Organizing Support

Finding skilled and talented staff to fill demanding campaign jobs is a persistent challenge that faces nearly every LGBT group. At times the Task Force is able to loan our seasoned campaign staff to local partners to fill some of these posts.

In 2006, we lent an experienced field organizer to help Washington Won’t Discriminate get its field campaign off the ground. Washington Won’t Discriminate was the statewide campaign working to defend a newly enacted anti-discrimination law from the threat of a ballot repeal. Though the campaign had started in early February, by May they were still searching for a statewide field director.

To solve that pressing problem, we sent an organizer to Seattle to fill the position. He was able to launch an ambitious volunteer program to talk with and identify pro-LGBT voters.

In just one month, the campaign recruited and trained more than 100 volunteers to talk with voters at street fairs and other public events. These conversations with voters produced a list of more than 6,500 identified supporters of LGBT equality and grew the campaign’s volunteer list by an additional 1,000 people.

Despite an aggressive faith-based campaign to place the anti-discrimination law up for a public vote, the opposition failed to gather the 112,400 signatures needed to qualify.