November 28, 2010 | Read Time: 1 minute
Giving on social networks has taken a new step forward for the holidays: The World Wildlife Fund is now making it easy for people on Facebook to “adopt” a polar bear, a tiger, or other animal in honor of a friend, relative, or colleague. Like dozens of other charities, World Wildlife Fund has long distributed a holiday catalog in print and online.
But this year the fund is also reproducing a version of its four-year-old holiday gift catalog on Facebook, the popular social-networking site.
The charity’s officials say that the catalog, which allows people to “adopt” more than 100 types of animals by making a contribution, works well with Facebook’s mission of connecting people.
Already such adoptions promoted in the holiday catalog account for a large portion of the money raised online by the World Wildlife Fund, and about 70 percent of donations to adopt animals come in during the holiday season.
Now people who “like” an animal in the catalog or who adopt a species by making a donation can alert their Facebook friends, leave a note about their experience in supporting a species, and send electronic cards to those in whose honor they have donated.
The wildlife fund hopes that those online activities will help the charity reach large numbers of donors’ friends online—and spark new donations from some of the 500 million people around the world who now use Facebook.
“I received a sea turtle,” wrote one Facebook user who left a comment in the catalog. “I really appreciate it as a gift because it’s one of my all-time favorite animals and because it’s helping WWF work toward preserving the species. It is really two gifts in one.”
