An online petition in 2003 pushed the Human Rights Campaign into the world of online fund- and friendraising. And the organization never looked back.

By Margaret Battistelli Gardner

“Passing a law is like making sausages — no one really understands what goes into it, and they don’t really want to see. They just want to enjoy the end result,” Crowley says.

HRC’s answer to all of these challenges, it seems, has been a mix of relentless education, creativity and dogged determination to keep donors engaged.