From new birder to Birdathon maven
By Ilana DeBare
Caitlyn Schuchhardt had dropped out of grad school in English Literature and was looking for community when, in 2019, she discovered the Feminist Bird Club in Madison, Wisconsin.
Birding brought wonder and joy into her life, and she loved the people she met through it. Schuchhardt started volunteering with Madison Audubon’s nest watch program, got a part-time job on the chapter’s staff, and then found full-time work coordinating the annual Great Wisconsin Birdathon.
She became a Birdathon maven. (Or should we say raven?)

Like Golden Gate Bird Alliance’s Birdathon, which starts this month, the Great Wisconsin Birdathon is the main fundraiser for a local conservation group—in their case, the Natural Resources Foundation. Also like our Birdathon, the Wisconsin one encourages people to raise money from friends and family.
But the Wisconsin Birdathon was ahead of GGBA in one key way—under Schuchhardt’s leadership, they started using new software that allowed donors to make per-species pledges. The total raised by the Wisconsin Birdathon rose from about $90,000 in 2020 to $117,000 in 2022.
Schuchhardt credits a lot of that increase to the Pledge It software they purchased, which Golden Gate Bird Alliance is using for the first time this year.
The software allows you to choose a birding goal—say 30 species on a particular outing, or 100 species over a period of time—and have friends pledge a certain amount like 50 cents or $1 for each species found. At the end of Birdathon, the software automatically bills each donor’s credit card based on the number of species you found.
“Our old fundraising platform was a nightmare,” Schuchhardt said. “Registering was hard, donating was hard, and collecting pledges was almost impossible. Pledge It makes the pledging process an absolute breeze, a smooth experience from start to finish.”
Schuchhardt herself experienced a learning curve with fundraising. Like many people, she started out feeling shy and awkward about asking friends for money. In 2020, the first year that she took part in a Birdathon, she approached only her immediate family and raised about $150.
But she had an “a-ha!” moment when a non-birder friend heard about her Birdathon participation after the fact and said, “Why didn’t you share that with me? I would have donated!”

Schuchhardt realized that “everyone has been touched by birds in some way.”…