Ben Rattray, CEO of Change.org. Josh Valcarcel/WIRED
The list of investors in petition site Change.org’s new $25 million funding round reads like a potted history of the internet industry, from Bill Gates and Arianna Huffington to the co-founders of Yahoo, Twitter, LinkedIn, and eBay.
Each one of these entrepreneurs has made a fortune by figuring out how to make something more accessible than it used to be: the personal computer, the web, mass media, commerce. But Change.org founder and CEO Ben Rattray argues that one of the most basic ironies of the internet is how it has so far failed to open up what is supposed to be the most participatory process of all.
“You’ve democratized all these industries, but you haven’t democratized democracy,” Rattray says.
Change.org represents Rattray’s attempt to channel the lessons taught by successful online businesses over the last 20 years into a medium that opens up the machinery of social change. “What the internet is about is becoming the best in the world at a single thing that you can scale over time,” he says.
Sharing Stories
With an additional $25 million, Rattray wants to scale Change.org to become more of what it already is. As a brand, the company has become fairly synonymous with online petition drives. Nearly 83 million people have signed or started a petition on the site, the company says, and the petitions they start go viral in social media feeds.
That virality is the key to Change.org’s strategy. Instead of seeking signatures for abstract, partisan positions on policy issues, the most popular Change.org campaigns are built around personal stories. An Afghan interpreter for the US Marines whose family was threatened by the Taliban<</a>> petitions the Department of Homeland Security (93,841 signatures). The parents of Michael Brown<</a>> petition Congress to equip police with body cameras (57,643 signatures). The last decade of social media has taught that, combined with a catchy, compelling headline, these stories are what the internet likes to share.
In a way, Change.org works like a cross between Buzzfeed and YouTube, with content optimized for social media on the front end. On the back end, a powerful analytics engine funnels links to other, related petitions based on what people are clicking. Some of these petitions are sponsored, mostly by non-profits, the company says, which is one way it generates revenue. The other is through native ads paid for by nonprofits seeking to increase membership.
Rattray says he’s sometimes asked whether people will get tired of petitions. His answer: “Funny thing: people never get tired of photos on Instagram.”
B Good
As a business, Change.org is certified as a “B Corporation”, a voluntary, third-party–vetted standard of social responsibility for businesses. Under the B Corporation standard, companies are legally structured to base business decisions on standards other than shareholder returns.
Rattray says that taking funding from individual investors rather than institutional investors spending other people’s money ensures the company won’t be under pressure to sacrifice its values for the sake of profits. It also helps that the founding team still controls the majority of voting shares. But those investors do receive equity in the company, just as any venture capital firm would.
Rattray says Change.org is an effort to show that succeeding as a business and succeeding as a force for good don’t have to be mutually exclusive.
“We’re not a company despite caring about social change,” he says. “We’re a company because we care about social change.”
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