Better World Clicks Away for Change.org

From Jonathan Alter, published at Fri Mar 09 2012

March 9 (Bloomberg) -- Everyone remembers how fast EBay,Facebook, YouTube and other websites that have changed our worldgrew.

It’s almost six years since Twitter was founded. What’s thenext web tool poised for explosive growth? It may be Change.org,which boasts almost 10 million active users and is adding morethan a million users a month. The big question is not whetherits investors and about 100 employees will get rich off socialentrepreneurship. It’s whether Change.org will change the world.

That URL went through several lame incarnations in recentyears before becoming, in its own words, “a social actionplatform that empowers anyone, anywhere, to start, join and wincampaigns for social change.” The site is neutral -- thinkYouTube -- and hosts about 10,000 campaigns a month from morethan 150 countries. Some of them are sponsored by organizationssuch as Amnesty International and the Humane Society that paythe site to host their petitions; most, however, are homegrownefforts focused on local issues.

So far, the online petitions have garnered anywhere from afew dozen signatures to more than a million. The biggest -- withmore than 1.3 million signatures -- is one calling for passageof Caylee’s Law, named after Caylee Anthony, which would make ita felony for parents or guardians not to notify law enforcementof a missing child within 24 hours.

Like Twitter, Change.org has the potential to reorder powerrelationships in a hugely beneficial way.

In a brilliant forthcoming book, “Why Nations Fail,” MITeconomist Daron Acemoglu and Harvard political scientist JamesRobinson analyze hundreds of years of world history to explainthat the fate of nations is determined not by culture, weatheror geography (look at the differences between North and SouthKorea) but by the strength of political and economicinstitutions.

Those countries with “inclusive” institutions that respondto the will of the masses, not just the elites, succeed. Thosewith “extractive” businesses and governments that use cronycapitalism (or crony socialism) to stifle competition andexploit others, fail. Thus Nogales, Arizona, is prosperous andNogales, Mexico, just across the border is poverty stricken. Theauthors argue that even economically successful regimes such asChina’s will founder if they don’t open up.

So with all the bad news in the world, it helps tounderstand that what President George H.W. Bush called “athousand points of light” are growing almost exponentially, andnot only in the huge expansion of “changemakers” (AshokaFoundation founder William Drayton rightly prefers that to theword “nonprofits”) that Bush cited.

Just as we learned that it takes only one terrorist toshake the world, we now know that it takes only one changemakerto begin fixing things, large and small. Technology now allowsthat person to nudge the world even if they lack the charisma ofLech Walesa or Mahatma Gandhi.

It could be Molly Katchpole, a recent college graduateworking two jobs who was upset about a $5 debit-card fee tackedon by Bank of America. After 300,000 signatures on Change.organd some ensuing media attention, the bank cried uncle. Verizonabandoned an online payment fee in 24 hours. Now AT&T executivesare resisting protests over their new policy of slowing downdata speeds for those who bought unlimited data plans. Good luckwith that one, fellas.

The site’s petitions have helped to achieve a variety ofgoals. After Change.org campaigns, a judge ordered shacklesremoved from a 13-year-old suspect, the National Park Servicereversed its position and reinstated a ban on plastic bottles inthe Grand Canyon, Amazon.com pulled whale and dolphin meatproducts from its site, and scores of individuals have averteddeportation, been reinstated in jobs or avoided foreclosure.When women in Saudi Arabia protested U.S. Secretary of StateHillary Clinton’s refusal to speak up for their right to driveon Change.org, they contributed to Clinton reversing herposition.

I’m especially intrigued by the site’s potential toreinvigorate investigative reporting by making it seem lessfutile. After a “This American Life” story on public radio,250,000 people used Change.org to register their objections tothe working conditions at Apple’s Chinese suppliers. The companywent on to announce new transparency guidelines.

There’s no magic threshold of signatures that bringsvictory. A young man started a campaign to get Blue Cross andBlue Shield to continue insuring his father, who had come out ofa coma, for the course of his recovery. More than 180,000 havesupported his cause; the effort hasn’t attained its goal so far.

It may not be long before the power balance betweenshareholders and consumers shifts further. The site, which hopesto have 25 million users by next year, plans to integrate withsocial media so that campaigns relating to brands willautomatically post on, say, the company’s Facebook wall.

Obviously, if every consumer petition led to changes thatseverely cut profits, the economy (including the well-being ofthe petitioners) would suffer. But we’re a long way from mobrule of our institutions. In fact, Acemoglu and Robinson (whodon’t mention Change.org in the book) argue that the U.S. is indanger of becoming more extractive.

The way forward is through better storytelling. Onlinecampaigns work best when they have narratives behind them --plucky stories of average people crowd-sourcing their way topower, as Katchpole did against Bank of America.

One big question is whether crowd-sourced advertiserboycotts may be in the offing, perhaps against billionairestrying to hijack the U.S. political system. Will people startsuccessful campaigns against Brawny Towels (the Koch brothers)and the Sands and Venetian casinos (Sheldon Adelson)?

Of course, ordinary people may care a lot more about theenvironmental messages on the website of the animated movie “TheLorax” (the target of a successful campaign launched by fourth-graders) than they do about super-PACs. But that could change ina flash on Change.org. “Every week brings some totally new useof this,” says Benjamin Joffe-Walt, the site’s communicationdirector. “We have no idea where the whole thing is going.”

Joffe-Walt says the mission of Change.org is to be “themost empowering organization in the world.” Don’t bet againstit.

(Jonathan Alter is a Bloomberg View columnist and theauthor of “The Promise: President Obama, Year One.” The opinionsexpressed are his own.)

Read more opinion online from Bloomberg View.

To contact the writer of this article:Jonathan Alter at [email protected].

To contact the editor responsible for this article:James Gibney at [email protected].