Change.org is a worldwide nonprofit
petition
A petition is a request to do something, most commonly addressed to a government official or public entity. Petitions to a deity are a form of prayer called supplication.
In the colloquial sense, a petition is a document addressed to some offi ...
website, based in California, US, operated by the San Francisco-based company of the same name, which has over 400 million users and offers the public the ability to promote the petitions they care about to potential signers, including 196 countries which are "creating change" in their communities. Designed to raise awareness within communities to influence "decision-makers" at the highest levels of governments, leading organizations use the website to advance their causes and mobilize supporters. Businesses also use the platform to engage with their constituents and consumers. In terms of media, the organization's mission is to source powerful stories and cover campaigns hundreds of times a day.
In 2013 the organisation's CEO stated its mission as: "Our role is to empower people everywhere to create the change they want to see." Popular topics of petitions created on the website include
general justice
A general officer is an officer of high rank in the armies, and in some nations' air forces, space forces, and marines or naval infantry.
In some usages the term "general officer" refers to a rank above colonel."general, adj. and n.". OED On ...
,
economic justice
Justice in economics is a subcategory of welfare economics. It is a "set of moral and ethical principles for building economic institutions". Economic justice aims to create opportunities for every person to have a dignified, productive and creat ...
,
criminal justice
Criminal justice is the delivery of justice to those who have been accused of committing crimes. The criminal justice system is a series of government agencies and institutions. Goals include the rehabilitation of offenders, preventing other ...
,
human rights
Human rights are moral principles or normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for certain standards of hu ...
,
education
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty ...
,
environmental protection
Environmental protection is the practice of protecting the natural environment by individuals, organizations and governments. Its objectives are to conserve natural resources and the existing natural environment and, where possible, to repair dam ...
,
animal rights
Animal rights is the philosophy according to which many or all sentient animals have moral worth that is independent of their utility for humans, and that their most basic interests—such as avoiding suffering—should be afforded the s ...
,
health
Health, according to the World Health Organization, is "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity".World Health Organization. (2006)''Constitution of the World Health Organ ...
, and
sustainable food
A sustainable food system is a type of food system that provides healthy food to people and creates sustainable environmental, economic and social systems that surround food. Sustainable food systems start with the development of sustainable a ...
.
History
Change.org was launched in 2007 by current chief executive
Ben Rattray, with the support of founding
chief technology officer Mark Dimas,
Darren Haas,
and
Adam Cheyer.
As of February 2012, the site had 100 employees with offices on four continents. By the end of 2012, Rattray stated "he plans to have offices in 20 countries and to operate in several more languages, including Arabic and Chinese." In May 2013, the company announced a $15 million round of investment led by Omidyar Network and said it has 170 staff members in 18 countries.
In 2011, Change.org claimed it was the subject of a
distributed denial of service attack by "Chinese hackers" and that the alleged attack was apparently related to its petition to the
Chinese government to release artist
Ai Weiwei. In 2011, there was a proposal to merge the Spanish-speaking counterpart website ''Actuable'' into ''Change.org''; the merger occurred in 2012 when the voluntary union of ''Actuable'' users into the ''Change.org'' platform was approved.
In 2012,
Arizona State University
Arizona State University (Arizona State or ASU) is a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, ASU is one of the largest public universities by enrollment in the ...
decided to block access to Change.org in response to a petition created by student Eric Haywood protesting "rising tuition costs at the school". University officials claimed that "Change.org is a spam site" and the blocking was conducted "to protect the use of our limited and valuable network resources for legitimate academic, research, and administrative uses".
It was reported on April 5, 2012, that Change.org hit 10 million members, and was the fastest-growing social action platform on the web. At that time, they were receiving 500 new petitions per day. On May 13, 2012, ''
The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers '' The Observer'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the ...
'',
BBC News
BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broadc ...
and other sources reported that Change.org would launch a UK-specific platform for petitions, placing Change.org in competition with
38 Degrees
38 Degrees is a British not-for-profit political-activism organisation. It describes itself as "progressive" and claims to "campaign for fairness, defend rights, promote peace, preserve the planet and deepen democracy in the UK".
38 Degrees tak ...
, a British not-for-profit political-activism organization.
An August 2013 ''
Fast Company'' article reported that Change.org would soon begin featuring petition recipients, saying, "For the first time, companies will be able to post a public response to any given petition (currently, they can only respond to the person who started the campaign). They will also be able to create their own Decision Maker page, which will show all petitions against them, the number of signatures gathered, and their statuses."
On June 30, 2021, workers for Change.org announced that a majority of staff in the US and Canada had signed union authorization cards in favor of being represented for
collective bargaining
Collective bargaining is a process of negotiation between employers and a group of employees aimed at agreements to regulate working salaries, working conditions, benefits, and other aspects of workers' compensation and rights for workers. The ...
by
CODE-CWA
The Campaign to Organize Digital Employees or CODE-CWA is a project launched by the Communications Workers of America to unionize tech and video game workers in January 2020. It sprung out of conversations with Game Workers Unite (GWU) and empl ...
, and that Change.org had
voluntarily recognize
The National Labor Relations Board, an agency within the United States government, was created in 1935 as part of the National Labor Relations Act. Among the NLRB's chief responsibilities is the holding of elections to permit employees to vote wh ...
d CODE-CWA as the representative of the workers.
Notable petitions
Brazil
On May 16, 2016, President
Dilma Rousseff
Dilma Vana Rousseff (; born 14 December 1947) is a Brazilian economist and politician who served as the 36th president of Brazil, holding the position from 2011 until her impeachment and removal from office on 31 August 2016. She is the first ...
’s impeachment request received 2,212,208 signatures.
Created by Caio Coppolla, March 15, 2021, Supreme Federal Court Minister
Alexandre de Moraes
Alexandre de Moraes (; born 13 December 1968 in São Paulo) is a Brazilian jurist, currently serving as president of the Superior Electoral Court and as a justice of the Supreme Federal Court.
Life
Married with three children, Alexandre de Mor ...
’s impeachment request received more than 4,770,000 signatures.
On October 13th, 2017, Ana Clara Leite was sexually harassed twice in taxis after drivers accessed her information using a mobile phone app called Easy Taxi. She won her petition asking Easy Taxi App to introduce safety measures, with the backing of more than 27,000 Brazilians.
United States
In December 2011, a fourth-grade class in
Brookline
Brookline may refer to:
Places in the United States
* Brookline, Massachusetts, a town near Boston
* Brookline, Missouri
* Brookline, New Hampshire
* Brookline (Pittsburgh), a neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
* Brookline, Vermont
See ...
,
Massachusetts
Massachusetts (Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut Massachusett_writing_systems.html" ;"title="nowiki/> məhswatʃəwiːsət.html" ;"title="Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət">Massachusett writing systems">məhswatʃəwiːsət'' En ...
, launched the "Lorax Petition Project" through Change.org requesting
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures (legally Universal City Studios LLC, also known as Universal Studios, or simply Universal; common metonym: Uni, and formerly named Universal Film Manufacturing Company and Universal-International Pictures Inc.) is an Americ ...
to include more of an environmental message on its website and trailer for its upcoming film, ''
The Lorax
''The Lorax'' is a children's book written by Dr. Seuss and published in 1971. It chronicles the plight of the environment and the Lorax, the titular character, who "speaks for the trees" and confronts the Once-ler, a business magnate who causes ...
'', a classic
Dr. Seuss children's story. The petitioners felt that the website and trailer lacked an important message from the book, "to help the environment". The petition collected over 57,000 signatures, and on January 26, 2012, the studio updated the website "with the environmental message the kids had dictated".
On the morning of February 2, 2012, Stef Gray, a 23-year-old graduate in New York, held a news conference at the Washington offices of Sallie Mae where she presented the results of her Change.org,
Sallie Mae, the "nation's largest private student-loan provider" petition, which had received about 77,000 signers. That afternoon the company changed its forbearance fee policy.
In November 2013, Aaron Thompson from
Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Tuscaloosa ( ) is a city in and the seat of Tuscaloosa County in west-central Alabama, United States, on the Black Warrior River where the Gulf Coastal and Piedmont plains meet. Alabama's fifth-largest city, it had an estimated population o ...
started a petition, directed at Seth MacFarlane to bring back
Brian Griffin
H. Brian Griffinas shown in Brian Griffin's House of Payne is a fictional character from the American animated television series ''Family Guy''. An anthropomorphic white labrador retriever voiced by Seth MacFarlane, he is one of the show's mai ...
on the TV series ''
Family Guy
''Family Guy'' is an American animated sitcom originally conceived and created by Seth MacFarlane for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The show centers around the Griffins, a dysfunctional family consisting of parents Peter and Lois; their ch ...
'', after he was briefly killed off in the Season 12 episode "
Life of Brian". Thompson's petition gained 30,000 signatures within 36 hours. The character was brought back to the show a few episodes later. However, this was not a result of the petition, as the episodes were conceived months prior.
In September 2014, Karol Wilcox of
Hayti, Missouri started a petition against the planned execution of Beau, a two-and-a-half-year-old dog in
Dyersburg, Tennessee
Dyersburg is a city and the county seat of Dyer County, Tennessee, United States. It is located in northwest Tennessee, northeast of Memphis on the Forked Deer River. The population was 16,164 at the 2020 census, down 5.72% from the 2010 census ...
, for allegedly killing a duck on his owner's property. By November, this petition had gained over 540,000 signatures. The petition worked and the dog was spared.
On December 5, 2015 the U.S. Congress reauthorizes the Zadroga Act. After many efforts, John Feal, a 9/11 first responder, was integral in passing the Zadroga Act in 2010. This act covers health expenses and compensates other first responders who are "suffering debilitating illnesses and injuries as a result of their service". When Congress stalled on reauthorizing the bill, he started a petition to help push it through that was signed by nearly 187,000 people.
The ''New York Daily News'' reported:
"Lifetime health benefits for sickened 9/11 first responders won overwhelming approval Friday from Congress after a long and contentious battle. The House and the Senate both voted to extend the Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, giving coverage to those afflicted with Ground Zero-related health woes for the next 75 years. ..In addition to extending the healthcare program for first responders and others suffering lingering 9/11 health issues, Congress renewed the Victims Compensation Fund for another five years to aid first responders too sick to work and their families."
After the
2016 United States presidential election
The 2016 United States presidential election was the 58th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. The Republican ticket of businessman Donald Trump and Indiana governor Mike Pence defeated the Democratic ticke ...
, in which
Donald Trump
Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...
was declared
President-elect of the United States
The president-elect of the United States is the candidate who has presumptively won the United States presidential election and is awaiting inauguration to become the president. There is no explicit indication in the U.S. Constitution as to w ...
, there were
mass protests. As part of these protests, one California man started a petition on November 10, 2016, which called for electors in states that Trump won to become
faithless electors and cast their vote for
Hillary Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...
instead at state
Electoral College meetings. The petition acquired over 4 million signatures by November 14, 2016, only 4 days after it started.
By November 23, 2016, it had gotten 4.5 million signatures. The petition ultimately failed as, on December 19, 2016, Trump officially gained the presidency with 304 electors. The petition closed with 4.9 million signatures, the highest in the platforms history, until March 5, 2019, when it was surpassed by a petition opposing the Article 13 of the proposed
Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market.
That petition was then toppled
In summer 2017, a petition called for
/r/incels (incel named after an abbreviation for "
involuntary celibate") to be banned for inciting violence against women.
On November 3, 2017, following
sexual assault
Sexual assault is an act in which one intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will. It is a form of sexual violence, which ...
claims made against actor
Kevin Spacey
Kevin Spacey Fowler (born July 26, 1959) is an American actor. He began his career as a stage actor during the 1980s, obtaining supporting roles before gaining a leading man status in film and television. Spacey has received various accolade ...
,
Netflix
Netflix, Inc. is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service and production company based in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, it offers a ...
fired the actor from, and stalled the production of, the sixth and final season of the television series in which Spacey had starred in on the network, ''
House of Cards''.
Following Spacey's dismissal, a petition created on November 2, 2017, calling for Spacey to be replaced by actor
Kevin James as a post-plastic surgery Frank Underwood began gaining a rapid number of supporters; this petition has gained media notability since its inception, gaining 50,000 supporters within eight days.
In wake of the
Logan Paul suicide video controversy, user "... - .- -.-- .- .-.. .. ...- ." ("stayalive" in
Morse code
Morse code is a method used in telecommunication to encode text characters as standardized sequences of two different signal durations, called ''dots'' and ''dashes'', or ''dits'' and ''dahs''. Morse code is named after Samuel Morse, one ...
) created a petition entitled “Delete Logan Paul’s YouTube Channel", having received more than 520,000 signatures as of January 15, 2018. While numerous other petitions have been created for the same purpose, none have received as much attention.
On July 14, 2019, an online petition titled "The Immediate Halt to the Construction of the TMT Telescope" was posted on Change.org in protest against the
Thirty Meter Telescope. The online petition has currently gathered over 278,057 signatures worldwide.
On May 30, 2020, a petition titled “Justice for George Floyd” was created, after
George Floyd
George Perry Floyd Jr. (October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020) was an African-American man who was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota, during an arrest made after a store clerk suspected Floyd may have used a counterfeit tw ...
, an unarmed, African-American man who
was murdered by police, which lead to
mass protests. As of early July 2020, the petition had nearly 19 million signatures, making it the most signed petition in the history of the platform, surpassing the Article 13 opposition petition over a year ago.
During the ''
Depp v. Heard
''John C. Depp, II v. Amber Laura Heard'' was a trial held in Fairfax County, Virginia, from April 11 to June 1, 2022, that ruled on allegations of defamation between formerly married American actors Johnny Depp and Amber Heard. Depp, as plain ...
'' defamation trial, a petition to remove actress
Amber Heard
Amber Laura Heard (born April 22, 1986) is an American actress. She had her first leading role in the horror film ''All the Boys Love Mandy Lane'' (2006), and went on to star in films such as '' The Ward'' (2010) and ''Drive Angry'' (2011). Sh ...
from her role as
Mera in ''
Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom
''Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom'' is an upcoming American superhero film based on the DC Comics character Aquaman. Produced by DC Studios, the Safran Company, and Atomic Monster Productions, and set for distribution by Warner Bros. Pictures, ...
'', which had initially gained 1.5 million within a month of its creation in November 2020,
has surpassed 4.5 million as of June 2022, after the trial was
livestreamed
Livestreaming is streaming media simultaneously recorded and broadcast in real-time over the internet. It is often referred to simply as streaming. Non-live media such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos are technically streamed, but no ...
publicly in May 2022.
United Kingdom
On March 10, 2015, political blogger Guido Fawkes, whose real name is
Paul Staines
Paul De Laire Staines (born 11 February 1967) is a British-Irish right-wing political blogger who publishes the Guido Fawkes website, which was described by ''The Daily Telegraph'' as "one of Britain's leading political blogsites" in 2007.Graeme ...
, started a petition to reinstate
Jeremy Clarkson
Jeremy Charles Robert Clarkson (born 11 April 1960) is an English broadcaster, journalist, game show host and writer who specialises in Driving, motoring. He is best known for the motoring programmes ''Top Gear (2002 TV series), Top Gear'' an ...
,
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
''. This followed the BBC's decision to suspend him over a "fracas" involving a producer on the show. The petition gained over 500,000 signatures within 24 hours, making it the fastest growing petition to date for the site, while having the servers at Change.org in the UK regularly become unresponsive due to the high demand. It had gained 1,060,980 signatures by March 20, 2015, and it was delivered to the BBC. On March 25, 2015, the BBC released an official statement confirming that, as a result of the actions which led to his suspension, they would not be renewing his contract with the show.
A petition was started in 2020, to get fundraiser
knighted, as of April 30, 1 million people had signed. It gained 1,043,729 signatures, and he was knighted on
sacked after it emerged he travelled from London to his parents' home in Durham with coronavirus symptoms during the COVID-19 lockdown, as of 13 Jan 2022, this had 1,201,401 signatures.
On March 31, 2015, Iranian prisoners were freed with the help of United Kingdom Citizens. Ghoncheh, a law student in the University of London and a British Iranian dual citizen, was in Iran teaching literacy to street children for charity as well as to visit family. She was arrested in June 2014 for attending the World League Volleyball matches, after the Iranian government was informed of the matter by the International Federation of Volleyball (FIVB). Iman Ghavami, the prisoner's brother, created a change.org campaign in petition to the Government of Iran and the Government of the United Kingdom. He gained 747,476 supporters after public outrage in the United Kingdom began in support of freeing Ghoncheh.
On 13 January 2022, a petition to rescind
's knighthood received 1,106,497 signatures.
, a large food and beverage corporation serving entertainment venues in North America and the UK, to fire its then-CEO Desmond "Des" Hague after the public release of security camera footage allegedly showing Hague abusing a young