The Reddit #WallStreetBets community spent a combined total of $300,000 dollars to conserve endangered wildlife, thanks to their recent plundering of New York hedge funds.
The philanthropy started when some members suggested they adopt a gorilla through the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. It snowballed as other adoption ideas continued to be shared, with Redditors posting images of their receipts contributing to a range of wildlife programs.
Even CNBC had featured a story about the Redditors’ charitable acts, by the time contributions towards the gorilla adoptions reached the $300,000 mark.
The idea was originally an off-shoot of an internal moniker for the subreddit—The Ape Gang— a reflection of their stock investing mob rule strategy. After the Fossey Fund took notice, their homepage was updated with a banner quoting Planet of the Apes. It read “Apes Together Strong.”
“The money these individuals have donated is an investment, not just in the Fossey Fund’s mission of Helping People, Saving Gorillas, but in our planet’s future,” the director of Fossey, Dr. Tara Stoinski, said. “We rely on individual donors who give to us year after year because they know we can be relied upon to be careful stewards of their donations, no matter how large or small.”
