Team Trees
Fundraiser by MrBeast and Mark Rober
- 3 min read
- 5 chapters
Related on Lably
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As of September 5, 2026, the project has raised over 25,141,640, exceeding the fundraiser's goal to plant 20 million trees. As anticipated, more than 20 million trees have been planted.
Background
The idea started on May 24, 2019, when a fan suggested on Reddit that MrBeast (Jimmy Donaldson) should plant 20 million trees to celebrate reaching 20 million subscribers on YouTube. The idea spread across YouTube, Reddit, and Twitter, mostly in the form of memes. The idea may have been related to the 2019 Amazon rainforest wildfires. American YouTuber, engineer, and inventor Mark Rober partnered directly with Donaldson to launch the fundraiser. On October 25, 2019, Donaldson uploaded a YouTube video explaining his plan, which claimed the top spot on YouTube's trending page, and caused numerous YouTubers to join the movement.
The trees will be planted "in a variety of forests on public and private lands in areas of great need" starting in January 2020. The goal is to have them planted "no later than December 2022".
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Efficacy
The Arbor Day Foundation has recorded and mapped every tree planted with the program. As of September 1, 2026, 25,122,450 trees have been planted across 30,475 acres at 104 projects worldwide.
Responses
Many YouTubers created content to capitalize on the growing trend of Team Trees; despite the Arbor Day Foundation reaching out to only a few hundred creators, Team Trees is now featured in over 80,000 videos from over 4200 global creators. Across Instagram and Twitter over 556,001 posts have garnered more than 4.6 billion views.
Discovery Channel made a documentary called #TeamTrees about the campaign which aired on December 3, 2019, coupled with a donation of US$100,203 the next day.
Eike Lüdeling, the department head of horticultural sciences at the University of Bonn, stated, "It turns out that many of these seedlings, if you don't do this well or if people do it who don’t really care about those trees, then they all just die quickly. Sometimes it’s probably a better idea to plant fewer trees and really take care of them." Danny Cohn, the director of public relations for the Arbor Day Foundation, addressed these concerns, stating that "the partners who work with the organization are all required to have plans to help their trees thrive."
Planting projects
Planting locations of Team Trees include:
Team Seas
On October 29, 2021, MrBeast and Mark Rober teamed up again to launch Team Seas, a successor to the project that aimed to help clean up marine debris. As with the Team Trees campaign, many influencers had also joined in spreading the message to help the project be a success.