Can you really produce $100 of benefit with only $1 of donation? It seems impossible!

We know from our field experience that we can create $10 of benefit for one dollar of donation.

We also know that we can do this in communities where incomes are as low as $1 per person per day (i.e. more than 100 times lower than incomes in the US)

So we know that with $1, we can produce $10 of benefit for someone has 100 times less income than the average person in the US.

This means that we can take $1 that is donated in the US and produce more than 1000 times more humanitarian benefit than would be created by spending that dollar for a randomly selected person in the US.

But our high-benefit Africa solar projects are currently in their demonstration phase.

To produce highly cost-effective humanitarian benefits at large scale, we have to do more than simple field experiments. We now need to create and demonstrate systems that can efficiently utilize a dollar donated in the US to deliver a low-cost, high quality solar system to a low-income household rural Africa. To date, we have demonstrated high-benefit solar at the demonstration scale of hundreds of households for lighting technologies. Next, we need to definitively demonstrate high-social-impact solar distribution at the scale of thousands of households and for a large variety of solar technologies.

Creating a fully functioning system that clearly produces more than $100 of benefit for every $1 donated is still a "work in progress." But meeting this goal is clearly within reach.

Planting a tree is pretty easy. How can there be any innovation in planting trees?

Depending on the type of forest, the amount of carbon sequestered (and therefore the amount taken out of the atmosphere) can vary by more than a factor of 10.

There are two things that make it so that a forest can sequester a lot of carbon and take a lot of CO2 out of the atmosphere:

First: If the trees are tall, there can be a lot of living carbon per square meter of area because the trees have a lot of height; and

Second: If there is a lot of mulch and organic matter on and in the soil, this can sequester many hundreds of additional tons of carbon per acre

Therefore we plan on developing new, high-sequestration reforestation methods which emphasize planting trees that grow tall and combined with thick layers of mulch that dramatically increase soil organic matter content.

We think this will allow reforestation projects that can sequester more than 1000 tons of CO2 per acre. This is five to ten times more sequestration per acre than current forestry project typically acheive.

OK, I am convinced! Where can I donate?

We are just now starting and forming our non-profit organization. It could take a few months to get preliminary approval from the IRS on our 501(c)(3) status.

In the meantime, our large-scale non-profit activities are being sponsored by a long-established non-profit organization called The International Collaborative, also known as the International Collaborative for Science, Education, and the Environment (ICSEE). The ICSEE is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization registered in the United States.

Your gift to this effort is tax-deductible to the full extent of the law.

Do you wish to make a deeper inquiry? We will be pleased to provide our annual report (990 form) upon request.

We respect your privacy and will never share your contact information, without your express permission.”

For further queries, send an email to info@generosityandecology.org, and we will put you on our newsletter mailing list and keep you up-to-date on developments.