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

“There are decisions that you have to make with limited information that you don’t really think about ahead of time — like how long we’ll be able to pay people, how long we’ll be able to cover them from an insurance standpoint, when do we make the decision to cut positions, what positions need to be cut, all of those types of things,” Conkerton says, adding that ANI went from 700 employees to fewer than 200 after Katrina.