Donating Gems

Hello, Jammers! It's Ozma00 here!
So, a while back, I decided to send AJHQ a little message about donating gems in the Animal Museum. I mean, it says that the gems help animals around the world, but how? Is there a sponsor who donates, say, one dollar for every hundred gems donated? How does this work?
Well, anyway, I finally got my response!

Animaljamozma00, May 25 10:24 (MDT):Where exactly do the gems we donate go? Do they go to different charities or to National Geographic? Also, is there a sponsor providing the donations?

Alana, Jun 01 21:30 (MDT):
Hello,
Thank you for contacting Animal Jam Support Headquarters, and might we add, that's a super wild question! Now that monkeys are endangered in Jamaa, the Animal Museum in Appondale has turned into the Conservation Museum, a place for Jammers to go and learn about endangered animals and what they can do to help! What endangered animals do you want to help save and bring to Jamaa?
Visit the Conservation Museum and you can learn about animals, print and color some cool worksheets, and even tell us your ideas about how to help endangered animals in the real world! To help Animal Jam make a difference in their worldwide animal conservation efforts, click on the gem donation and idea box in the Conservation Museum. Do you see it? It's on the wall, right next to the door as you come in! You can choose to donate any number of gems from 10 to 1000! Don't forget to let us know what animals you are passionate about by typing your ideas in the box provided, Jammer!
The Gem donation box in the Conservation Museum is one way that Animal Jam helps support the mission of the National Geographic Society to inspire kids to care about the planet. A significant portion of all revenue Animal Jam collects goes to support National Geographic's worldwide conservation efforts. To date, Jammers have enabled the Animal Jam creators at Smart Bomb Interactive to contribute over $3 Million to the National Geographic Society's work. The Gem donation box in Appondale helps us determine which individual projects and animals kids would particularly like Animal Jam to support. This is a precursor to the Play Wild Fund, which will give kids direct control over where their contributions are channeled. We're planning to launch the Play Wild Fund later this year. Until we do, we are finding ways to give Jammers a voice in the way we support the conservation of wild animals and places! You can read more about ongoing NGS projects here:
http://www.natgeotakeaction.org/explorers/takeaction/conservation.
We hope this addresses your question, but if you have any more questions or concerns, please feel free to write to us again!
Animal Jam HQ

The answer is pretty awesome! Thanks, Alana!
The short version: The donation box in the museum helps AJHQ determine what animal Jammers like best. The amount of gems you donate for each animal shows how much you'd like to support it. This is kind of a Beta version of something new called the Play Wild Fund, which should be coming out sometime later this year. The Play Wild Fund will let Jammers pick where they want money to be donated.

Also, Jammers who bought paid memberships and other things from the AJ Store have helped the creators of Animal Jam, Smart Bomb Interactive, donate more than THREE MILLION U.S. DOLLARS to National Geographic! Pat yourselves on the back, members!

To learn more about the projects that Nat Geo has in store, click here.

The Play Wild Fund seems pretty epic! What do you think it'll have?

~Ozma00

P.S.
I strongly encourage everybody to vote in Animal Jam Community's Animal Jam Blogging Awards! Click here to get there.
~Ozma00