and it feels great to know I’m really helping to rejuvenate the environment,” says Doug Kurfess, a sales representative at a San Francisco internet company. Bruce J. Wright, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the San Mateo County Parks and Recreation Foundation had similar praise for AndEarth.com’s contribution of four species of trees to Huddart Park: “Your creative effort to raise awareness and money for important restoration projects is admirable.”

AndEarth.com began three months ago when two long-time friends, Will Hoover and Richard Gill, decided to start a company based on their interest in preserving the environment. “We didn’t want to be in just another office job or a dot.com with fluorescent lights and stock options,” says Richard Gill, “we wanted to do something that we believed in.” AndEarth.com tries to raise funds for between six and twelve environmental projects each year. Without a single marketing purchase, the grassroots based company is fast approaching 5,000 subscribers, almost exclusively through word of mouth. As the network of subscribers grows, so does the effectiveness of the AndEarth.com community, using the internet to harness public interest into a form that can be applied directly to practical problems. The AndEarthToday email newsletter is free, and anyone can sign up on the http://www.andearth.com website.
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