About mokugift

Our Mission

• To create fun and meaningful gift experiences that benefit the environment.

Our name

Definition: mokugift [mōe-koo gift]

• moku means "tree" in Japanese.
• moku means "island" in Hawaiian.

Our mission

Our mission is to foster environmental solidarity by making it easy and rewarding for anyone to fight climate change and by providing the tools to inspire others to do the same. Mokugift makes it possible for concerned citizens, even those lacking access to planting space, to plant real trees for $1 apiece, either for themselves or as gifts to others. Gifting a mokugift tree is similar to sending an e-card, and recipients can display their trees online at Facebook, MySpace, MyYahoo, iGoogle and other popular Web sites. Award-winning nonprofit organizations specializing in agroforestry project—which restore depleted lands and boost the agricultural productivity and incomes of indigenous peoples in some of the poorest parts of the world—plant the actual trees purchased via mokugift.

Why trees?

Trees and forests help regulate the climate by absorbing heat-trapping carbon gasses, and there's a growing consensus that tree planting in tropical latitudes is one of the most efficient way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. On average, each tree planted in the humid tropics absorbs 50 pounds of carbon dioxide every year for at least 40 years, amounting to one ton over the course of the tree's lifetime.

In addition, although the majority of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere comes from burning fossil fuels, unsustainable, slash-and-burn agriculture and other poor land-management practices have resulted in forestry itself becoming a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions. Restoring tree cover through agroforestry programs, and ensuring that local communities receive a fair share of the benefits, is the most effective long-term approach to the problems of deforestation and land degradation.

Our platform

Mokugift is not just a Web site for planting/"gifting" trees but also a platform that enables individuals to inspire others to plant trees. Visual and interactive elements make receiving a mokugift tree fun, uplifting and memorable. Businesses and nonprofits can also leverage this technology to reward and motivate customers, donors or employees. As an eco-reward, mokugift is a great way to motivate up-sells and tap into growing environmental awareness and interest in sustainable lifestyles.

Mokugift provides personal Web pages (Tree Islands) that track and display tree-planting achievements. As individuals plant trees themselves or "gift" trees to friends and associates (who in turn receive their own Tree Islands), the system tracks how inspiration spreads from one person to another. You receive recognition not only for the trees you've planted but also for those planted by your friends and their inspired friends (3 degrees). You can see the total number of people you've inspired and the total number of trees planted by them. You can also see which friends you've inspired and their individual achievements. Active promoters of tree planting are rewarded with free tree planting.

Mokugift is an excellent fit for companies looking to reinforce a brand's environmental equity and reward customers for making environmentally responsible choices. To learn more about how businesses and institutions can use mokugift for rewards and incentive programs, click here.

Mokugift provides a fast and easy fundraising option for schools, religious groups and non-profits. Your members can promote tree planting online in support of your organization and mokugift takes care of all order taking and processing. Your organization will receive 50% of all proceeds. Focusing on online promotion makes it easier and more effective for your members.

Partnerships

Mokugift is an official partner of the United Nations Environment Programme's "Plant for the Planet: Billion Tree Campaign. Launched at the Climate Convention meeting in Nairobi in 2006, the campaign originally set a goal of planting one billion trees but has since issued a new target of seven billion trees—roughly one tree for every living person on the planet.

"We are honored to partner with mokugift as part of the UNEP Billion Tree Campaign. Mokugift is taking creative approaches with its online gifting service and iPhone application to help the Billion Tree Campaign achieve a target of seven billion trees. In the spirit of the Billion Tree Campaign, mokugift empowers ordinary people to be part of the solution." — Satinder Bindra, Director, United Nations Environment Programme

Mokugift seeks to expand distribution through partnerships with relevant sites and services. We have, for instance, partnered with eBase Solutions in a joint venture to bring mokugift to Japan (mokugift.jp). Please contact us about partnerships via our contact form, and we will get back to you promptly.

Artists & Athletes Program

The idea: to inform, inspire and empower fans to plant trees in support of UNEP's Billion Tree Campaign. By visiting Artist & Athlete Tree Islands on mokugift.com, fans can plant trees and send a message to the artist or athlete. Anyone planting a tree with a participating artist or athlete can see their message posted on the Tree Island, along with the number of trees they've planted. For their part, artists and athletes can build goodwill by offering to plant a tree for each tree they receive as a gift. To help generate awareness, mokugift is approaching media companies for PSA ad spots and encouraging interested artists and athletes to participate in the spots and assist with outreach.

News

Please refer to our blog for the latest news about mokugift: mokugift.blogspot.com

Participate

Mokugift's affiliate program offers rich media ads that are engaging and stylistically consistent with our Web site. To join our affiliate network, click here.

Founders

Mokugift co-founders Hans Chung (Idea Guy) and Krates Ng (Build-It Guy) are high school friends who both gravitated to the San Francisco Bay area's technology sector. The selling of "virtual gifts"—teddy bears on Facebook, roses on dating sites—sparked the idea for mokugift. Why not have virtual tree gifts represent real trees planted in places fighting deforestation?

Their pursuit of online tree "gifting" coincided with a growing awareness that climate change was no longer just an abstract scientific and public-policy topic, but also a lifestyle issue calling for tangible action on the part of ordinary people everywhere. In researching agroforestry and prospective tree-planting partners, they realized that planting trees not only benefits the environment (by absorbing greenhouse gas emissions) but also can serve as a foundation for sustainable economic development for communities that have been adversely affected by poor land-management practices. Conceived as a social venture focused on customer experience, profit and tangible, positive benefit to the environment and society, mokugift launched on November 20, 2007.

Prior to mokugift, Hans founded CrispAds, a blog advertising network that wound up being acquired by a lead-generation company. He also worked at consulting firms such as The McKenna Group, as a strategy consultant for technologies companies including Japan's NTT. Hobbies: martial arts, cooking, furniture design. Residing in San Francisco's SOMA District, Hans has been on a mission to reduce his apartment's power consumption. He takes public transportation to work and the gym, and shops for local groceries at the farmers' market and Mission District grocery stores.

Krates is a typical startup engineer, preferring to join a team early on. Prior to mokugift, he was with a real-time computer server monitoring company, Wily Technologies, which was acquired by Computer Associates. Before that, he was an engineer at Andromedia (acquired by Macromedia, which, in turn, was acquired by Adobe). Hobbies: ice hockey, triathlon, cooking, scuba and travel. Krates lives with his wife and cats in the San Francisco Bay area, drives a Honda Civic Hybrid, eats less meat than before, recycles everything he can, and shops for local groceries at the farmers' market.