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

The organization’s increased focus on the Web has required an internal shift, too.

“More people are aware that the site is not only a communication tool, it’s also a relationship-building tool, and this is a way of actually bringing revenue into the organization,” Conkerton says.

“New Orleanians, in general, have become a lot more comfortable using the Web for transactions,” she says, citing a rise in online banking and bill paying in the area post-Katrina. “Blogging became the way evacuees knew what was going on back home. So we’ve all become a lot more Web-savvy than we used to be.”