Change.org launched in 2007 as a social networking site for non-profits. Today, the site looks quite a bit different and has morphed into a petition platform that wants to empower activists around the world through what it calls “people-powered campaigns.” While the site only grew rather slowly in its early years, it’s on a tear now. According to Change.org’s own data, the site just passed 10 million users and is now growing by 2 million members per month. That’s quite a difference from last October, when the site was only growing by about 300,000 members per month. This makes Change.org the fastest-growing site of its kind. → Read More
The financial crisis in world markets over the past few weeks has been a real eye-opener, but even those of us who have seen our stock portfolios decline by 30 percent or more don’t have much to complain about. It could be worse. It could be a lot worse. A third of the world’s population lives in poverty, and 20 percent lives in extreme poverty, meaning they are always hungry.
What can you do? How about making a microloan of a $20, $50, or $100 to an entrepreneur in a poor country? Today is Blog Action Day, with blogs around the world making a concerted effort to raise awareness about global poverty and ways to fight it. What we’ve decided to do is to start a TechCrunch lending team at Kiva.org. Anyone can join. → Read More
Change.org uses social networking to help social causes. The site already has it’s own network for linking volunteers to causes and voters to politicians. Now they’ve also launched a new Ning-like DIY white-label social network for non-profits. For the launch, they’ve already partnered with 50 non-profits, like CARE, Greenpeace, and Amnesty International. Any other non-profit can launch their own network as well, as long as you have a government approved tax ID number. You can sign up for one here. Like Ning, non-profit pages are part of their overall network and can be redesigned with a variety of modules. Any member of Change.org can become a member of these networks. They have modules for all an organization’s main needs: events, fund raising, forums, blogs, members, and posting photos/video. I really like how Change.org is evolving overall. The site is about connecting people passionate about a particular cause and not engaging in a shouting match or symbolic gestures of online support. Other useful services for non-profit work include Wild Apricot, Idealist.org, Tree Nation, and Kevin Bacon’s Six Degrees. CrunchBase Information Change.org Ning Information provided by CrunchBase → Read More
We covered the social activist community Change.org when they first launched back in February. The site is one of a few philanthropic startups tailoring the latest web features for non-profits and politics. It is a social networking site that serves as a resource for researching and organizing groups around social and political causes, called “Changes”. Changes are a place for members to post related images, videos, blog posts, and donate time or money to the relevant nonprofits. Tonight, Change.org is launching an ambitious version 2.0 that expands beyond nonprofits and into political fundraising and lobbying. Founder Ben Rattray says politicians are expected to raise over $3 billion in this election cycle, with about half of that spent on fund raising (running total here). He says nonprofits receive donations upwards of $250 billion a year, with $50 billion of that money spent on chasing down a donors. Change.org wants to lower those fund raising costs, counteract large donor’s “special interest” money, and help give a voice to the average Joe who can’t afford a $2,500 a plate dinner. To accomplish this, Change.org has effectively turned each “Change” group into a political action committee (PAC) by adding a database of politician profiles and some extra features to the “Change” groups. Now each group has the power to pool together a pot of money to donate to relevant charities or political candidates, as well as the power to lobby your representatives. Instead of only nominating one charity per group, members can now vote on who which charities or politicians can best enact the change they want. Any member of the group will be able to submit a candidate for the donation, but only people who donate to the group’s “piggy bank” ($10 min by credit) will be able to vote the candidates up or down the list. Donations can be raised through the main site or an embeddable widget. At the end of the month, all the money in the piggy bank will be divided between the top “n” donation candidate(s) (3 by default), minus a 1% management fee to sustain Change.org. If the money is raised for a political candidate, that candidate will get a check for the amount and their opponent will get slapped with a novelty check for the negative amount, just to let the competition know you mean business. Donations can also be conditional, such as donations to whoever → Read More
Nonprofit social networking site Change.org is launching this morning and hopes to change the way the average person or activist interacts with nonprofits. The site focuses on getting users to issues they care about – ending hunger, stopping global warming, etc. Users can sound off on issues, but the site also recommends that these users donate their time and money to the causes they support. Unlike other recent sites we’ve seen, Change.org doesn’t reek of smugness. The site consists of social networking’s usual suspects, profiles, friends, messaging, groups, and a personal blog. Groups, in this context, are called “changes” and are meant to join together like-minded people around social changes they feel passionate about. In private beta, groups have been formed around topics such as “Stop Global Warming” and “Save Net Neutrality“. Each group gets a comment thread and blog to chat on along with a photo gallery to post pictures or videos. The other half of the site is the nonprofits the users can organize around. They have already populated a database (powered by Guidestar) of over one million nonprofits, but I could only find 100 profiles through their search engine. Each of the profiled nonprofits has a bio, user reviews, photos, videos, and community blog. Users can befriend a nonprofit and let everyone else know by becoming a supporter of the organization. Each nonprofit also gets a project page, where they can ask members to donate money to fund special projects or just the general fund. Donations are either taken by credit card ($10 min) on the organization’s page, or can be solicited by individual Change.org users who write up a pitch highlighting why it’s important to give. All donations are redistributed to the respective nonprofits through JustGive.org. Change.org takes 1% of every dollar donated. Change also hopes to support its operations through promotional campaigns nonprofits would launch on the site. Members can also donate time instead of money by participating in the “Actions” page, which is a Google maps enabled classified listing of volunteer activities, resolutions, events in your zip code. Anyone, including the nonprofits can post to the list. The site has been a project for Ben Rattray over the past two years, joined by Stanford friend Mark Dimas and a supporting team of Darren Haas, Rajiv Gupta, and Adam Cheyer. Change.org is currently funded by friends and family. → Read More
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