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Concept
Change.org
Summary
Change.org is a website which allows users to create and sign petitions to advance various social causes by raising awareness and influencing decision-makers. The site is a US-based for-profit company and claims to have nearly 500 million users as of December 2022. Petitions often focus on causes such general justice, economic justice, criminal justice, human rights, education, environmental protection, animal rights, health, and sustainable food.
The site also provides support and coaching for organizations and paid members to help further advance their causes.
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.
In 2011, Change.org claimed it was the subject of a distributed denial of service attack by "Chinese hackers." The alleged attack was 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.
By February 2012, the site had 100 employees with offices on four continents.
In 2012, Arizona State University decided to block access to Change.org in response to a petition created by student Eric Haywood protesting against "rising tuition costs at the school." University officials claimed that "Change.org is a spam site" and that 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, BBC News, and other sources reported that Change.org would launch a UK-specific platform for petitions, placing Change.
Official source
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