New: Community-Supported Fund for Research, Education, and Conservation

By Todd Kinney, CCAS Treasurer

Each year, the majority of Champaign County Audubon Society’s budget is used to make grants to individuals and organizations that are doing work in concert with the mission of CCAS.  These include our S. Charles Kendeigh Research Grants, our Education Mini-Grants, local conservation projects, and affiliation sponsorships of Illinois Environmental Council, Prairie Rivers Network, and more.

We are so grateful that the Champaign County community continues to entrust CCAS with contributions that support our mission and our work.  As we continue to expand the scope of our impact, we want our contributors to be able to expand their impact as well, rather than restrict their contributions to a single use.

Going forward, we are merging the funds that we use to support Kendeigh Research Grants and Education Mini-Grants into a new single fund called the “Community-Supported Fund for Research, Education, and Conservation.”  In this way, contributors will no longer be forced to specify which set of grants they are making a contribution to support, and Bird-a-Thon donations will go directly to this fund to support all of our various grants.  This will simplify our accounting and give us the flexibility to increase the number of grants we make each year as the number of applications vary for each type of grant.