Join Our End-of-Year Fundraising Campaign

In 2022, the Bird Conservation Network launched a major PR campaign to share the results from our Trends Analysis that examined our 22-plus years of data from the BCN Survey. I’m glad to say that the result of that effort has been a great success:

• We achieved coverage of the Trends Analysis results in 19 local, regional, and national media outlets, including front page of the Chicago Tribune, on prime-time radio, and in publications like Cornell’s Living Bird
• 17 talks have been given or scheduled on our findings at meetings with bird clubs, monitors, stewards, land managers, regional conservation organizations, and other NGOs.
• We created a compelling video on the BCN Survey (see below).

But our work isn’t finished, and we want to continue to build on our momentum. Throughout the course of this initiative we have learned about how unique the BCN Survey is, and the important results that we have produced thanks to the efforts of our monitors, volunteers, BCN representatives, and collaborators on this project. Now we’re looking to take the next steps to make greater change happen for our region’s birds.

Our primary goal going forward is to research and work with land managers and regional conservation groups to proactively consider the best practices that can be implemented to better support birds in the Chicagoland region. Based on feedback and questions we fielded during presentations to land managers, habitat special interest groups, and others, our secondary goal is to make BCN Survey and Trends Analysis data more readily accessible and create tools that will enable more specific research conclusions and inform more specific management decisions.

On that note, we are launching a fundraising campaign to help end the year financially strong and begin to make the future goals above a reality going into 2023. BCN is an all-volunteer led, regional 501c3 nonprofit organization with limited resources, which means that every donation we receive is both highly valued and also has the potential to make a direct impact on bird conservation in the Chicagoland area. Thanks to generous gifts from two member groups, individual donors, and the Paul and Dottie Foundation of DuPage Foundation, we’re already more than halfway to our year-end goal.

If you have already donated to BCN, either financially or through the time you contributed as a BCN Survey monitor, BCN Representative, or other volunteer, I want to personally thank you for your valuable involvement with us and the difference, both direct and indirect, that you are making for birds.

For those inspired and positioned to be able to donate financially, we invite you to join us. We raised the bar for BCN in 2022; let’s raise it further in 2023 and make positive change happen as we work together for birds and their habitats in Chicagoland. Donations can be made online through our website via the button below or if you would like to donate by check or provide a special donation, please contact us at treasurer@bcnbirds.org.