Small individual contributions can add up to meaningful support for nature. But successful crowdfunding requires more than selecting an online platform and asking people to donate. It needs a clear objective, a compelling story, trusted partnerships, and transparent communication about how the money will be used.
The Together for Tamaraws campaign in the Philippines offers practical lessons for conservation organizations and governments considering crowdfunding as part of their biodiversity finance strategies.
Responding to an urgent conservation challenge
When the COVID-19 pandemic brought tourism to a standstill in 2020, the temporary closure of Mounts Iglit-Baco Natural Park created uncertainty for the rangers and wardens working there. Their livelihoods were affected, but their responsibility to protect the critically endangered tamaraw (Bubalus mindorensis) could not be put on hold.
Found only on the Philippine island of Mindoro, the tamaraw is an important part of the country’s natural heritage. Rangers and wardens patrol their habitat and help protect the species from poaching and other threats.
To maintain this essential work, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources – Biodiversity Management Bureau (DENR-BMB), through the United Nations Development Programme Biodiversity Finance Initiative (UNDP BIOFIN) Project, and partners launched Together for Tamaraws.
The campaign mobilized approximately US$32,000—139 percent of its fundraising target. The funds provided six months of food and patrol assistance to 59 conservation frontliners, including field allowances for 33 furloughed rangers and wardens. Many of those supported belonged to the Indigenous Mangyan community.
Beyond its immediate results, the campaign demonstrated how crowdfunding can mobilize resources quickly during a crisis while giving the public a direct role in protecting biodiversity.
Begin with a clear problem and solution
Every crowdfunding campaign needs to explain what the problem is, who or what is affected and how the proposed intervention will help.
For Together for Tamaraws, the connection was direct: the pandemic had affected the livelihoods of conservation frontliners, but protecting the tamaraw still required regular patrols. Donations would help rangers and wardens continue that work.
A clearly defined problem gives a campaign urgency. A credible solution gives potential donors confidence that their contributions will serve a practical purpose.
Set a specific financial target
A campaign also needs a realistic fundraising goal based on the cost of delivering its proposed activities.
This means answering several questions before approaching the public: How much money is required? What will it finance? How long will the support last? What can different levels of contribution provide?
The team behind Together for Tamaraws also sought to secure part of its target before the public launch. According to the campaign team, raising approximately 30 percent in advance helped establish early momentum and demonstrated that the initiative already had support.
This approach can encourage others to participate. A campaign that has started attracting contributions may appear more achievable and credible than one beginning from zero.
Know the audience and plan the campaign
Before launching, the team prepared both communications and implementation plans to build trust with donors and ensure the campaign could be carried out effectively.
The communications plan identified the campaign’s audiences, the messages most likely to reach them, and the channels through which they could be engaged. The implementation plan sets out the activities, responsibilities and resources required to run the campaign.
Operational considerations are equally important. These include identifying prospective individual and organizational donors and selecting platforms for receiving and disbursing contributions.
Planning these elements helps ensure that public interest can be converted into contributions and that the funds can then reach the intended beneficiaries efficiently.
Tell a story that people can understand
Crowdfunding is not only about asking for money. It is also about explaining why a cause matters and helping people understand their role in addressing it.
Together for Tamaraws placed the experiences of the rangers and wardens at the centre of its communications. Rather than presenting biodiversity loss as a distant or abstract issue, the campaign showed the people working every day to prevent the extinction of a species found nowhere else in the world.
Its messaging connected individual donations with a larger collective effort. When donors could see where their contributions were going, they were able to recognize themselves as participants in protecting tamaraw.
As the campaign team summarized its approach:
“Write for the ear, shoot for the eye and aim for the heart.”
Emotional engagement, however, should remain connected to a clear explanation of the problem and proposed solution. The aim is not simply to generate attention, but to build informed and sustained support.
Build partnerships and maintain visibility
Even a strong campaign story will have limited impact if people do not see it. Partnerships are key to expanding a campaign’s reach.
Together for Tamaraws worked with partners, the media and campaign ambassadors to expand their reach. Regular communication through social media and other channels kept the campaign visible, while participating organizations and individuals helped carry its message to their own networks.
Effective partnerships extend a campaign’s reach, but they require consistent engagement. Partners should receive regular updates, be included in communications activities, and understand how they can help amplify the campaign.
Use clear and consistent messaging
Clear and consistent messaging helps ensure that people understand npt only what the campaign is about, but also why their participation matters.
Together for Tamaraws used simple, concise, and accessible language across its communications. The campaign avoided jargon and technical terms and kept information bite-sized to make the message more relatable.
This also helped strengthen a sense of cultural connection and identity. By communicating the importance of the tamaraw that resonated with Filipinos, the campaign was able tore ach local reach and encourage greater appreciation for a species that is uniquely part of the country’s natural identity.
The key is to make the message easy to understand without losing its meaning.
Make numbers relatable
Numbers help potential donors understand both the scale of a challenge and the value of their contribution.
Instead of communicating only the campaign’s overall target, Together for Tamaraws translated both the scale of the conservation work and the value of individual donations into tangible examples. For instance, the campaign communicated how a donation could provide one day’s allowance for a warden, while also comparing the scale of the strict protection zone of the Mts. Iglit-Baco Natural Park with an area that could be understood by the public.
These examples helped potential donors see not only what their contriubtion could support, but also the scale of the work being undertaken by rangers and wardens.
Campaigns can use the same principle to explain what donations could finance, such as:
- A day of ranger support
- Essential equipment or supplies
- Restoration of a defined area
- Community training
- Monitoring of a threatened species
- Protection of a particular habitat
Specific examples make a campaign more accessible. They also give donors a clearer picture of how their contributions form part of a larger result.
Connect the message to the moment
Together for Tamaraws was originally developed in response to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The team subsequently adapted its communications as new events affected the conservation context.
These included a reported tamaraw-poaching incident and the death of Kalibasib, the last tamaraw living in captivity. The campaign was also timed to conclude during Tamaraw Month in October.
Responding to developments as they occurred kept the campaign timely and demonstrated why protecting the species remained urgent. It also illustrates an important principle: while the campaign’s central objective should remain consistent, its communications need to respond to the environment in which the campaign is operating.
Show where the money went
Communication should not end when a fundraising target is reached.
Donors need to know how much was raised, how the resources were used, and what the campaign achieved. Financial information can be presented through simple charts, while photographs, testimonies and activity updates can demonstrate results on the ground.
Transparent reporting assures donors that their contributions reached the intended cause. It also builds trust that can support future campaigns and longer-term partnerships.
For biodiversity projects, reporting should cover both immediate outputs and, where possible, longer-term conservation outcomes. This could include the number of people supported, patrols conducted, hectares managed or restored, species monitored and policies strengthened.
One solution within a broader finance strategy
Crowdfunding will not replace the sustained public and private investment required to address the biodiversity finance gap. Nor will it be suitable for every conservation need.
Its strength lies in mobilizing people around a clear and relatable objective. It can raise resources relatively quickly, test new approaches, increase public awareness and create a sense of shared ownership.
When combined with public budgets, private investment, donor funding and other biodiversity finance solutions, crowdfunding can contribute to conservation in the short, medium and long term.
Together for Tamaraws showed what this can look like in practice. At a moment of crisis, many individual contributions came together to support conservation frontliners and help sustain the protection of one of the Philippines’ most threatened species.
The campaign’s wider lesson is simple: when people understand the problem, trust the proposed solution and see how they can help, even relatively small contributions can create lasting collective impact.