The Fledging Birders Institute is a non-profit environmental education organization with the dual mission of enhancing the healthy development of our youth with the profound benefits of birdwatching AND promoting public awareness of avian diversity and factors which threaten it thereby fostering a societal bird conservation ethic. Since its formation in 2009, the Fledging Birders Institute has hosted 3 national conferences aimed at making birding a more inclusive activity for all people. These Focus on Diversity: Changing the Face of American Birding conferences have proven to be highly effective in generating dialogue about the demographics of birding, evaluating the conservation impact of this issue, and inspiring on the ground efforts to bring bird conservation to broader audiences.