Plant Trees as Part of a VidDay Group Video Gift
- Jeff Laxson
- 2 days ago
- 4 min read
A group video gift is personal because it comes from people the recipient knows. They hear familiar voices, see familiar faces, and get messages that were recorded specifically for them.
VidDay’s Group Planting feature gives contributors another way to take part. Along with submitting a video message, they can choose to plant trees in the recipient’s honor.
That extra gift makes the most sense when it fits the person being celebrated. Someone who cares about environmental restoration, prefers non-material gifts, or simply doesn’t need more stuff may appreciate knowing their celebration contributed to something beyond the day itself.
Tree planting works best as an addition to a personal gift when it reflects something the recipient would genuinely appreciate.
Add tree planting to the group gift
When you create a VidDay, you can enable Group Planting so contributors have the option to plant trees when they submit their video messages.
Participation is optional. Someone can record their message without planting trees, while another contributor might choose to add trees to the gift.
That makes it particularly well suited to a group celebration. Everyone is already contributing something personal through their video message, and those who want to can add to the group’s tree-planting total too.
You might consider Group Planting when the recipient:
Cares about forests, wildlife, conservation, or environmental causes
Has said they don’t want more physical gifts
Prefers experiences and non-material gifts
Is being celebrated by a large group that wants to contribute together
Would appreciate seeing their birthday, retirement, wedding, or other occasion connected to restoration work
There’s no need to add tree planting simply because it’s available. Like any part of a gift, it works better when it feels appropriate for the person receiving it.
How Group Planting works
The process is intentionally simple.
After creating your VidDay, you can enable Group Planting from your event settings. Contributors will then see the option to plant trees when they submit their video messages.
The tree contributions become part of the overall group gift, so the recipient can see that friends, family, coworkers, or other contributors did something together in their honor.
If you want the exact steps for setting it up, our Gift Funds and Group Planting tutorial walks through the feature from inside a VidDay event.
What makes a tree planting gift feel real
Tree planting can sound wonderfully simple. Someone contributes, a tree gets planted, and the world becomes a little greener.
But planting is only the beginning.
For a tree-planting program to create lasting restoration, someone has to know where trees are being planted, whether they survive, how the site changes over time, and what happens after the initial planting day.
That’s also what makes an environmental gift easier to trust. A vague promise to “plant trees somewhere” leaves a lot unanswered. Seeing where restoration is happening and how it’s being monitored makes the contribution more concrete.
That’s why VidDay works with veritree and provides a public Impact Hub where our community can follow the restoration work connected to VidDay.
How VidDay’s tree planting impact is tracked
Through veritree, restoration projects use field data and monitoring tools to document what’s happening on the ground.
Depending on the project, that monitoring can include geotagged planting information, field observations, survival monitoring, and remote sensing to follow changes across the restoration area over time.
This matters because planting a sapling and successfully restoring an ecosystem are not the same thing.
Planting the tree is the first step. Credible restoration also means tracking what happens afterward.
The VidDay Impact Hub gives you a closer look at that work, including project locations, restoration progress, land being restored, and other measurable outcomes.
We also separate trees verified through veritree from the trees VidDay funded before our veritree partnership. That distinction matters to us because transparency is more useful than pretending every tree in our history was tracked using the same verification system.
More than 116,000 trees and counting
VidDay began supporting tree planting in 2020, and our community has since helped fund more than 116,000 trees.
The number is worth celebrating, but a tree count only tells part of the story.
Restoration projects can also support healthier soil, wildlife habitat, water systems, and the communities doing the work on the ground. Some projects use approaches such as agroforestry, where trees are integrated into agricultural landscapes to help improve soil conditions and create additional opportunities for local communities.
The Impact Hub lets you explore that broader picture instead of reducing everything to a single number.
And because the Hub reflects ongoing progress, you can return to it rather than relying on an old milestone tucked inside a blog post.
A group gift with two kinds of contribution
What we like about Group Planting is how naturally it fits alongside video messages.
A friend can tell a story that makes the recipient laugh. A parent can talk about something they’re proud of. A coworker can mention the small things the recipient did that made work better.
Those messages are the personal part of the gift.
Tree planting adds something different. Contributors who choose to participate can also make a collective contribution connected to the same celebration.
That combination keeps the recipient at the center. They’re still receiving something created specifically for them, while the group has an optional way to extend the celebration into restoration work elsewhere.
See where the trees are making an impact
If you’re considering adding tree planting to your VidDay, take a look at the VidDay Impact Hub.
You can explore the restoration projects, see current progress, and learn more about how the work is monitored.
And when you’re ready to add Group Planting to a video gift, our step-by-step tutorial shows exactly where to find the setting and how it works for contributors.
A tree planting gift works best when it suits the person you’re celebrating. When they care about the impact and would rather receive participation than another object, adding trees to messages from the people they care about gives the group one more way to show up for them.
