Bipartisan Campaign Trailblazer is the Latest to Join Growing Policy Team
Press Release – NEW YORK (April 20, 2017) – Today, the National Audubon Society announced the appointment of Claire Douglass as Director of National Campaigns. In this role Douglass will oversee public engagement for Audubon’s policy campaigns that advance its conservation priorities across the country to build the most effective conservation network in America.
“Claire has built a reputation as a strong campaign leader who cultivates bipartisan support by building strong relationships with grassroot supporters and grasstop decision-makers,” said David O’Neill, Chief Conservation Officer and Senior Advisor to the CEO at Audubon. “Her knowledge, coupled with her passion for the issues that matter to Audubon, make her a great fit for this important leadership role and will add critical experience to Audubon’s growing and influential national policy team.”
Douglass brings extensive campaign experience having most recently served as the U.S. Campaign Director for Climate and Energy at Oceana. In that role, Douglass led a bipartisan campaign that helped reverse offshore drilling plans in the Atlantic Ocean. The campaign included 120 East Coast municipalities, more than 200 members of Congress, 1,000 state and local elected officials, and 35,000 businesses — all of which publicly opposed offshore drilling and exploration. Prior to Oceana, Douglass worked in both for-profit and nonprofit organizations that supported sustainability and clean energy. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree from the University of Colorado.
In addition to leading Audubon’s Washington-based advocacy strategies for the 112-year-old centrist organization, Douglass will help ensure that Audubon succeeds in achieving its ambitious climate change objectives and will guide policy campaigns at the local, state and federal levels. She will be based in Audubon’s Washington, DC office.
About Audubon
With total revenues in 2016 of $102.6 million (25% increase since 2010), Audubon is one of the nation’s largest conservation organizations, comprising 23 state offices, 41 nature centers and 23 wildlife sanctuaries and representing 463 local chapters. Audubon – which focuses on the protection of birds and the places they need throughout the Americas – has been transformed in recent years, according to Crain’s New York Business, through cutting edge technologies, a sharpened conservation focus and operational overhaul that has increased revenue and decreased overhead expenses.
As written in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Inside Philanthropy and GreenBiz, that strategic and operational transformation has attracted new funders and broadened the organization’s reach to younger and more diverse audiences as Audubon expands its international work and achieves conservation victories. For the first time in nearly two decades, Audubon has also earned Charity Navigator’s highest ranking of four stars, twice in a row.
Audubon’s main Facebook page has more than 1,071,000 followers and reaches approximately 4.1 million people each week as the organization’s supporters share and interact with Audubon’s posts. And the organization’s 2014 birds and climate change campaign, which earned more than two billion media impressions, recently won a Diamond SABRE award from public relations industry leaders.
To learn more about Audubon and its new strategic direction, please visit here.
The National Audubon Society protects birds and the places they need, today and tomorrow, throughout the Americas using science, advocacy, education and on-the-ground conservation. Audubon’s state programs, nature centers, chapters and partners have an unparalleled wingspan that reaches millions of people each year to inform, inspire and unite diverse communities in conservation action. Since 1905, Audubon’s vision has been a world in which people and wildlife thrive. Audubon is a nonprofit conservation organization. Learn more at www.audubon.org and @audubonsociety.
