#22 How does Change.org make money?
#22 How does Change.org make money?
User driven promotions and donations
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Change.org
Change.org is a petition website that lets users create free petitions to gather signatures from supporters. It serves as a platform to give a collective voice to a group of like minded people. They raise concern towards an issue and collect people who don’t wish to be named or reveal their identities but feel strongly for the cause.
Stats
🐣2007 Founded
👩💻408M Campaigners & Supporters, 390M Campaigns
💰25M Revenue (2018)
💸72M Raised (most recently from Reid Hoffman)
Some of the most signed petitions on Change.org are:
Justice for George Floyd: 19M Signatures
Justice for Breonna Taylor : 11M Signatures
Petition opposing the Article 13 of the proposed Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market: 5.3M Signatures
How does Change.Org make money?
Change.org is a Public Benefit Corporation - a specific type of corporation that allow for public benefit to be a charter purpose in addition to the traditional corporate goal of maximizing profit for shareholders. Yes, it a for-profit organisation although people perceive it as a non-profit organisation.
There are 2 ways Change.org makes money:
Pay to promote petitions
People use Change.org to campaign about the most pressing issues in their lives and communities. You can chip in to help petition starters find supporters, by paying to promote their petitions as advertisements to a wider audience on Change.org.
Promoted Petitions are advertisements, allowing you to have your favorite petitions discovered by thousands of potential supporters. Similar to boosted posts on Facebook or sponsored tweets on Twitter, promoted petitions let you pay to show any petition (including your own) to other potential supporters on Change.org or its distribution channels.
By chipping in, a supporter can help the petition continue to gain momentum, and get it closer to winning. On average in the US or the UK, for $100 invested by promotions, a petition will be featured to 2,000 people on the Change.org website or via email.
During 2018, 1.6 million people promoted petitions on Change.org
Pay to Power the platform
You can become a Member to help more people around the world win their campaigns, financially supporting the expert coaching, media support and free technology that sees ordinary people win their campaigns every day. Members receive unique opportunities to go even deeper into the Change.org experience.
Membership is basically a recurring monthly donation to support the running of Change.org. As a member, you get the opportunity to weigh in on upcoming features and get a behind-the-scene glimpse into upcoming campaigns.
By the end of 2018, more than 98,000 members were making monthly contributions.
Until 2016, Change.org used to run an advertising product for non-profits to sponsor their campaigns and attract more support. They pivoted away from that to a user-funded petition-promotion model.
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