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

On the streets
While popular in other parts of the world, street and door-to-door fundraising haven’t yet hit their stride in the U.S. But HRC has been honing the art of face-to-face fundraising for more than a decade.

“For a long time, like many nonprofits that have been around as long as we have, we acquired most of our donors the typical way — through direct mail and telemarketing,” Grams says. “As our online endeavors grew, acquisition online has grown proportionately. But the biggest source of acquisition for HRC remains street and door-to-door canvassing. [We have] representatives knocking on doors in certain neighborhoods or standing on street corners and stopping anyone walking by, asking them to join HRC.