Cyndi Lauper

In 2004, when President Bush was preparing for a press conference to address the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would define marriage solely as a union between a man and a woman and take the power to allow or disallow gay and lesbian marriages out of the hands of the states, the Human Rights Campaign was on his tail.

Since day one, I’ve held that those of us who are responsible for putting out FundRaising Success learn more from our readers than our readers learn from us. And this year’s Fundraising Professionals of the Year Awards have served to punctuate that belief. Each year, we send out nominating forms that are nice and neat, with perfectly balanced categories that cover what we think are all the bases. And each year, we name winners in those respective categories. But this year, the nominations weren’t so cut and dry, and we were reminded that there are thousands of fundraising pros out there who toil in