Congresswoman Asks Colleagues to Pressure Sec. Clinton over Foreign Cyber-Attack on Change.org

Posted by Benjamin Joffe-Walt   |   May 11, 2011   |   Comments (3)

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) asks members of Congress to urge Secretary Clinton to condemn an ongoing cyber-attack against U.S.-based social action platform Change.org. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) joins DeLauro’s condemnation of the attack.

U.S. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) sent an open letter Wednesday to all members of Congress urging them to call on U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to publicly denounce an on-going cyber-attack against Change.org and commit to an investigation to uncover those responsible for the attack. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) joined Rep. DeLauro in denouncing the attacks.

On April 18, foreign hackers launched a highly sophisticated cyber-attack on the U.S.-based social action platform. The ongoing attack, which originated in China and has temporarily brought down Change.org at intermittent periods, follows the viral success of a Change.org petition calling for the release of internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. The campaign was started by leading global art museums, including the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and London’s Tate Modern, as well as the Association of Art Museum Directors. More than 133,000 people from 175 countries have signed the petition in a sign of widespread global solidarity for human rights and free speech.

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Magazine Apologizes, Fires Journalist Making Rape Threats

Posted by Benjamin Joffe-Walt   |   May 6, 2011   |   Comment (1)

An Argentinian magazine has apologized for a column by a journalist who threatened to rape a feminist activist in Buenos Aires after an international campaign led companies Lacoste and Fiat to pull ad campaigns from the publication.

The Argentinian magazine El Guardián has apologized for a column by a journalist who threatened to rape a feminist activist in Buenos Aires, pledging to never print the reporters work again.

The news comes after a two month international campaign forced the Italian car company Fiat and the French clothing company Lacoste to pull their advertising campaigns from the publication.

On March 3, 2011, El Guardián published a reporter named Juan Terranova who wrote a column explicitly threatening to rape Inti Maria Tidball-Binz, a Argentinian activist with Hollaback, an international feminist advocacy organization dedicated to ending the street harassment of women.

Local and international activists used the social action platform Change.org to demand that the publication print an apology and fire the journalist. But despite thousands joining the campaign, the magazine refused.

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U.S. Congresswoman Condemns Chinese Attack on Change.org

Posted by Benjamin Joffe-Walt   |   April 26, 2011   |   Comments (7)

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) asks U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to denounce attacks on the U.S.-based social action platform Change.org after a campaign by famous art museums calling for Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s release went globally viral on the site.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) called late Monday for U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to publicly condemn an ongoing Chinese attack on Change.org, the world’s fastest-growing social action platform.

Last week Chinese hackers launched a highly sophisticated cyber-attack on the US-based social action platform after more than 90,000 people in 175 countries endorsed an online call for the release of internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, an increasingly outspoken critic of the Chinese government. The petition now has more than 120,000 signatures.

Rep. DeLauro urged Sec. Clinton “to condemn this attack on Change.org and call on the Chinese government to take swift action to ensure that this attack and others like it in the future are stopped swiftly and that the perpetrators are brought to justice.”

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Change.org Celebrates a Belated Earth Day

Posted by Jess Leber   |   April 25, 2011   |   Comment (1)

Disclaimer: Today is not Earth Day. That was on Friday, when we intended to publish the blog post below, a feat that proved impossible due to a total site-wide outage most of Friday, courtesy of our Amazon hosting provider. So we are celebrating a belated Earth Day today. We are actually quite excited about the turn of events. It give us a chance to elevate some awesome campaigns above the typical green noise of the annual Earth Day event. It also allows us to emphasize a point made in the blog post below: That campaigns are not (usually) won in a day and—despite the success of the first Earth Day—a green movement isn’t a movement unless it can mobilize more than once a year.

Check out our home page for 10 Belated Earth Day campaigns to take action on today, and if you’re on Twitter today, follow hash tag #EarthdayEveryday. And now for your scheduled programing…

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The first Earth Day was held in 1970. It was moment built upon a groundswell of environmental awareness among those who could no longer accept breathing dirty air or watching their rivers ruined by sludge. U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson, who founded that first Earth Day, wrote, “Earth Day worked because of the spontaneous response at the grassroots level. We had neither the time nor resources to organize 20 million demonstrators and the thousands of schools and local communities that participated. That was the remarkable thing about Earth Day. It organized itself.” Read More ››

Under Attack by Chinese Hackers, Change.org Asks Supporters of Ai Weiwei to Tweet Sec. Clinton for Help

Posted by Benjamin Joffe-Walt   |   April 20, 2011   |   Comments (7)

Despite a highly sophisticated Chinese cyber attack on Change.org, the world’s fastest-growing social action platform, the U.S. State Department has yet to condemn the attack.

Chinese hackers temporarily brought down Change.org earlier this week after more than 90,000 people in 175 countries endorsed an online call for the release of internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, an increasingly outspoken critic of the Chinese government.

The ongoing cyber attack is targeting Change.org, the world’s fastest-growing social action platform. It follows the viral success of a Change.org petition calling for Ai Weiwei’s release by leading global art museums, including the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Tate Modern, London, as well as the Association of Art Museum Directors.

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Chinese Hackers Attack Change.org Platform in Reaction to Ai Weiwei Campaign

Posted by Benjamin Joffe-Walt   |   April 19, 2011   |   Comments (10)

Attackers use distributed denial of service attack to bring down the world’s fastest growing social action platform after more than 90,000 people in 175 countries call for release of Chinese dissident artist.

Chinese hackers temporarily brought down the world’s fastest-growing social action platform after more than 90,000 people in 175 countries endorsed an online call for the release of internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Ai Weiwei.

Weiwei, best known for his role in the construction of the Beijing Olympic stadium and his recent Sunflower Seeds exhibition at the Tate Modern, has become an increasingly outspoken critic of the Chinese government in recent years, in particular over the handling of the 2008 earthquake in the country’s Sichuan province.

The cyber attack on Change.org follows the viral success of a petition calling for Ai Weiwei’s release by leading global art museums, including the Guggenheim Museum, New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Tate Modern, London, as well as the Association of Art Museum Directors. The campaign is attracting more than 10,000 new supporters a day and is now the most popular international campaign on Change.org, the world’s fastest growing activism platform with some 3.5 million monthly visitors.

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100 Victories in 100 Days

Posted by Benjamin Joffe-Walt   |   April 14, 2011   |   Comments (6)

Six months ago, the accomplished columnist Malcolm Gladwell published a scathing critique of online activism in The New Yorker.

Online activism, he said, is “a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger,” making it “easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact.”

His heart is in the right place, and I’ll be the first to admit, the seductive cynicism of Mr Gladwell’s critique was remarkable, took me back and had me questioning what I do every day.

Today I have one request of Mr Gladwell: visit www.change.org/victories.

Earlier this week Change.org, the world’s fastest growing online activism platform, celebrated the 100th victory of 2011 in as many days (actually we had 103 victories in 100 days)… Change.org is now winning social change campaigns on average more than once a day.

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2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study: Does Your Organization Measure Up?

Posted by Maria Tchijov   |   March 24, 2011   |   Comments Off

Have you ever wondered how your organization’s metrics compare with other nonprofits? Every year, our good friends at M+R Strategic Services and NTEN work with many different nonprofits in order to answer just that question. The M+R research released yesterday provides nonprofits with benchmarks across a variety of mediums, specifically focused around key issues like fundraising and advocacy. To help us make the most of all that data, M+R’s Senior Strategist Steve Peretz has highlighted some of the key findings below. Check it out, and see how your organization stacks up.

The 2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study is out now (today!) from M+R Strategic Services and NTEN.

This year’s study looks at performance data from 40 nonprofits—more groups than ever before, which means more numbers to crunch and more charts for you to geek out over.  (If you’re into that kind of thing.  Which we are.)

If you’re ready for it, you can skip straight to the full report.

Or here are my top takeaways from this year’s study – and I recommend following along with the Benchmarks Infographic shown at right:

  • International groups saw an enormous 163 percent increase in dollars raised from 2009 to 2010, largely because of to 2010’s emergencies in Haiti and Pakistan.
  • All groups – including International – saw a 14% change in dollars raised online—but take out International’s explosive growth and the other groups in our study still saw a steady 10% increase in dollars raised online from 2009 to 2010, the same percentage increase those groups saw from 2008 to 2009.
  • Advocacy emails had the highest open, click-through, and response rates of any type of email we evaluated, as well as the lowest unsubscribe rate. Fundraising emails had the lowest click-through rate.
  • On Facebook, the “Most Popular” nod went to Wildlife / Animal Welfare organizations in our study: the Wildlife / Animal Welfare sector had a Facebook fan page action rate nearly twice as high as the average.
  • There’s still tremendous room to grow on Facebook and Twitter: On average, nonprofits had just 110 Facebook fan page users and 19 Twitter followers for every 1,000 email subscribers.

See for yourself by downloading the FREE report here

Onward!

Steve Peretz

M+R Senior Analyst

Change.org Celebrates 100th Annual International Women’s Day

Posted by shelbyknox   |   March 7, 2011   |   Comments (6)

Today is the 100th anniversary of the celebration of International Women’s Day and we at Change.org are excited to be part of a worldwide movement to uplift, honor, and improve the lives of women and girls around the globe. You’ve probably already seen the shiny purple and white logo we’ve placed on the front page to mark the occasion. You’ll also find this logo on petitions that directly improve the lives of women and girls, in the United States and in countries around the world.

You’ll notice, however, that the actions sporting this nifty logo are featured across all sections of the site rather than being tucked neatly into the “Women’s Rights” cause. That’s because, very simply, women are half the population impacted by every injustice we seek to right and must be  half of every single solution.

That’s why we at Change.org are proud to live the sentiment, today and every day, that women’s rights are human rights. Our collective humanity is tied up in enacting solutions that empower the half of the population that, while often the most marginalized, also encompasses the largest untapped pool of talent in the world.

Today, as we take a moment to look back and celebrate the past 100 years of achievement for women and girls, we must also look forward to the next 100 years. We’ve partnered with many nonprofits working on doing just that: from demanding a place for women in peace negotiations to rallying the real “Mama Grizzlies” in support of the environment, these groups are focusing on empowering women to make changes in their communities.

Below, you’ll find some brief highlights of campaigns from across the site, as well as a full list of all campaigns related to International Women’s Day. And, if you don’t see a campaign around a topic you care about, why not start a petition about it?

Insist Afghan women be allowed a voice in peace negotiations. Afghan women and girls have suffered the consequences of war with their fellow countrymen and become the targets of traffickers and warlords. Once promised equality and a better life, Afghan women have now been denied a voice in the future of their homeland. Tell Secretary of State Hillary Clinton she must intervene of behalf of Afghan women and they be given a seat at the peace table.

Demand Congress stop hurting women and children. Under the guise of “balancing the budget,” the United States Congress is bargaining away the rights of poor women, pregnant women, children and infants. Tell your representative that cutting funds for family planning, WIC programs that ensure children have healthy food, and Head Start education isn’t good money sense – it’s playing politics with women and children’s health and lives.

Stand in solidarity with the real ‘Mama Grizzly.’ While the majestic mother bear has been pinned as the political symbol of ultra-conservative women as of late, the folks at The Wilderness Society have decided it’s high time the Mama Grizzly be returned to her rightful place of honor. A real Mama Grizzly defends the world’s natural treasures, treads lightly on the earth, and inspires others to do the same. Take the Real Mama Grizzly pledge today!

Hold the US Armed Forces accountable for sexual assault. Women make up 20% of the armed forces serving to protect and defend the United States of America. 1 in 3 of these women will be raped or sexually assaulted while serving her country. These women receive little support from their Commanders and perpetrators often get a slap on the wrist, which breeds a culture of tolerance for sexual violence. Tell Congress to hold the Armed Forces accountable for eliminating rape from the ranks.

That’s just a sampling of our great campaigns that embody the spirit and promise of International Women’s Day. Here are even more actions you can take to stand up for women, girls, and the world:

Change.org in 2011

Posted by Ben Rattray   |   January 31, 2011   |   Comment (1)

Over the past year, activity on Change.org has exploded.

More than 2.5 million people now visit Change.org to take action each month, and we’re growing at more than 150,000 new members per month.

More importantly, together we’re winning real change. Every day people start campaigns on Change.org to fight for issues they care about in their community, and every day we are making real, measurable change – successfully battling dangerous gas extraction in Texas, standing against anti-gay discrimination in Portland, and fighting on behalf of rape victims in South Africa.

Our mission in 2011 is to expand our movement into an international network of people empowered to fight for what’s right locally, nationally, and globally.

Our first step begins today: we’ve just released a new site design focused on displaying the most popular, breaking actions on Change.org and across the web. There are remarkable stories of real people making a difference on Change.org every day, and we want to better promote their campaigns and mobilize others around them.

We have also enhanced our petition tool, which allows anyone anywhere to start their own campaign for change. By adding a real-time feed of all the activity surrounding each petition, we’ve made it easier for each signer to more richly participate in the unfolding narrative of each campaign.

We have many more things in store for 2011 as we build out the Change.org platform. In the meantime, we’d love your feedback on the new site and suggestions for what additional tools you might want to increase your impact.

If you have any comments, suggestions or questions about the new site, please click here to see a post with FAQs by our outreach director, Maria Tchjiov.

Ben Rattray is the founder and CEO of Change.org