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.
This is one of the reasons why and how the Web will change Society
Realy it is nice search engine.I like it .I think it will more infomative about global worming.
Business with a social cause marketing,
nice positioning.
http://www.tekn...ld.blogspot.com
i like how the domain name pretty much hits the nail on the head with the site’s mission.
org for organization, change – for making changes. it’s a linear, straight-forward purpose and cause – hence the linear, and straight-forward domain name. couldn’t find a more perfect match!
not to mention the ’stickyness’ of the name – it sticks.
the site design on the otherhand, well – if you can’t say nothing nice…
WOW. This is what is should be all about. Using technology and other resources to improve the quality of life. The ability to create small communities is wonderfull. Each may achieve a small step, but all those result combined will totally have a ”ginormous” impact.
You should also checkout http://www.fivelimes.com which is another social change oriented community site encompassing environmental and social sustainability. Great to see these sites being developed!
Can’t say that a conservative would feel welcome to joining that website for their own cause. Looks like its heavily populated by left to extreme left causes (minus the obvious uniting ones like Darfur and stopping child prostitution.
They should have tried to populate with some more conservative issues to balance the site out otherwise people from other thought lines will be discouraged to join.
I am optimistic that we can put these Web 2.0 tools to use to get more people involved in social issues. Change.org joins a variety of communities that are already out there, the biggest of which is Care2 (www.care2.com) with more than 6 million active members. Other community sites include the environment-focused treehugger.com, as well as more general networks that have developed at omidyar.net and the Social Edge community. The other thing to take note of is not sites dedicated to social action but the communities of socially active people that have developed in MySpace and Facebook and other general networking sites. Even MyBlogLog has a very active group of users who are organized around nonprofit work.
Sounds good – now we can downsize government
http://seminar7...-socialism.html
Definitely an interesting site. It should be worldwide.
I like this site. The “giving networks” are a good idea. The nonprofits section is also well done. Overall, the site is divided into very simple and understandable sections… note how action commitments and events are all under ‘actions’.
I am a little confused by the ‘blogs’ feature. I can see its basically… anything, news or whatever. Maybe I’m just confused by calling it ‘blogs’, but then again I can’t think of a better word either.
Nicely done! I hope it encourages awareness and change!
Congrats to Ben and Mark, great job guys! I’ve been following this since the beginning, and I’m very happy for them to see it launched and doing well.
There seems to be a number of these sites out there. However, Idealist.org seems to have the largest both nationally and internationally out there. Seems like just another copycat.
For some innovative ideas in social networking, take a look at The Darfur Wall website, http://darfurwall.org. Darfur Wall is a great example of how to engage people and give people a way to participate in a cause they identify with. The Advocates feature is especially interesting.
Another website for social change is Firstgiving.com. Firstgiving is a website that helps anyone create a free personalized fundraising page for any non-profit registered with GuideStar. Through Firstgiving you set up your fundraising page and then promote it via email, your blog, and various social networks (MySpace, Facebook,etc). The great thing about Firstgiving is that you can grab a widget or a badge and then put in it your social networking accounts so everyone in your online network can see it and also any other visitors that may come to your page. It’s a way to mobilize your friends and online network to help support a cause that you are passionate about. Also Firstgiving directly transfers any funds raised directly to the non-profit that you are supporting.
to smith288: what “conservative” issues should they have added? Save tax cuts? Save big subsidies for big oil? Keep the war in Iraq?
Ok, jokes aside, some of them definitely are positions supported by the left. The great thing is that it’s called Change.org and YOU can add your own elements of change.
Also, I think your statement was unjustly biased. I think most of the causes are without political bias save a few of the liberal ones (stem cell research, universal health care, stop the war in iraq, protecting the womens right to choose).
I gave a quick look around, but I didn’t see any transparency into the financial structures… how much is accumulated, from whom, where it goes, what that money does… is this blackbox philanthropy, or did I miss some clear opening of data in there somewhere…?
I’m really into the business for change/social change movement (it’s a big part of why I am working to do what I want to do as an entrepreneur) – I know this space very well
I think by the grassroots sort of nature of this kind of stuff, a social network is a really good fit and I like the vibe they’ve created on it. I wonder how they’ll work to reach out to people to drive registrations and participation – it’s going to be very interesting to watch this as it develops. Building a social network/community isn’t easy – I would suspect they’ll lean heavily on the green bloggers and sites that are out there, and maybe do grassroots efforts at envinroment/social change events?
Either way, very cool.
With all the crazy start up money talk, it’s nice to see the conversation head back in the direction of social change. It’s totally valuable to build communities around social causes and to give activism tools to people who care. The more we can drum up conversation about these issues, the better.
That said, I’m inclined to expect greater results from really focused campaigns with specific metrics and results. It’s difficult to get even the most dedicated activist to DO something if there is no clear goal. We struggled with this in my previous job at Participant Productions. Lawrence Bender, the producer of An Inconvenient Truth is working on a campaign to get every American household to purchase on Compact Florescent light bulb. 100 million bulbs = $4 billion in energy savings. It’s simple, it’s tangible and everyone can do one small thing to make a big difference. Doesn’t hurt to have WalMart behind it.
Anyway, I think really targeted campaigns are more effective and I’d like to see more energy being put into those than another social network.
^ I love Participant’s work – very cool that you’re here!
We should all connect – we donate a lot of space on our platform for companies pushing social change, we’re big fans of supporting that stuff
Seems like a good time to mention this group, too: Donors Choose. Saw them present at a local NYC Tech Meetup last night.
http://www.donorschoose.org
They make every dollar accountable and seem to drill down on what’s important by allowing teachers, for example, pitch for limited grants (like $500) for specific projects. What they return to the donors after watching the presentation last night is amazing – a full report complete with ‘thank you’ cards from the kids. Donors Choose calls it micro-philanthropy. Seems like a great trend for giving.
Here’s another site that combines social networking with humanitarian concerns.
http://www.footstops.com
It’s all non profit and has been live for about a month. January’s revune went to COPE http://www.dire...g/ngo.cfm?id=46
Great model but seems like there is a lot of competition in this space. The overall design and usability reflect the teams efforts and 18 months of development.
The social cause space it getting a lot of attention, which is nothing but positive. I hope this venture really takes off.
Our soon to be launched application takes a different approach to raising funds for non-profits by rewarding customer generated referrals to small-to-medium service businesses with money to donate to non-profits.
We are also hoping to have a big impact in the social marketing space, and a greatly encouraged by others providing connections and exposure to causes people care about. Rock On Change.org!
I would like to see all these non-profits band together and create one massive social network with philanthropy in mind. As small sites, they have limited potential. If they band together to create ONE brand, the possibilities are virtually unlimited (maybe ONE.org should be the center?).
http://www.TakingITGlobal.org has been leading the charge in the youth global issues / change social networking space since 1999
This site will make helping the world more efficient than german love-making.
It’d be nice to see http://www.volu...ersolutions.org and United Way of America go this route as well…
VolunteerSolutions is already ahead in a sense b/c the volunteer opps. on the site are “quality” in that they’ve been vetted by a local volunteer center…now to put all the pieces together…
An outstanding site for smaking the world a better place is http://www.Chan...gThePresent.org.
It has more information on (and from) nonpfofits.
It lets you choose exactly what you want to accomplish (preserve an acre of the rainforest, make a blind person see, etc.).
It has better tools for giving.
It has a much lower transaction cost than any of the other donation portals. Why would I want change.org to take 4.5% of my donation!
No surprise; the people behind it include an impressive list of leaders from the social sector (see the Board of Advisors).
Congratulations Mark & Ben. Your idea works even for us in our 70’s! We were happy to see Micki Krimmel’s suggestion of making a difference with light bulbs. We joined this effort in January ‘07!
Open Data like Open Source
Yet another website for me to log into? Another place to blog and check messages? A more useful service would connect the work we already do on our own sites and blogs. Give us meaningful hooks and tags to plant on our end to build a bridge between all of our ideas and projects. Open data like open source.
If you want platform-independent comments, connections, and collaborations, then send a note to me through my website with your ideas. Tell me who has started this work or how you think it should be done. Tell me why it’ll be revolutionary. http://theCoup.org