The National Audubon Society

Encouraged by the RBF, the National Audubon Society developed into a leader in the field of environmental education from 1957 to 1977. Over these 20 years, the Fund gave almost $2 million to the Society. Beginning in 1969, the Fund targeted its support to the Society’s Nature Centers Division for educational outreach including publications, training centers, workshops for the general public, and environmental curricula for elementary and secondary schools. These programs reached millions of young people. In the early 1970s, the Audubon Society, along with the Fund and the general public, increasingly recognized the complexity of cause-and-effect across the natural and human-built world. Accordingly, Audubon began to shift its approach from that of simple conservation and appreciation toward a viewpoint of interdependent ecological systems. The Fund’s final grant to the society in 1977 enabled it to evaluate and reshape its educational programs to address and communicate these changing understandings of environmental issues.