Become a Sponsor
One Zoo Tree is a collaborative (crowd and open source) educational platform that provides millions of learners, students and animal enthusiasts a 360 degree look at animal careers, what they need to study in preparation, which animals they can work with, and how to gain valuable experience. In addition, it also fosters a deeper understanding and appreciation for conservation of all species.
The platform is being constructed on the world’s first fully digitised Career Preparation Path (CPP) information. Development will allow: close to 500 career profiles to choose from; more than 1000 animal fact files converted into short courses with different levels of knowledge; a digital academy with further thousands of short courses on each career and skill building; and an experience programme that creates digital logbooks.
Developing a niche platform
The idea of a digital career platform to assist students in figuring out how to reach a career isn’t new, but focusing it on a specific market is. In addition, we decided that the platform should remain entirely free for all roleplayers to maximise the information and overall impact.
But the initial price tag on development was in excess of US$580,000.
The development was divided into three phases:
- Initial research and concept design
- Development of core structure and data mining
- Design and incorporation of digital tools, such as the path mapping ability and logbook
OZT is currently within the second phase, with sponsorship sought to finalise the data mining that will feed into the short courses.
Why should we Sponsor OZT?
To enable faster data mining:
One Zoo Tree is well on the way to become the leading resource of its kind, with close to 4,000 informative pages and 300 short courses already designed.
The mapping software (Artificial Intelligence) that will form the heart of the platform requires complete sets of data, which means that ALL the career profiles need to be finalised, together with at least 80% of the topical short courses. Missing data will result in skewed career preparation paths.
With an estimated completion time of 20 hours per career profile, and roughly half that for each course, it will take years to finalise. Most of the time spent on profiles and courses is used to research and sift through factual and relevant data.
Sponsorship will allow for the data mining to be outsourced, which will drastically reduce the completion time of the final platform.
To create hope:
OZT has designed various initiatives to mine the necessary data, as well as ensure data reliability. One of these initiatives is to outsource the basic data mining to struggling or retired teachers. The initiative will be launched in South Africa, where the unemployment rate is among the highest in the world (currently over 40%).
Why teachers?
They are best placed to understand and create the educational material required for the path levels, short courses, and study guides. Their input will also ensure that the platform will fit into and expand on the current global career guidance systems.
To play a positive role in educating a generation:
Your decision to be a part of One Zoo Tree will enable us to reach our goal of educating millions of children around the world on the importance of conservation. We owe it to our children to empower them to make a difference. The success of the OZT platform will also be replicated in other industries, and could change the way our current educational system prepares children to enter a career.
Current Performance Statistics
The One Zoo Tree platform allows for live design. Over the past few months, we have created different versions of Pages to test usability and response.
The amount of new visitors to the website grows as we add new Career and Animal Pages. On average, 1 new page or course is created daily.
Monthly visitors to the site have increased by 50% in the last three months to just under 3,000.
Our marketing drive only starts in June, which will drastically increase the intake of larger roleplayers such as schools, universities, and animal organisations
What are the Benefits?
Sponsors will receive exposure to:
Main Target Audience
Our main target audience is children aged 10 to 18 who want to work with animals. Research has shown that close to 50 million children around the world show interest in working with animals, but less than 0.1% manage to make that dream a reality. The platform will allow children to actively pursue their dreams.
Secondary Target Audience
Although our main target is learners, close to 45% of our visitors are adults! Adults who want to change careers would rather consult a professional platform that guides them through the unknown and sometimes scary changes than rely on basic information scattered across the internet. Accurate facts and a path towards a smooth transition between careers are important to them.
Educational Partners:
To ensure that the data required is factual, relevant, and remains updated, One Zoo Tree is partnering with various industry experts. They are best suited to give direction and advice on preparing for a career, what to expect, and how lateral movement within the industry is possible. The data mining that connects to each career profile and short course will bring sponsors into direct contact with teachers.
Educational Institutions:
Schools around the world will be able to use the website to assist their students with effective career guidance. In turn, universities will be able to deposit their animal-related course information and create their own groups to directly communicate with prospective students.
Animal Organisations:
Participating animal organisations receive increased exposure and communicate directly with the students who might work with and for them in the future.
Built-in tools
Several tools have been added to assist students in planning their career paths, such as an event schedule, a bursary list, and a job board. Sponsors will be able to sponsor these tools.
What are the Sections available for Sponsorship?
In essence, sponsors are able to sponsor anything within OZT or even the entire platform. But we have divided the site into sections for sponsors who would prefer to focus their sponsorship. Here are the current sections:
Landing Pages
These include the home page, the pages introducing the concept of OZT to users, and the user guide on the entire platform.
Career Category Pages
The pages introduce users to the 15 different career categories in addition to all of their subsidiary pages to help navigate to specific profiles.
Specific Category
Each category contains the navigation pages, career profiles, and 5 course navigation pages for each profile. For example, a category such as Animal Health has over 700 specific category pages.
List based on Species
These pages help students decide on all of the above 500 profiles based on specific species they would like to work with.
Species Pages
There are 33 specific categories of species covered in OZT. Each category has 5 dedicated navigation pages, and specific species landing pages. A category such as mammals has over 150 specific species pages.
Course Categories
Similar to the career categories, the short courses are divided into the 15 career categories.
Course Species Pages
Each of the above 33 categories of species have matching courses. The courses are in four different levels, which means that a species category could potentially span over hundreds of courses. The sponsorship grows as new courses are added.
What Next Courses
This series of courses is meant for students who have not decided on a specific career, or who are not sure of the steps to take to prepare for life after high school.
Skills Courses
This series of courses helps students learn more about the specific skills required for animal-related careers.
Additional Tools
The tools cover topics such as a list of thousands of tertiary institutions, bursaries, events, and a job board.
The Community
Members have access to the community, where they can join groups corresponding to each career profile and species. Each group has its own forum. There are also landing pages with lists of members, site activity, and all of the groups. The Community is the largest potential sponsor section, as just the groups and forums exceed over 1500 pages. Sponsorship banners are also possible on individual member profiles, which could exponentially increase sponsor exposure.
(The groups belonging to tertiary institutions, schools, and animal organisations will not form part of a sponsorship section, as these groups are privately owned.)
Layout of Banners
As a sponsor, your organisation will be allocated one banner per page across the entire section you wish to sponsor. The banners are placed at the top of each page to allow for maximum exposure.
Banner Dimensions:
Average Image size: 728 (w) x 90 (h) pixels
File format: jpeg or png
Colour: RGB
Current Rates
Thank you for considering sponsoring our website!
We endeavour to structure your sponsorship opportunity to fit your marketing goals and budget. The cost of each sponsorship package depends on factors such as the number of pages and user visits your ad will reach.
Please fill out the form below with your contact information and any specific details about the sponsorship package you’re interested in. We will then be in touch with more information, including pricing details based on your desired reach and exposure.
We look forward to partnering with you and showcasing your brand to our audience!
