“I wanted to look back and see results that had a long term impact on helping people.”

The words are from Connie Collingsworth, general counsel of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who is pictured on InsideCounsel's cover this month. But they could just as well have come from any one of the other four non-profit GCs profiled on the following pages.

These accomplished attorneys either left or bypassed more comfortable positions at law firms or in the corporate world to take on the challenges of leading typically understaffed and underfunded non-profit legal departments. Some–including Collingsworth and Liz Blake, general counsel of Habitat for Humanity–work for organizations with a global agenda, with the ensuing complications of any multinational corporation. Joe Levin, co-founder of the civil rights-focused Southern Poverty Law Center, and Mary Elcano, general counsel of the American Red Cross, find plenty of legal challenges closer to home. And for Wikimedia GC Mike Godwin, who cut his teeth as an attorney on the earliest battles over cyberlaw, the venue is an infinite as the Internet.