Non-Profit Times Chooses MoveOn Founders as Execs of the Year

[quiet.american]

December 1, 2004
NPT Executives of the Year
Blades And Boyd redefined online advocacy

By Robert Ford


What was supposed to be a simple dinner turned out to be a movement.

One evening in 1998, Joan Blades and Wes Boyd were at a restaurant. They overheard people at another table complaining about the ongoing debate in Congress whether to impeach President Bill Clinton because of his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Blades and Boyd believed that too much public money had been spent on the matter. The duo sent a one-line email petition to approximately 100 friends, asking them to sign if they thought, “enough was enough” and if the country should “move on.”

“Our friends sent it to their friends and before you knew it, we got back nearly 100,000 responses,” Blades said. “It showed that people were terribly upset by what was going on.”

From the wreckage of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal and that online petition sent from their home in Berkeley, Calif., Blades and Boyd launched MoveOn and in the process changed the way online advocacy is done.

Because of the model they built that shows how just a few people can change the way government and society work, Blades and Boyd are the NPT Nonprofit Executives of the Year for 2004. It is the first time the award has been given to two people in the same year.

whole article:
http://nptimes.com/Dec04/npt2.html