Most Americans—more than 80%—don’t think that their elected officials care what they have to say. Change.org has been rebuilding its own platform to try to change that.
The platform, founded in 2007, is best known for campaigns that have gone viral nationally, like a petition to get justice for George Floyd in 2020 that got nearly 20 million signatures. Of course, most petitions don’t have that kind of audience. But you don’t need millions of people to make change happen, and over the last two years, Change.org has rebuilt its tools to connect people with decision-makers in their own community.
“The core problem we’re trying to solve is that people just feel unheard,” says Steve Dziedzic, who was named the organization’s new president today. “They don’t think their voice matters anymore in our democracy.”
The site now has “an explicit local focus,” says Dziedzic, who has been leading the platform’s redesign, previously as chief product officer. “That’s a big shift for the organization.” There are practical reasons for this: People care most about local issues, and local petitions are also the most likely to succeed. Even if someone wants to work on a national problem like gun control, he says, it makes the most sense to start with a local law and then expand.
When someone comes to the platform now, it helps shape the message to have the best chance of persuading a local decision-maker to take action. An AI “petition writer” tool on the site starts by asking someone for their story. It helps combine that with a logical argument for the mayor or whoever else you’re asking for change. (Dziedzic, who previously founded a couples’ therapy app that was acquired by Talkspace, says that writing a good petition has similarities with couples’ therapy; it helps to be able to dispassionately talk about what you need.) The company is investing around $100 million to rebuild its platform and add AI.
If someone wants their city to build a bike lane, for example, and they’re focusing on safety and sustainability, the tool could potentially also suggest economic arguments to help convince a mayor that taking away parking spaces won’t harm local businesses.
If someone already posted a rant on TikTok, they can paste a link to that video and the tool will use it to automatically draft a petition. TikTok or Instagram aren’t good places to reach local officials, Dziedzic says, because a mayor can’t tell how many of the people liking a post are actually constituents; Change.org now uses addresses to verify constituents, so city officials get an important signal of when they need to be paying attention. The company also uses a tool to scan social media for complaints that could turn into successful petitions, and the team reaches out to invite new users to participate.
After someone creates a petition, the platform also helps find people who are likely to want to sign. It suggests related subreddits, Facebook groups, and other places to find people who’ve rallied behind the issue in the past. Dziedzic says the feature helps increase the number of signatures by 20%. “Unless you have at least 100 signatures, it’s just really not going to matter to the mayor, unfortunately—they need to know that there’s a nontrivial amount of constituents who care about this,” says Dziedzic. Everyone who signs can upload their own video. The site also helps petitioners pitch local media, since that’s another important way to get local officials to care.
Critically, it also looks up the right decision-maker to target, whether you’re trying to make changes in a park or block a data center. Then it tries to broker a meeting. If a city council meeting is the right venue, it lets you know when the next meeting is happening. You can use the platform to reach out to everyone who’s signed and invite them to attend the meeting too. “It’s starting digitally, but then it ends up in the physical world, helping shape real community,” says Dziedzic.
In the past, some critics have called out petitions as a form of slacktivism; some studies have suggested that when someone signs a petition, they’re less likely to take other, potentially more meaningful actions later. But Change.org’s new structure is geared to nudging people to do more.
The tools are helping users get results. In one recent campaign that started as a TikTok video, a Maryland resident created a petition asking the county for a moratorium on new development until residents could get more data about the impacts. More than 10,000 people signed, and the moratorium is now in place. (So far this year, the platform has hosted more than 1,800 petitions about data centers, and more than 3 million people have signed.)
Others have recently used the platform to remove Flock cameras, make intersections safer, and fight for relief from a $3,332 electric bill, among thousands of other things.
The company wants to help society collectively make wise decisions, Dziedzic says, and that could eventually mean going beyond petitions alone—for example, helping decision-makers hear as much as possible from people on both sides of an issue, rather than only the point of view of someone who launches a petition. For now, though, the focus is more straightforward.
“People want to be able to shape their communities, where their loved ones are, where they do life,” says Dziedzic. “By helping people shape their communities in connection with their elected officials, we think that is the shot—that’s my biggest hypothesis for people believing their voice matters again. And it’s most practical, because the local petitions are also the most likely to win.”