Today, I announced a restructuring of Change.org to enable us to sharpen our focus on the infrastructure that supports powerful movements beyond one time petitions. As part of this announcement, we made the decision to reduce our global team by 19%. I want to explain how I arrived at this difficult decision and why.

A changing context

Our mission is to empower people everywhere to create the change they want to see. Historically, we have focused on easy and effective petitions for everyday people. Signing petitions remains one of the top three most frequent civic actions in the world and we’re proud of the role we play as market leader in this space supporting 124 million people every year. But the way change is being made is itself changing.

More than a decade ago, the internet made it possible for one person to capture a powerful moment and have an impact; with a petition, hashtag or event that went viral, shining a light on an issue in a new way. These moments were often powerful, but also fleeting.

Now we’re increasingly seeing the emergence of a class of leaders driving not just viral moments, but ongoing movements. These everyday heroes are leading change globally and locally across everything from racial justice to healthcare to animal welfare. They give up their time in service of a greater good, but often lack the right support to amplify their impact.

We are restructuring in order to double-down on providing this next generation of leaders with the infrastructure they need to build future movements. While petitions will still be part of their toolkit, we’ll be going far beyond that by helping them generate sustainable income and mobilize their audiences across a range of actions and platforms.

How we’re restructuring

Since our transition to non-profit ownership, ensuring mission-first governance in perpetuity, we’ve been able to take a longer view to how we can most effectively pursue our mission. At that time I also formally took on the role of CEO, and a number of new leaders have joined the team since, bringing new expertise and perspectives. Informed by the changing landscape of activism, our results over the last 12 months, and the broader economy, we have been working on what capabilities, structure and financial flexibility we need to take our impact to the next level.

That work led to two key conclusions; (1) we will significantly increase investment in the products and services that provide infrastructure for powerful ongoing movements, and (2) we will streamline our organization to put more resources into work that directly supports our users, while giving us the financial flexibility we need to invest through an economic downturn.

Today’s announcement affects teams across all of our divisions and at every level, from entry level to executive. It’s important to emphasize that these aren’t based on blanket reductions, but instead a number of structural areas of the business where we are adjusting focus.

This doesn’t make it any easier, especially for those affected. Over the last 9 months, we’ve been taking progressive steps toward our new strategy and structure in a way we hoped would minimize the impact on our staff — including repositioning existing teams, slowing hiring, and making budget changes as the broader economic environment worsened. Unfortunately, these simply have not been enough to change the core equation. We need to make a different set of investments, and we need to ensure we’re in a position to make those investments despite a changing economic climate.

Change.org staff are remarkable

Losing team members who have helped make Change.org what it is today, some of whom I’ve worked alongside for years, is something that I feel deeply; this set of changes does not reflect on them at all.

People who work at Change.org are one of a kind; they’re passionate, driven, smart and incredibly capable. Change.org alumni have historically gone on to great things; founding remarkable companies, leading divisions, and raising the bar in the teams they join. The group leaving us are no different; they’re amongst the best out there, and any company would be lucky to have them. I encourage other companies and orgs to snap them up while you can; if you know of an opportunity, reach out to changetalent@change.org and we can connect you.

For most staff affected, today will be their last day. However a number of our team in the US and Canada are part of a union and represented by the CWA, and for those staff we’ve reached out and will begin negotiation on the effects of these decisions, as is required by us.

For those departing today we’re doing our best to support and care for them during the transition. That means:

• 12 weeks severance plus additional time depending on tenure
• 3 months extended healthcare for most colleagues
• Extended wellbeing support through our partner Modern Health
• Job transition support, including interview and resume training, as well as a database we’ll share for anyone looking to hire.

Moving forward

As we move forward, I remind myself of the reason Change.org exists; our users are at the forefront of inspiring, brave and important work every day, and our responsibility to them is high. We don’t make decisions like today’s announcement lighty, but these changes are part of what will ensure we can adapt, evolve and better serve the people who use Change.org for decades to come, and help create a world where no one is powerless.

Approximately half a billion users from around the world have come to the platform, starting more than 4 million petitions to address the world’s most pressing political, societal and economic issues. The platform is expected to reach approximately 5 billion signatures for change in the coming year, a milestone for the company which first launched in the United States in 2007, and began global expansion in 2012.

“Over the last decade, Change.org has pioneered a global civic infrastructure that has enabled millions of people to make more progress, on more issues, than any other platform in the world," said Bec Wilson, Chief Operating Officer and Head of Organizer Success for Change.org. "We are proud to reflect on the impact people have driven through Change.org and the millions upon millions of lives they have touched in societies across the globe."

Millions of petition organizers have achieved victories for individuals and entire communities, driving change both locally, nationally and on a global scale. Change.org supports organizers by helping them to find supporters, develop campaign strategies, secure media coverage, organize events, and get in touch with powerful decision makers. The organization has been a simple but powerful technology behind the most compelling, citizen-led, globally recognized campaigns and most passionate activists in the world:

• Addressing the current Russia-Ukraine conflict
• Examining the veteran suicide crisis in Australia
• Achieving Juneteenth National Holiday legislation in the United States
• Fighting “corrective rape” in South Africa
• Addressing the burning of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil
• Ending the Tampon Tax in Great Britain
• Putting a stop to the criminalization of refugees in Japan

Through the platform, everyday people have rallied to save the innocent from execution and wrongful convictions, demanded action from corporations, protected animal rights, and saved lives with access to medication and care. They have held law enforcement agents accountable, fought discriminatory dress codes in schools, made sure teachers and families could weather the COVID-19 pandemic and most recently, have jumped into action to protect reproductive rights, among many other causes.

Beyond petition support, Change.org continues to find new ways to drive meaningful societal change in the world. The organization recently launched the Racial Justice Fund to empower African-American communities with 5.5 million dollars in funding for Black-led organizations across the United States and around the world. The program was recently recognized by Fast Company World Changing Ideas Awards in the General Excellence and CSR categories.

In Latin America, the organization has helped to amplify the voices of the LGBTQ+ community, particularly in the trans rights movement. This includes partnerships with various transgender organizations, activists and influencers in Brazil, Mexico and Peru to bring more awareness to their identity rights, and to fight and scale their campaigns through documentaries, murals and signature deliveries.

In 2017, the Change.org Foundation launched She Creates Change, a leadership program for emerging women civic leaders in India. Many of the program participants have used the skills and experience gained through the program to move into positions of leadership and influence throughout India. Given this success, the program has since expanded into Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, and Nigeria, with plans to reach more marginalized communities through further expansion across the Global South.

“The global expansion of Change.org in 2012 was a critical step toward creating a positive impact in some of the world’s most marginalized communities,” said Preethi Herman, Global Executive Director and board member of the Change.org Foundation. “Now, a decade later, the Change.org Foundation has taken ownership of Change.org, further unlocking the power of citizen-led campaigning through technology, programs, research and partnerships.”

The celebration of Change.org’s 10-year anniversary as a global organization follows its historic transition to a nonprofit-owned governance structure that establishes the permanent independence of the platform and secures the long-term stewardship of Change.org as a digital public utility committed to the public interest. This new structure also positions the organization for its next phase of growth: from a single product company focused on petitions to a civic infrastructure platform that empowers people everywhere to use their voice, money, and time to build healthier, more participatory and responsive societies.

Change.org is an open platform that draws people with different and sometimes competing perspectives, experiences and interests to use the free platform tools and resources to support issues and causes they care about. Through robust user guidelines and a dedicated legal and policy team, Change.org maintains a strong commitment to user privacy and safety and ensuring the rights and responsibilities of its half a billion users worldwide remain protected and enforced.

About Change.org
Change.org is the world’s largest tech platform for people-powered, social change. More than half a billion people across 196 countries use our technology-driven petition and campaign tools to speak up on issues they’re passionate about. Approximately 70,000 petitions are created and supported on our platform every month, with 1.5 million new people joining our global network of users every week. People on Change.org have powered tens of thousands of campaign victories worldwide, and more are winning every week.

Every day, our users collaborate to organize on local, national and global issues; hold corporations to account; and demand action from decision makers at the highest levels of government and business. Our platform is free to use, open to all, and completely independent because it’s funded by the people who use it. Our independence makes us a trusted resource for decision makers, who turn to the platform to hear from and respond to the communities they represent.

The nonprofit Change.org Foundation as majority owner, oversees the Change.org Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), a corporate subsidiary focused on technology, innovation and growth; and the Change.org charitable programs focused on empowering the most marginalized people and communities globally. This hybrid structure of two mutually supporting organizations enables us to combine the ambition and growth trajectory of a tech company with the mission-focused stewardship of a nonprofit.

Change.org is committed to providing the tools, resources and support needed to empower anyone, anywhere to create the change they want to see in the world.

Related Links:

• Change.org/Anniversary
• Support a cause you care about at Change.org
• Join Change.org and work with the best who want to be great while doing good!
• Change.org Racial Justice Fund
• Change.org Foundation

World’s largest tech platform for social change also named finalist as Employee Size: Midsize and receives Honorable Mention for Racial Justice Fund in General Excellence and CSR categories

Change.org, the world’s largest tech platform for social change, today announced their recognition as a finalist for Fast Company’s 2022 World Changing Company of the Year. This prestigious honor is part of Fast Company’s annual World Changing Ideas Awards, which honors products, concepts, companies, policies, and designs that are driving change, tackling issues from public health crises to climate change to inequality, and pursuing innovation for the good of society and the planet.

Change.org accepts this honor along with the additional honor of being named a finalist in the Employee Size: Midsize (100–999 employees) category. The organization is also receiving an honorable mention for the Change.org Racial Justice Fund in the General Excellence and Corporate Social Responsibility categories following its distribution of 5 million dollars in funding to Black-led organizations across the United States and abroad to empower African-American communities.

“Change.org was founded on a vision of using cutting edge technology to make collective action more accessible and more effective than ever before,” said Nick Allardice, CEO of Change.org. “Recognition by Fast Company as a finalist for the 2022 World Changing Company of the Year is an incredible honor — but the true champions are the tens of millions of people using Change.org every month to make a difference and improve their communities. We’re honored to help lift them up.”

Since Change.org launched in 2007, approximately half a billion users from around the world have come to the platform, starting more than 4 million petitions to address the world’s most pressing political, societal and economic issues. From the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, to the veteran suicide crisis in Australia to achieving Juneteenth National Holiday legislation in the United States, fighting the burning of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and ending the Tampon Tax in Great Britain, Change.org has been a quiet but powerful force behind the most compelling globally recognized campaigns and most passionate activists in the world.

“We are consistently inspired by the novelty and creativity that people are applying to solve some of our society’s most pressing problems, from shelter to the climate crisis. Fast Company relishes its role in amplifying important, innovative work to address big challenges,” says David Lidsky, interim editor-in-chief of Fast Company. “Our journalists have identified some of the most ingenious initiatives to launch since the start of 2021, which we hope will both have a meaningful impact and lead others to join in being part of the solution.”

The World Changing Ideas Awards showcase 39 winners, 350 finalists, and more than 600 honorable mentions — with climate, social justice, and AI and data among the most popular categories. A panel of eminent Fast Company editors and reporters selected winners and finalists from a pool of more than 2,997 entries across transportation, education, food, politics, technology, health, social justice, climate, nature, water, workplace and more. Now in its sixth year, the 2022 awards feature entries from across the globe, from Switzerland to Hong Kong to Australia. The full list of winners, finalists and honorees will be included in the Fast Company’s Summer 2022 issue on newsstands May 10, 2022.

The Fast Company World Changing Company of the Year recognition follows Change.org’s historic transition to a nonprofit-owned governance structure that establishes the permanent independence of the platform and secures the long-term stewardship of the organization as a digital public utility committed to the public interest. This new structure also positions the organization for its next phase of growth: from a single product company focused on petitions to a civic infrastructure platform that empowers people everywhere to use their voice, money, and time to build healthier, more participatory and responsive societies.

About Fast Company
Fast Company is the world’s leading business media brand, with an editorial focus on innovation in technology, leadership, world changing ideas, creativity, and design. Written for and about the most progressive business leaders, Fast Company inspires readers to think expansively, lead with purpose, embrace change, and shape the future of business.

About the World Changing Ideas Awards
World Changing Ideas is one of Fast Company’s major annual awards programs and is focused on social good, seeking to elevate finished products and brave concepts that make the world better. A panel of judges from across sectors choose winners, finalists, and honorable mentions based on feasibility and the potential for impact. With the goals of awarding ingenuity and fostering innovation, Fast Company draws attention to ideas with great potential and helps them expand their reach to inspire more people to start working on solving the problems that affect us all.

About Change.org
Change.org is the world’s largest tech platform for people-powered, social change. More than half a billion people across 196 countries use our technology-driven petition and campaign tools to speak up on issues they’re passionate about. Approximately 70,000 petitions are created and supported on our platform every month, with 1.5 million new people joining our global network of users every week. People on Change.org have powered tens of thousands of campaign victories worldwide, and more are winning every week.

Every day, our users collaborate to organize on local, national and global issues; hold corporations to account; and demand action from decision makers at the highest levels of government and business. Our platform is free to use, open to all, and completely independent because it’s funded by the people who use it. Our independence makes us a trusted resource for decision makers, who turn to the platform to hear from and respond to the communities they represent.

The nonprofit Change.org Foundation oversees both the Change.org Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), a wholly owned corporate subsidiary focused on technology, innovation and growth; and the Change.org charitable programs focused on empowering the most marginalized people and communities globally. This hybrid structure of two mutually supporting organizations enables us to combine the ambition and growth trajectory of a tech company with the mission-focused stewardship of a nonprofit.

Change.org is committed to providing the tools, resources and support needed to empower anyone, anywhere to create the change they want to see in the world.

Related Links

• 19 midsize companies making the world a better place
• These 39 companies are doing corporate social responsibility right
• Join Change.org and work with the best who want to be great while doing good!
• Change.org Racial Justice Fund
• Change.org Foundation

World’s largest tech platform for social change also named finalist as Employee Size: Midsize and receives Honorable Mention for Racial Justice Fund in General Excellence and CSR categories

Change.org, the world’s largest tech platform for social change, today announced their recognition as a finalist for Fast Company’s 2022 World Changing Company of the Year. This prestigious honor is part of Fast Company’s annual World Changing Ideas Awards, which honors products, concepts, companies, policies, and designs that are driving change, tackling issues from public health crises to climate change to inequality, and pursuing innovation for the good of society and the planet.

Change.org accepts this honor along with the additional honor of being named a finalist in the Employee Size: Midsize (100–999 employees) category. The organization is also receiving an honorable mention for the Change.org Racial Justice Fund in the General Excellence and Corporate Social Responsibility categories following its distribution of 5 million dollars in funding to Black-led organizations across the United States and abroad to empower African-American communities.

“Change.org was founded on a vision of using cutting edge technology to make collective action more accessible and more effective than ever before,” said Nick Allardice, CEO of Change.org. “Recognition by Fast Company as a finalist for the 2022 World Changing Company of the Year is an incredible honor — but the true champions are the tens of millions of people using Change.org every month to make a difference and improve their communities. We’re honored to help lift them up.”

Since Change.org launched in 2007, approximately half a billion users from around the world have come to the platform, starting more than 4 million petitions to address the world’s most pressing political, societal and economic issues. From the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, to the veteran suicide crisis in Australia to achieving Juneteenth National Holiday legislation in the United States, fighting the burning of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil and ending the Tampon Tax in Great Britain, Change.org has been a quiet but powerful force behind the most compelling globally recognized campaigns and most passionate activists in the world.

“We are consistently inspired by the novelty and creativity that people are applying to solve some of our society’s most pressing problems, from shelter to the climate crisis. Fast Company relishes its role in amplifying important, innovative work to address big challenges,” says David Lidsky, interim editor-in-chief of Fast Company. “Our journalists have identified some of the most ingenious initiatives to launch since the start of 2021, which we hope will both have a meaningful impact and lead others to join in being part of the solution.”

The World Changing Ideas Awards showcase 39 winners, 350 finalists, and more than 600 honorable mentions — with climate, social justice, and AI and data among the most popular categories. A panel of eminent Fast Company editors and reporters selected winners and finalists from a pool of more than 2,997 entries across transportation, education, food, politics, technology, health, social justice, climate, nature, water, workplace and more. Now in its sixth year, the 2022 awards feature entries from across the globe, from Switzerland to Hong Kong to Australia. The full list of winners, finalists and honorees will be included in the Fast Company’s Summer 2022 issue on newsstands May 10, 2022.

The Fast Company World Changing Company of the Year recognition follows Change.org’s historic transition to a nonprofit-owned governance structure that establishes the permanent independence of the platform and secures the long-term stewardship of the organization as a digital public utility committed to the public interest. This new structure also positions the organization for its next phase of growth: from a single product company focused on petitions to a civic infrastructure platform that empowers people everywhere to use their voice, money, and time to build healthier, more participatory and responsive societies.

About Fast Company
Fast Company is the world’s leading business media brand, with an editorial focus on innovation in technology, leadership, world changing ideas, creativity, and design. Written for and about the most progressive business leaders, Fast Company inspires readers to think expansively, lead with purpose, embrace change, and shape the future of business.

About the World Changing Ideas Awards
World Changing Ideas is one of Fast Company’s major annual awards programs and is focused on social good, seeking to elevate finished products and brave concepts that make the world better. A panel of judges from across sectors choose winners, finalists, and honorable mentions based on feasibility and the potential for impact. With the goals of awarding ingenuity and fostering innovation, Fast Company draws attention to ideas with great potential and helps them expand their reach to inspire more people to start working on solving the problems that affect us all.

About Change.org
Change.org is the world’s largest tech platform for people-powered, social change. More than half a billion people across 196 countries use our technology-driven petition and campaign tools to speak up on issues they’re passionate about. Approximately 70,000 petitions are created and supported on our platform every month, with 1.5 million new people joining our global network of users every week. People on Change.org have powered tens of thousands of campaign victories worldwide, and more are winning every week.

Every day, our users collaborate to organize on local, national and global issues; hold corporations to account; and demand action from decision makers at the highest levels of government and business. Our platform is free to use, open to all, and completely independent because it’s funded by the people who use it. Our independence makes us a trusted resource for decision makers, who turn to the platform to hear from and respond to the communities they represent.

The nonprofit Change.org Foundation oversees both the Change.org Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), a wholly owned corporate subsidiary focused on technology, innovation and growth; and the Change.org charitable programs focused on empowering the most marginalized people and communities globally. This hybrid structure of two mutually supporting organizations enables us to combine the ambition and growth trajectory of a tech company with the mission-focused stewardship of a nonprofit.

Change.org is committed to providing the tools, resources and support needed to empower anyone, anywhere to create the change they want to see in the world.

Related Links

• 19 midsize companies making the world a better place
• These 39 companies are doing corporate social responsibility right
• Join Change.org and work with the best who want to be great while doing good!
• Change.org Racial Justice Fund
• Change.org Foundation

Change.org Named Finalist as Fast Company 2022 World Changing Ideas Company of the Year was originally published in Change.org on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Today, Change.org announced two executive leadership team appointments designed to take the world’s largest tech platform for social change into its next phase of growth. John Yurcisin is joining as the organization’s Chief Product Officer and Erika Warren is joining as the new Head of Growth. Both recognized product leaders, Yurcisin and Warren will partner with the Change.org executive team to expand the organization from a single product company focused on petitions to a civic infrastructure platform, scaling the technology platform’s capacity to empower people everywhere to use their voice, money, and time to build healthier, more participatory and responsive societies.

“We’re at a pivotal point as a company that has scaled its reach across 196 countries to serve more than half a billion users. To continue to meet the demand, we need to ensure the best leadership is in place for driving our incredibly talented and motivated product team toward achieving their ambitions for the platform,” said Nick Allardice, CEO of Change.org. “We have more strategic hires planned throughout the year that will further up level our ambitious teams as we remain laser focused on increasing global impact through user-centric technology expansion.”

As Chief Product Officer, Yurcisin, formerly General Manager across multiple Amazon businesses, will define Change.org’s long term product direction, define its overall product architecture in partnership with other functions and ensure the success of new high impact initiatives. He will also be responsible for the organization’s product and go-to-market functions, including Product Management, User Experience, Growth, Marketing, Analytics and Program Management.

“I’m both humbled and thrilled by this opportunity as it presents a compelling challenge for me both personally and professionally,” said Yurcisin. “I am excited by the Change.org technology platform and its ability to deliver solutions to help billions of people around the world advance very real, sometimes life changing, societal issues.”

Warren joins the team as the Head of Growth, leading product and promotional channels to maximize key metric performance. As a user and membership funded organization, this role will help Change.org continue to offer free services to billions of users, including those in the most marginalized communities. This role exemplifies the organization’s commitment to building to a clear and ethical path to growth solutions, while ensuring user and member contributions are maximized in order to fuel the greatest sustainable impact for the estimated 70,000+ causes and campaigns supported by the site each month.

“I’m incredibly excited to be a part of the next phase of growth, and to increase the massive impact the organization has across the globe,” said Warren. “Change.org is one of the most important social impact organizations of modern times. To be chartered with helping more people create and participate in activism is compelling. I am excited and proud to join an excellent team doing such purposeful work.”

Under this new product team leadership and in collaboration with the Change.org engineering team lead by CTO Elaine Zhou, Change.org plans to continue its platform enhancement strategy with a focus on modern infrastructure centered around big data and user-centric product expansion. These expansions will serve to sustain and scale a platform through which people can access digital tools, human-powered services and information to achieve institutional civic change.

About Change.org

Change.org is the world’s largest tech platform for people-powered, social change. More than half a billion people across more than 196 countries use our technology-driven petition and campaign tools to speak up on issues they’re passionate about. Approximately 70,000 petitions are created and supported on our platform every month, with 1.7 million new people joining our global network of users every week. People on Change.org have powered tens of thousands of campaign victories worldwide, and more are winning every week.

Every day, our users collaborate to organize on local, national and global issues; hold corporations to account; and demand action from decision makers at the highest levels of government and business. Our platform is free to use, open to all, and completely independent because it’s funded by the people who use it. Our independence makes us a trusted resource for decision makers, who turn to the platform to hear from and respond to the communities they represent.

The nonprofit Change.org Foundation oversees both the Change.org Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), a wholly owned corporate subsidiary focused on technology, innovation and growth; and the Change.org charitable programs focused on empowering the most marginalized people and communities globally. This hybrid structure of two mutually supporting organizations enables us to combine the ambition and growth trajectory of a tech company with the mission-focused stewardship of a nonprofit.

As an organization, Change.org is committed to providing the tools, resources and support needed to empower anyone, anywhere to create the change they want to see in the world.

Roughly half of the U.S. population came to Change.org to make a difference in 2021. Our users started 791,896 petitions that collected over 460 million signatures.

Thousands of petition starters achieved victories for individuals and entire communities, driving change both locally and on the national scale.

They rallied to save the innocent from execution, to get them released after decades served for wrongful convictions, and to hold law enforcement agents accountable.

They stood up for trans youth rights, fought discriminatory dress codes in schools, and made sure teachers and families could weather the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thanks to our members, we were able to support many of these remarkable people on their journeys.

We helped them develop campaign strategies, secure media coverage, organize protests, and get in touch with the people in power.

We launched a racial justice fund to empower communities of color across the country.

And we won’t stop here.

This year, we’ll continue to evolve the world’s largest nonprofit-owned tech platform for social change, and expand the support and guidance we offer to everyday people looking for the most impactful ways to advance important causes: demanding justice for victims of sexual assault, ensuring fair wages, improving animal welfare, keeping our communities healthy, and bringing more light into our lives.

Now is the time to use your voice. Sign or share a petition on a cause you care about, and go from passive observer to advocate. Or, start your own petition today. You have the power to make things better.

What will you change in 2022? Check out our 2021 highlights video for inspiration!

We are excited to announce that through the generosity of donations of equity from more than 50 of our investors, led by Reid Hoffman and including Bill Gates, Sir Richard Branson, Ray Dalio, Evan Williams, Jerry Yang, Sam Altman, and Arianna Huffington, Change.org is transitioning to 100% nonprofit ownership by the Change.org Foundation.

This unprecedented action establishes Change.org as the world’s largest nonprofit-owned tech platform for social change.

Over the past decade, more than 450 million people have come to rely on Change.org as a platform to raise their voice on issues they care about. As digital services become more integrated into people’s lives, they are becoming the new essential public services — and it’s because of this increasing power that we’ve worked to ensure Change.org continues to be committed to and aligned with the public interest as we scale.

The new nonprofit ownership and governance structure we are announcing today achieves this alignment by establishing the permanent independence of our platform and our legal responsibility to our mission of empowering people everywhere to create the change they want to see.

This secures the long-term stewardship of Change.org as a digital public utility committed to the public interest.

This new structure also positions us for our next phase of growth: from a single product company focused on petitions to a civic infrastructure platform that empowers people everywhere to use their voice, money, and time to build healthier, more participatory and responsive democratic societies.

Building an essential public service, funded by our users

We have always sought to build an important public service using the best of consumer technology — and over the past few years, we’ve seen an explosion of growth.

People now use Change.org in 196 countries, and in some countries usage is close to the number of total voters in elections. In the United States 54% of the public uses Change.org, in the UK it’s 56%, and in Spain it’s 52%.

This growth has been driven by the 70,000+ campaigns that are now launched on our platform each month. While the most visible campaigns are national or global efforts that mobilize millions of people, the majority are local campaigns making small changes with hundreds of signatures at a time.

To support and accelerate this increased usage, we have been heavily investing in tech-enabled expert support and mobilization:

• Expert Support at Scale: Leading campaigns to create real change is often hard. That’s why we have teams of experts providing advice, support and guidance to people leading campaigns — it’s like a personal trainer for activism, and 100 percent free. Since the start of Covid-19 we have scaled this service by more than 100x, and now provide support to 20,000 campaign starters every month.
• Technology for Mobilization: Finding the people who are interested in supporting a campaign can also be difficult. The Change.org technology platform combines easy and intuitive storytelling tools with a powerful machine learning and automation system that has helped campaign organizers reach an audience of 1.65 billion people on Change.org since the start of 2020, attracting 935 million signatures and 285,000 media articles.

To fund these free public services we’ve also innovated on our business model, and today we are fully and proudly funded by millions of our users. After years of work, we’ve successfully transitioned from an ad-based revenue model to a user-driven revenue model in which users can chip in money to promote and grow the campaigns they care about or become monthly members to make our platform free for everyone. Both of these products have a user satisfaction score of nearly 90, and by the end of 2019 we became financially self-sustaining from user-contributed revenue.

A hybrid structure to maximize our long-term impact

After reaching the critical milestone of financial sustainability, we started to consider how we could set up the organization to further scale our impact, particularly in the context of a declining public trust in tech companies.

As a platform focused on democratic empowerment, we have always worked to create an organizational structure that closely aligns our interests with our mission and the public interest. It’s why we’ve only raised money from mission-driven investors and why we were one of the first tech companies to become a Public Benefit Corporation. As we explored how to set up the organization for scaling our long-term impact, we looked at how we could deepen our alignment with our mission and the public trust in our platform.

After more than 18 months of work, we’re excited about having created a hybrid organizational structure that achieves two goals:

(1) Preserve our ability to continue to operate as a fast-moving and innovative tech company, and

(2) Ensure that this company and all of our activities are ultimately responsible to our mission and the public interest.

This hybrid structure enables us to combine the ambition and growth trajectory of a tech company with the mission-focused stewardship of a nonprofit.

Similar to organizations like Mozilla and The Guardian, we will now have a nonprofit governing board — The Change.org Foundation — which will oversee two mutually supporting organizations: (1) Change.org Public Benefit Corporation (PBC), a wholly owned corporate subsidiary, and (2) Change.org Programs, the charitable activities of the Foundation:

• Change.org PBC: Focused on building the technology products and services that can scale to support more than 1 billion users globally to raise their voice on the issues they care about. Change.org PBC will continue to run as a company focused on innovation and growth, governed by the non-profit Change.org Foundation.
• Change.org Programs: Focused on empowering the most marginalized people and communities globally. One of the risks in scaling a tech platform is that the most marginalized people and communities with least access to technology, resources and power are overlooked or harmed. We’ve designed a structure that aims to avoid this result by creating a dedicated team that focuses on empowering the least powerful people around the world to make the change they want to see.

The investors who have made this possible

The only way we could make this transition happen is with the unprecedented and generous support of our investors, who represent some of the world’s leading entrepreneurs, business visionaries, and philanthropists.

We’re deeply grateful for their support for this new structure, and want to thank the investors who have helped enable this transition by becoming founding donors of the new nonprofit-owned Change.org:

We want to particularly thank our lead investor, Reid Hoffman, without whose support and generosity Change.org would not be what it is today. When we faced our most challenging moment amidst a business model shift in 2017, Reid took the risk of personally investing $30m in Change.org, while pledging to donate any of the profits to charity. He has since helped turn around the organization financially and drive sustainable growth, and with the gift of all of his equity to the Change.org Foundation he is donating much more than his previous public pledge. We cannot thank him enough for what he has done for Change.org, our mission, and our users around the world.

In total, more than 90% of investor equity is being donated. We are also proudly part employee-owned, and in order to make Change.org 100% nonprofit-owned, the company is redeeming the remaining equity and retiring employee-owned options in a manner that ensures the continued financial health of the organization.

Leadership for our next phase of growth

We’re also making a number of leadership changes as part of this transition:

Executive Chair — Ben Rattray

Our founder, Ben Rattray, has led Change.org as CEO since the launch of the company in 2007. With this structural shift in our governance, Ben has decided that going forward he can best serve the organization by transitioning from CEO to Executive Chair of the new Change.org Foundation Board, supporting both Change.org PBC and Change.org Programs.

CEO, Change.org PBC — Nick Allardice

The Change.org PBC Board conducted an extensive CEO succession search that spanned over 6 months, and after interviewing many outstanding candidates, unanimously appointed Nick Allardice, former Chief Product Officer, to serve as permanent CEO of Change.org PBC.

Nick brings a rare combination of skills to the role as a seasoned technology executive, successful entrepreneur, and lifelong social movement campaigner. He has been a core leader at Change.org for 10 years, and has led many of the company’s most important advances. Prior to leading Change.org’s Product Development team, Nick spearheaded Change.org’s global growth and campaigns teams.

Before Change.org Nick co-founded Live Below the Line, an international digital fundraising platform that raised tens of millions of dollars for fighting poverty. He was part of the team responsible for some of the largest and most successful anti-extreme poverty campaigns in Australia’s history, and has served on the boards of a number of climate, poverty alleviation and care economy nonprofits.

Executive Director, Change.org Foundation — Preethi Herman

In 2016, we launched the Change.org Foundation to support nonprofit programs around the world that were high-impact and required philanthropic support. Change.org’s nonprofit activities now span more than a dozen countries and successfully support tens of millions of people thanks to a group of remarkable social entrepreneurs around the globe led by Preethi Herman, who has served as Global Executive Director. We are excited to say that Preethi has agreed to continue to lead Change.org Foundation as Executive Director in this new structure, leading all Programs among other responsibilities, and to continue as a member of the Change.org Foundation Board of Directors.

Board of Directors

Over the past few years we’ve been fortunate to have a highly engaged board committed to driving the organization’s financial sustainability and growth in impact, and we are deeply grateful to them for their guidance and support. As we transition to this new structure, we will be creating a newly expanded Change.org Foundation Board, and in the coming months will be announcing several new board members.

The first member of the new Change.org Foundation Board that we’re excited to announce is Regina Wallace-Jones. Regina has a rare background as a dual career professional in both the tech sector and in public service. She is the SVP of Product Engineering at Mindbody, the leading global wellness company, and has served as a tech executive at Facebook, eBay and Yahoo!. She was also elected to East Palo Alto City Council and recently completed her term in the capacity of Mayor of the city. Regina is the founding board president of StreetCode Academy, a patron of Black Girls Code, and board member for Women Who Code, and we feel lucky to have her leadership.

Hope for the future

As we look to the future, we simultaneously see immense challenges facing the communities we serve, and an extraordinary and increasing power that people have to address those challenges.

We consider ourselves lucky — we get to look across the dozens of countries where we have operations to see the tens of thousands of small and large ways people are working together to shape their institutions and communities for the better.

The way this happens is sometimes hard, messy, often too slow, and frequently set back. But the big picture story of people-power is not reflected in the despair-filled daily headlines. We are at a moment in time where people everywhere are more empowered, more connected, more capable and have more voice and agency on the issues and institutions that affect them than at any other time in human history.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, we’ve seen this again and again — from thousands of local campaigns to address school and essential worker safety, to millions of people supporting industries and workers decimated by the pandemic, to countless personal campaigns like the successful efforts to ensure the right of birthing mothers to be accompanied by their partners in hospitals. People are organizing together online when they couldn’t gather in-person, raising their voice, and shifting the policies of governments and businesses.

We believe this is just the beginning of what is possible, and hope you’ll join us (we’re hiring!) as we work together to build a digital public utility that can power the next era of change.

Ben, Nick & Preethi

Change.org is changing

These are the opening words from a video recapping our “organizational reset,” a process that Change.org began nearly a year ago to assess our shortcomings and what was needed to truly become a more impactful and equitable organization. Among other things, this several-week process, powered by a cross-functional set of staff-led committees, helped take forward a series of racial justice commitments we made in June 2020.

Today, one year later, we’d hoped to report that we’d made significant strides both in structuring our organization to be more diverse, equitable and inclusive, as well as in fighting racial inequality in the world. And while we have made progress, what we really want to share openly is that this journey is even harder and longer than anyone thought. Meaningful, non-performative change — the kind needed to undo what has been embedded in our society over the course of 400 plus long years — takes time. That makes for a painful journey for those who continue to be oppressed, underrepresented, and misunderstood in often very subtle and unseen ways.

Here are a few reflections from various group leaders on their experience during this process:

“As Black people, conversations about race, diversity, and inclusion are nearly impossible to not take personally. These aren’t objective concepts for us. And yet, we live in a world where not everyone is at the same stage in their understanding and empathy around these concepts. I wrote in a piece for Medium as a representative of our Black affinity and resource group, Change.Noire, that said allyship is a journey, not a destination, and I still believe that. Doing this work takes honesty, humility, and self-awareness. I give grace to those who are on a journey of greater self-awareness and on the path to becoming an agent of change. As we find our way as an organization, Change.Noire and similar groups will continue to keep diversity and inclusion top of mind, holding our leaders accountable and pushing Change.org further to create a true culture of equity and inclusion.” — Ansa Edim, Change.Noire

“As a white member of staff, much of my journey has been about reckoning with the multitude of ways that my privilege and the privilege of white people around me have shaped the policies and practices of the organization. Interrogating how that has affected my colleagues of color, past and present, was challenging and painful. But it has also been incredibly enlightening, and I’m grateful for the many ways we’ve grown as an organization since then. We paused ongoing big initiatives in order to focus hundreds of hours of team time on some of the most difficult questions we face around our strategy, our policies, and our approach to equity and inclusion. The work to deliver on our commitments is ongoing. We continue to fall short in some areas, and we need to be dedicated to learning from those ongoing challenges, not giving up when we face them. I believe this to be true for Change.org, and in my own journey of allyship.” — Melissa Benjamin, Reset Committees

“Many of us naturally experienced a range of overwhelming emotions: burdened by lived experience, excited to take concrete action, and anxious about whether we could achieve real impact, to name a few. The greatest challenge we faced as an organization in this last year was striking the balance between the desire for immediate action and the need to take the time and space required to interrogate the best way forward in the pursuit of systemic change. With so many efforts and conversations in motion at once, we struggled to discern top organizational priorities. There was so much energy and interest to make an impact in the ways that many staff felt were necessary. It was hard to say no. We didn’t want to be perfect, but we wanted to be effective. Through this experience, we learned a lot that informs our work today.” — Justin Lyons, DEI Council

“Revisiting internal systems and processes through the lens of equity allowed us to meaningfully interrogate our roles in perpetuating systems that lead to inequality. We were also able to identify the ways in which we had become accustomed to organizing ourselves around the comfort of the dominant group at the expense of the safety and advancement of non-dominant groups. Transparency is key to equitable systems, particularly considering that people in power default to hiring those with whom they have chemistry and are comfortable with. If teams are relying on the systems of hiring and advancement that aren’t rooted squarely in equity, then naturally that system is going to default to results that are homogenous.” — Lindsay Stuiber, Anti-Racism/Anti-Oppression Committee

“Last year, as we watched a movement for racial justice grow across the United States and around the world, we asked tough questions internally about who we are as an organization and how we could best support and affirm the work of the countless Black people pushing for justice and change. From that, the Racial Justice Fund was born, which we hope will help to set a new precedent for ourselves and similar organizations — one that embraces philanthropy and movement building in a way that is impactful, restorative, and grounded in justice.” — Rashawn Davis, Racial Justice Fund

Together, we’ve learned a number of things, including:

1. Transformational change of this nature requires a long-term investment in unlearning ingrained behaviors in order to see consistent results over time;
2. The complexity and depth of engagement required to make meaningful progress on this work means it can be difficult to prioritize while still managing other aspects of our core business operations — despite being a critical aspect of our culture AND our business success;
3. This work is emotionally taxing, tiring, frustrating, and sometimes even scary. Making meaningful progress requires everyone to be on board and engaged;
4. It’s challenging to feel satisfaction in the value of partial progress and to set collective expectations around what success actually looks like along this complex journey;
5. Small wins matter on the journey to big, transformational change, although the progress we’ve made is still just the beginning of so much more work to be done.

I’m grateful for the voices, passion and commitment of everyone on the Change.org team. As we continue on our internal journey to make our organization better, we’re also working hard to have a positive impact at a grassroots level through our Racial Justice Fund: a proud pledge to move $6 million dollars into the hands of Black people on the ground who are leading the ongoing fight for justice. To date, we have moved more than $2.3 million to organizers and Black-led organizations making racial justice impact through education, criminal justice reform and advocacy.

We understand that it is not enough to simply move money, but that we also need to form lasting relationships with the organizations we support. To do this, we partnered with North Star Fund — a New York-based community foundation that has a long history of prioritizing the voices of those impacted and those leading the work.

North Star Fund has helped us design a selection process to identify the right funding recipients. It’s a process that incorporates the voices of a diverse group of Change.org staff and the voices of incredible petition starters like Cece Jones-Davis and Dr. Daihnia Dunkley, who are at the heart of what we do here at Change.org.

Our work through the Racial Justice fund touches just one of the commitments we’ve been working toward. Here’s a quick glance at where we are today against each of the seven commitments we outlined in 2020:

We’ve made important progress. But there’s more to do. We’ve had some really hard conversations over the last year. But it has led us to a place where we more clearly see the changes we need to make, not just out in the world, but within ourselves. Along the way, we’ve opened wounds and in some cases unintentionally created new ones. We hope we’ll soon be able to look back and say our most difficult moments in this process were all in service of our shared goal — to build an equitable organization truly capable of achieving our mission to empower people everywhere to create the change they want to see.

We will continue to bring you along on this journey with us, sharing updates on both our progress and our setbacks. Thank you for holding us accountable.

Nick Allardice, Acting CEO

Change.org

W.E.B. Du Bois once said, “The most important thing to remember is this: to be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.”

This quote came to my scattered mind during a sleepless night in late May after the murder of George Floyd. As the Senior Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at Change.org, I felt the need to put the company (including myself) on notice. I sent an email to the entire staff later that day.

In my opinion, we weren’t doing close to enough to meet our social responsibility as a tech platform and social change organization to fight systemic racism and oppression.

I took stock of where we had failed and what we needed to do to reach the expectations that I — and many others — hold of Change.org. And I once again reminded everyone that we needed to do that work together as a team. It couldn’t rest squarely on my shoulders.

Change.org began to put the DEI building blocks in place in 2018 immediately after I transitioned into a Chief of Staff role. We started by creating a cultural embrace of the work throughout the organization. I applied the best practices learned in my former role as a campaigner: grow an army of supporters, take them on a journey, push when you have the momentum, and advocate for concrete changes from key decision-makers.

Fast forward three years, we have achieved so much:

• A restructured recruiting process that prioritized an equitable and inclusive experience
• A redesigned onboarding program to better ensure a sense of belonging and success
• An increase of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color representation on staff
• The creation and uplifting of staff affinity and employee resource groups
• Regular DEI programming and training for staff
• Gender pay equity
• A DEI Leadership Council to help push the work forward

Despite this progress, we — like many others — faced the sobering reality that it wasn’t enough this past June. In response, we committed all staff time and energy to what we called an “organizational reset.” We charted a vision and plan for integrating anti-racism, anti-oppression practices into our operations and assessed our leadership structure, decision-making practices, impact strategy, and business model through an equity lens. The process raised our collective consciousness about the ways in which our structures, process and systems led to inequitable outcomes. It engaged the entire organization in existential questions that we’re still wrestling with today.

From this process, I wanted to share major lessons that we’ve learned about how to effectively advance DEI and racial equity work:

Find your conviction

Check in with your organization’s soul and interrogate its pursuit of justice. Is the current direction of the work in alignment with your core values? Do you need to redefine your values? Assess where your systems, structures, and policies are inconsistent with those values. Clearly identify and articulate the boundaries that will inform your actions when facing hard tradeoffs.

Invest immediately

The status quo is clearly not working for everyone. Inequitable outcomes cannot and will not materially change without smart and substantial investment. Don’t do the bare minimum. Accept that real loss — in power, privilege, comfort or revenue — is necessary to see progress toward social justice. Act swiftly once acceptance is achieved.

Start smart

DEI was not initially established as core to our operations at Change.org — a common issue. Prioritizing diversity, equity and inclusion happens when real accountability is in place. If you’re overwhelmed by the daunting task ahead of you, start with easy wins: set a clear vision, publicly communicate realistic goals and build from your current strengths.

The work never stops

Talking is not doing, especially from senior leaders. The results of your team’s actions (or inaction) represent your true commitments. Treat the work with the same gravity that you would a crisis — because many people (on your team and in marginalized communities) live in constant turmoil in part due to your continued inaction. Remain persistent and resilient.

Looking back over the last few years, we’ve made significant strides toward being a truly multicultural organization that contributes to a more equitable world. There continues to be real energy on staff for the personal growth required to be able to consistently impact this work. That’s important because those in my position can only take it so far. Everyone needs to be actively involved if we’re going to make any kind of necessary and material change.

Justin Lyons is the Senior Director of People and Inclusion at Change.org. He launched the organization’s first diversity, equity, and inclusion program in 2018 and leads these growing efforts today, along with the company’s staff connection initiatives globally and lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Written by Molly Dorozenski, Managing Campaigns Director at Change.org

Being open is at the core of who we are at Change.org, and on any given day, tens of thousands of new petitions are started on the platform. People come to Change.org to advocate for their needs, their wants, and their community. Their petitions can be progressive, conservative, silly, smart, funny, or sad. One day we might see a massive petition asking for the ending of Game of Thrones to be rewritten, and another day a mother fighting to clean up Santa Susana’s nuclear test site because her daughter has cancer.

Openness means that everyone has the ability to speak up about the issues they care about, regardless of their background, experience, or affiliations. It means that our platform is a public square for the many and diverse views we each hold in society. But sometimes, finding the balance between making space for different perspectives and safe for all users is a challenge.

We’ve spent over a decade trying to find that balance, iterating and learning as we go. Most recently, I facilitated a bottoms-up, staff-led process of deeply examining our policies, and who they may disproportionately impact.

To start, we looked at a variety of frameworks for how to think fairly about the limits of openness that created more or fewer guidelines for our petition starters. We explored:

• Basing our policy on UN-described human rights.
• Basing our policy on anti-racism and anti-oppression
• Basing our policy on harm reduction
• Being maximally open and being radically transparent with any rules that were necessary

We focused on basing our policy on harm reduction. We asked ourselves, Could a platform be open while focusing on the reduction of harm? In principle, it seems great, but harm itself can be political. For example, when we addressed the topic of schools reopening during the global COVID-19 pandemic, we see the potential for harm on both sides of the argument. On one side, reopening schools could unnecessarily expose children to COVID-19, and on the other side of the argument, for many children, school is a safe and secure space away from dangers and hunger at home. Around the world, one side was labeled “conservative” and the other “progressive” and yet there were conservative and progressive arguments on both sides. In this case, we chose to allow both types of petitions on the platform to find support for their point of view.

With all frameworks, we repeatedly ran into situations where people’s rights conflicted. Sometimes it was very clear that some rights should be held as more important than other rights. Physical safety is more important than comfort, for example.

We were surprised though, that most situations were much more nuanced. Through an anti-racist lens, affordable healthcare helps narrow the gap in insurance coverage for People of Color. So does that mean we wouldn’t allow a petition that said the Affordable Care Act in the US made insurance coverage unaffordable for some families? Determination of harm quickly becomes political, and it’s easy to see that a public debate about the merits of plans would be good for the country.

Ultimately we found that a decision-making matrix could help us determine if the harm created by a petition was greater than the positives for freedom of expression and public interest. We’re still refining it, but we hope it will let us maximize the benefits of openness and minimize the harm that can come from petitions on the site.

Polarization

Increasingly, another concern with being an open platform is polarization. Are people actually having the public debate we are giving them space to have? If our algorithm serves people petitions similar to ones they’ve already signed, are we recreating their echo chamber for them? On the other hand, if we give people petitions that they strongly disagree with, will they simply become more entrenched in their existing opinions? Will they learn about other arguments, or will we unintentionally trigger them?

In a context where the left and right increasingly experience different realities and understandings of truth, what can we do to foster healthy and safe public debate?

Judging the worth of an argument by its loudest supporters can push people to extremes. We have a lot of work to do to figure out how to help expose people to new ideas without setting everything up as a binary choice when it’s possible (in many cases) that the issue is more nuanced.

Globalization

Change.org is a global company, and the decisions we make on policy and openness have far-reaching impacts. Operating globally means that we need to be aware of cultural differences between countries and listen carefully to the debate and consider how we can contribute positively. Those political contexts help determine the level of safety in speaking truth to power.

Our approach thus far, unintentionally, has been to optimize the platform for countries that have the most rights (or the most freedom). But doing the opposite — optimizing for the countries that have the least rights (or the least freedom) — is how we can help the most oppressed and create a safe space for them to make change.

Balance

One of our early questions as a group of staff grappling with these questions was how we could be as open and as safe as possible. This turns into a bit of a knot if you follow the logic too far. If you are maximally open (in the sense that you don’t restrict any content), you can create a problem where the site is most welcoming to dominant groups, and it alienates people from non-dominant groups who are made to feel unsafe on a platform without ‘rules’.

But if you are maximally safe (in the sense that you are restrictive on all content that might make people feel unsafe) you are not open because people are restricted in what petitions they can start and don’t feel empowered to even try. So: being too open is not open at all, and being too safe is not open at all either.

The only real solution to this problem is finding a balance, which we are continually adjusting. Platforms like ours benefit from reasonable guidelines that people can follow, and efforts to engage experts, both in different locations and with different identities.

We need to be open in our policy development and listen to differing points of view, and we need to be respectful of all identities and cultures — especially considering the impact of oppressed peoples in such discussions. And we need to constantly grow and change as the world around us grows and changes.

Molly Dorozenski is a Managing Campaigns Director at Change.org and led a reevaluation of Change.org’s approach to openness. She has worked in strategy and communications at Change.org and Greenpeace. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Mark and enjoys writing, making art, and cooking.