Audubon Nature Institute

The Baton Rouge Area Foundation has announced grants totaling $18 million to four nonprofit organizations working to address residual effects of last year's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

Awarded through the foundation's Future of the Gulf Fund, which was established with funding from BP, the grants will support environmental and worker-training programs in communities affected by last year's Deepwater Horizon spill. Grant recipients include Catholic Charities Archdiocese of New Orleans, Audubon Nature Institute, Single Stop USA and Louisiana Voluntary Organizations Active in Disasters.

Wow! Who ever thought the Gold Awards could be so exciting? The sun was setting on judgement day, and we had a tie for Package of the Year. A first! So, I polled our four judges — Steve Froehlich, director of development analytics at the ASPCA; Tim O’Leary, vice president of McPherson Associates; Paul Bobnak, director of North American Publishing Co.’s Who’s Mailing What! Archive; and FS Senior Editor Abny Santicola. After some soul searching and spirited debate, they weighed in: two for one package and the other two for the other package.

In August 2005, New Orleans’ Audubon Nature Institute was on the verge of beginning a $100 million capital campaign. Philadelphia-based development, marketing and management consultants Schultz & Williams had just finished a feasibility study for the organization, and all signs were “go.”