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

“To have us gone from the community would leave a huge, gaping hole that nobody else could fill at this point,” she says. “I think we need to be here for families in New Orleans. We need to give people in New Orleans a reason to come back.”

While DRM post-Katrina is harder than it was before, even for things such as one-on-one meetings with local major donors, with a greater, now more widespread constituency, Conkerton is cognizant of the need to keep everyone involved and engaged.