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 question of what to do with staff was something else not readily addressed in ANI’s disaster plan. Communicating with displaced staff with phone lines down and cell phones non-functional was difficult, to say the least. What’s more, with its facilities closed and no visitors to serve — and the fact that it needed every spare penny for recovery efforts — ANI had to let staff go.