September 27, 2007

An award for HRC…

Posted by: Chris

…that we can all agree was well-deserved:

Audubon Nature Institute (www.auduboninstitute.org) and Human Rights Campaign (www.hrc.org) have received FundRaising Success Magazine?s 2007 Gold Awards for Fundraising Excellence for online and multichannel fundraising campaigns.

The Human Rights Campaign, a nonprofit organization that works to advance equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) Americans, won first runner-up in the Multichannel category for its "Defeat the Federal Marriage Amendment" campaign (www.hrc.org/millionformarriage/fmavote.html), which raised nearly $230,000 from 4,119 gifts through a coordinated series of offline and online advocacy, communications, and fundraising appeals.

"The Defeat the FMA campaign demonstrated the role of online advocacy and engagement in fundraising," said Dane Grams, Online Strategy Director for Human Rights Campaign. "Using Convio?s integrated suite of tools for advocacy and fundraising, we converted 2,383 activists to donors -- who contributed nearly half of the campaign?s TOTAL revenue."

Well done, HRC, especially considering the FMA had absolutely zero chance of passing and the two HRCs -- the other would be Hillary Rodham Clinton -- cooked up the strategy of defending our right to marry by never actually mentioning our desire to marry. Instead accusing the Bush administration (and correctly so) of a political diversionary tactic.

Of course that strategy also fit the game plan of Hillary, Howard Dean and other leading Democrats -- to keep gay marriage out of the political spotlight in a vain attempt to sidestep the issue. If only HRC were as effective at making the case for our equality as they are bilking of us precious resources for the gay rights movement.

P.S. For those interested in the glacial progress of the federal hate crime bill, HRC is breathlessly reporting the "breaking news" that the Kennedy-Smith amendment is up for cloture vote today. If it meets the 60 votes threshhold, then it will have survived any filibuster attempt.  That would also set a nice mark for whether it has enough wind at its sails to survive a Bush veto, since that only requires 7 additional votes.

Even still, winning the vote today only secures the hate crime bill's attachment to the massive Defense Department authorization bill, which is itself caught up in the raging debate over the Iraq war.

Tags: fund-raising, HRC, Human Rights Campaign