“Crypto is the key that unlocks the cages”
Paris Hilton, Jimmy Fallon, Snoop Dog, Post Malone, and Stephen Curry all own a Bored Ape from Yuga Labs’ NFT project – the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). But you could argue these celebs’ NFTs are nowhere near as powerful as Richard Zimmerman’s.
Unlike some of his fellow club members, Zimmerman isn’t an A-lister. He’s the Founding Director of Orangutan Outreach – a 15-year-old New York-based non-profit dedicated to orangutan conservation in Borneo and Sumatra.
But it’s only during the last year that Orangutan Outreach has reached a far wider global audience than it probably thought possible. And it’s in part thanks to Julius… or BAYC #2234 as his NFT birth certificate shows.
Speaking at the 2022 NFTNYC event in June, Zimmerman recalls how it all began.
“A year ago we got a donation from something called the Bored Ape Yacht Club… I had no idea what it was… and I thought it was a joke because I mean, obviously, the name“
As you might suspect, Zimmerman was intrigued. And as part of his “deep dive” into the 10,000 edition NFT project, he bought himself one… and affectionately named him Julius.
Talking about buying Julius, Zimmerman was quick to point out “I was really fortunate to be early, so my wife didn’t kill me. It took me two days to figure out how to buy it, and another two days to tell her”.
And then something happened that he really wasn’t expecting…
“a few days later we got this huge HUGE donation from the Bored Ape Yacht Club… it was so crazy that I had to keep doing the conversion”
As The Block writes, no wonder Zimmerman kept tapping away at his calculator. BAYC’s donations in 2021 were indeed “HUGE”…
“The group previously donated 135 ETH ($419,000) to a range of animal charities on June 30, including a 33.75 ETH ($100,000) donation to Orangutan Outreach at the time. On July 9, it donated 11.5 ETH ($36,000) via The Giving Block, including 5.75 ETH ($18,000) to Orangutan Outreach. And on July 28, it gave 169 ETH ($524,000) to the same cause.”
Orangutan Outreach’s day-to-day mission is to rescue, rehabilitate and release – “you don’t want animals in cages you want them safe and healthy and you want them in the wild… so we’re continuing to do that… but with the big donation we were allowed to really expand our thinking”
That thinking has now turned into two major projects.
The first is building large sanctuary spaces for unreleasable orangutans who need care for the rest of their lives. And the second is a highly considered reforestation project aiming to empower as many local people as possible who can sustain the project in the long term.
“you don’t just want to drop a few dollars and plant some trees, and leave… it has to be really well thought out”
In a poetic conclusion to his NFTNYC talk, Zimmerman sums it all up beautifully…
“we think crypto is the key that unlocks the cages, and we want to unleash the power of NFTs and Web3 as we get more involved to make the world a better place for orangutans and humans”
Julius’ role as Bored Ape Ambassador is to build relationships in order to “to turn NFTs into NFTrees”. But not just in the Yacht Club… in the wider Web3 world too. And this is exciting for two reasons.
Firstly, two of Orangutan Outreach’s new Web3 friends are Shift4 and The Giving Block – who are currently doubling all crypto donations through an extremely generous fund match.
And secondly, as recent stats show, crypto donors are vastly more generous – donating on average $10,455, compared to the average $128 from cash donors.
This is a truly heart-warming purpose, and one that also demonstrates the new philanthropic opportunities – and donors – NFTs bring to the charity sector.
