With many of its facilities in ruins, and its employees, customers, volunteers and donors scattered by Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans’ Audubon Nature Institute turned to the Web to raise the money needed to get back to its mission.

By Abny Santicola

“Keep in mind, over a million people from the New Orleans area out of 1.3 million people were out of here. Those are our members, those are our customers, those are our donors, and our volunteers. They were all over the country,” Conkerton says.

The Internet was the only way ANI could reach out to these constituents, and it offered the added opportunity to touch concerned citizens across the nation. Indeed, as a major visitor attraction in New Orleans, about 80 percent of ANI’s visitation comes from out-of-towners, giving it some level of familiarity beyond the city.