Change.org Raises $30M Led by Reid Hoffman; Sam Altman and Bill Gates Invest Too | Hacker News Reader

Change.org Raises $30M Led by Reid Hoffman; Sam Altman and Bill Gates Invest Too

fortune.com

161 pointsartsandsci97 comments

There is much better option in some countries if you want to change some law or government policy. For example, in the UK any British citizen or UK resident can create an online petition to be discussed in UK Parliament [1].

If a petition gets 10,000 signatures, the government will respond.

If a petition gets 100,000 signatures, it will be considered for debate in Parliament.

And source code is available on GitHub [2]

[1] https://petition.parliament.uk/

[2] https://github.com/alphagov/e-petitions

Unfortunately, whether or not the petition is debated in Parliament, it won't actually change the law or government policy, because the government doesn't in the slightest bit care about the petitions.

I'm not sure that is totally true, it would be silly to ignore something that got a strong response.

Trump's still been invited on a state visit.

Are people in the UK really signing a petition that amounts to "don't invite the President of the United States to the UK on an official visit"?

I wondered the same, so I looked it up: https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/171928

Yes, and when 3% of the entire country's population has gone out of their way to vote for that, it's worth serious consideration.

It's often said that one letter written and sent is representative of the opinion of 1,000 people. Perhaps with online petitions it's more like 5.

He was invited before any petition.

The petition was to convert it to a regular foreign visit, rather than a State Visit where he meets the Queen, etc.

They've debated something like a dozen petitions in Parliament. I'm not aware of anything meaningful having happened as a result.

Like the million people marching against the Iraq war in london 2003?

Marching in the streets sends a much stronger message per person than does signing an online petition.

It had fuck all effect though.

We don't really know what the impact is further down the line, the government has lost a vote over going to war since.

Politicians are kings of being silly, then...

Not a very good idea to believe a government controlled platform for something like this.

Not sure for-profit is appropriate either though (even if it's a b-corp, as Change.org is).

What are your reservations about a B-corp?

Nonprofit legal status is hardly a guarantee of anything about corporate behaviour, aside from what paperwork they fill out.

To be clear, I'm actually curious about it, especially because Bs are becoming mildly trendy, and I don't know that much about them.

I've got nothing against b-corps. In fact, I think they should be the default corporate form rather than one you need to opt into with specific language in the articles of incorporation (as in Delaware). But b-corps are still owned by investors. They are legally entitled to take into account considerations other than maximizing shareholder return. Whether they do or not is a separate matter; they are not obligated (although this can depend on state and type of entity, I believe). They receive funding as investments (with expectation of returns) rather than donations. Again, no problem with that as such. But if my choice is between government operated petition site and a petition site accountable to private investors (even if a b-corp), I wouldn't reflexively favor the latter.

can't tell if this is in jest, is "considered for debate" really a better option for bringing about change?

At the end of the day influence (and by proxy money since it buys influence) is pretty much all that matters in changing policy.

I am sure it is much more effective (and expensive) to lobby, but regular citizens can't afford it. There is a long way to go and "considered for debate" is just the first step.

Change.org only guarantees that all data you have provided (including what you are not aware of) will be sold to highest bidder.

The point of physical petitions is they're hard. Showing a politician a few thousand names, with verified voter-registration statuses, who wrote out their addresses, and maybe copied a single sentence expressing their support for your cause, is much stronger than a million people who clicked an Internet button. The former can be organized to the politicians benefit (or against him, to his detriment). The latter probably can't.

I would tend to take the cynical view that the point of petitions in general is that it lets people feel like they're making making their voice heard and acting as a pressure relief valve of sorts for all but the most serious of grievances. Most protests today fulfill the same purpose.

Have you been involved in a legislative process? (I haven't, directly, at the federal level.) At the local and state levels, hard petitions are huge. (In some jurisdictions, they're required to get on the ballot.) Protests are meaningful inasmuch as they are willing to show up, time and again.

Why? Off-season elections, which most of these politicos must win to keep office, are not games for numbers. They're games to motivate people to inconvenience themselves by voting.

Remember why politicians like PAC and campaign contributions. They spend that money on turning out voters. If you can turn out a bloc of potential voters, or people whom you can reasonably claim are upset enough to vote against them, you'll catch attention. The active minority wins against the disinterested majority. Internet petitions represent the latter; hard petitions and protests high in repeat attendance demonstrate the former.

The European Union has a similar. A European Citizens Initiative has been available since the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon. If 1 million EU citizens (~0.2% of the population) sign it, the European Commission must respond, maybe with legislation. It hasn't been used much though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Citizens%27_Initiativ...

In Brazil too[0]. The numbers are different, but if a petition reaches a certain number of signatures our Congress has to lead to the plenary. You could use the official government website for that. Recently we had a Law called 10 mediated against the corruption[1] that followed this script. Unfortunately, our Congress has greatly changed the proposal. I participated actively in this campaign and I am participating in some other proposals that are being built. What I have discovered is that getting in touch with a congressman so that he or she will sponsor the proposal and defend it in its originality is much faster and with a higher success rate. Unfortunately, we do not yet have a possibility to prevent congressmen from altering the public petition and this allows they to transform something positive into something very bad.

[0]https://www12.senado.leg.br/ecidadania/principalmateria (in portuguese) [1]http://www.dezmedidas.mpf.mp.br/campanha/documentos (in portuguese)

I don't think there is a single instance of a petition leading to legislation, though.

I fail to see how the UK's policy is better. For starters, its a government policy which can be revoked at will. Change.org is a for-profit entity whose objectives are clear and cuts across government and private enterprise.

> Change.org is a for-profit entity

Wikipedia claims that in summary information, but the text contradicts it; I suspect the people saying that (including Wikipedia) are making the error of failing to recognize that "for-profit", "not-for-profit", and "nonprofit" are three different categories (not two, with the last two being aliases), and that you can't distinguish between the first and second categories by just looking at the legal formalities that identify the third category.

It's not actually. It's decided by parliament, which is not the same as the government. It specifically exists in order to challenge the government.

I can't recall any instance where this has had any remotely noticeable effect. Can you name an instance?

EDIT#1: Just to be absolutely clear: This is an incredibly transparent distraction ploy. There's no actual intention of acting on any of this.

EDIT#2: See also the recent FCC "public consultation" on Net Neutrality.

(Related to my company) I've spoken with a half dozen government officials in the US and they all said they do not consider petitions in policy making. The biggest problem they have is not knowing easily what fraction of the signers are in their constituency. Beyond this, they see petitions as a marketing ploy by organized groups and hence further discount it.

Btw, interesting article on change.org's challenges with business model: https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/05/change-dot-ug...

I can concur. In the US, representatives care about 1st, how many people will vote for them in the next election, and 2nd who is paying. That's the extend of their moral and logical debate (if any).

That's a little disingenuous of them. Every petition I've ever seen in the US required not only a name but an address as well, specifically for this purpose.

The challenge for the official is to sort the signatures easily to identify their constituents. Not so easy without zip+4 data (5-digit zip not always accurate on election districts).

The UK's petition system (https://petition.parliament.uk) specifically collects postcode information to group votes by constituency, and even provides a handy heat map showing % of constituents who voted.

The US has something similar. The issue is that (even in the UK) the response can be "no" and the consideration can also be "no".

The US used to have something similar. The site still exists, but under Trump the petitions are no longer reviewed. You can't take democracy for granted.

This is a little frustrating. Don’t get me wrong, the site should definitely exist and serves a useful purpose. My criticism comes when I read that they have ~300 employees. They are ranked 1,269 globally on Alexa. Craigslist is ranked 99 globally with only 30 employees. Even more so, on Glassdoor their benefits include “Fully stocked kitchen with everything you can imagine, catered dinners, massages, game room, nap room, open and comfortable work space.” [1]

“The world is kind of in the shitter and Change.org could be the world’s greatest plunger.” Not if it continues being a bloated company focused on recouping their massive expenses.

[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Benefits/Change-org-US-Benefits-EI...

Not every company is Craigslist or aspires to be. It can be argued that if Cragislist had more employees they could do more for their users.

Microsoft has tens of thousands. Does Windows do more for its users than Ubuntu Linux?

Yes?

Yes, without a doubt.

Definitely, it’s not a perfect comparison — it just seems to me that a company with somewhat low revenue and an altruistic mission should do everything it can to be lean.

Unfortunately that's quite a hard problem. I'm not saying this applies to Change.org as I hardly know it, but cutting corners doesn't necessarily lead to spending less money. Charities in general often have this problem of having to minimise "overhead" to remain in the public's favour, resulting in overqualified people wasting a lot of their time on e.g. simple administrative tasks because that way it doesn't count as overhead.

Your post is great, well made and articulated, sort of the anti-plunger post.

They competing for talent who expect all of those perks as standard. It's a smart move.

I worked for Change circa 2010 ~ 2011. Interesting to see how their revenue model has changed.

IIRC they were previously making money by building email lists for non-profits and other orgs that would essentially contract Change to get them exposure.

From what I read here, seems that wasn't really working out. Not sure what to make of becoming it a crowdfunding platform.

Yep, so much spam from change.org after signing a petition, had to unsubscribe

This strikes me as an organization that should be run similar to Wikipedia. But I suppose its far to late for that.

The difference is that Wikipedia actually provides some public benefit, whereas change.org doesn't accomplish anything so there's not going to be many people interested in donating resources to keep it running.

Is change.org a for-profit enterprise?

The name suggests otherwise. If so, it's not really an investment in the traditional sense where you'd expect a return.

> The name suggests otherwise.

Do not underestimate the power of someone to make a business selling the feeling that your not part of a business!

> Is change.org a for-profit enterprise?

By their own description, no, though they are identical to one in at least superficial legal form (I don't know if their corporate governing documents do anything to address this.) Note that not-for-profit is not a crisp legal category ("nonprofit" is a term used for specific tax classification which requires a number of other qualifications and accepting a number of behavioral restrictions, including on political activity, on top of being not operated for profit.)

The linked article describes them as a for-profit org.

> Change.org, a for-profit petition and fundraising website focused on social and political change.

They are a B-corp for what that's worth.

> The linked article describes them as a for-profit org.

The linked article provides no basis for this description and, without any cited basis and given change.org's consistent description of not being operated for profit, seems to be making the (fairly common) mistake of confusing the absence of the tax status of "nonprofit" (which requires a lot more than being not-for-profit) with being "for profit". There are quite a number of not-for-profit entities that are not nonprofits.

I really wish they would make it easier for example to convert a "for-profit" to a self-perpetuating board of directors for example.

Nonprofits have cash flow and profit/loss too, they just call the profit 'surplus'.

Not-for-profit (including that as part of the qualification of a tax exempt nonprofit) has nothing to do with the entity not making surplus revenues, it has more to do with the entity not being a tool to return profits to those who control it.

Exactly. That's why I don't understand the usage of the term "investment".

"Investment" is often used in senses where the return being sought is a social good and not a financial return to the investors. This could be viewed as either a metaphor for financial investment or a literal investment in utilitarian terms for which financial terms are, after all, only a convenient proxy.

Long gone are the days when .org was a meaningful suffix.

I would like to see a world where petitions are much more taken into account. Unfortunately, for many leaders, they are not taken seriously.

I hope Change.org can do something about this.

Change.org could remedy this by adding a feature that would Mail, Email and or Phone the person and or group . If you would do this people would take it seriously.

There has to be a progression in order for leaders to take them seriously. It has to start with a petition, but there has to be something that happens if the petition gains critical mass but leaders don't acknowledge it. It has to go from petitions to protests and electoral losses at the very least.

If it stays a petition, it's much too easy to ignore.

I think in order to succeed, they need to take responsibility for more than just the petition. Measuring people's basic feelings about issues is just the first step in the process. They need to nurture the entire discussion, through debate with counter-arguments, policy formation, public debate of policy, balancing of priorities against other issues, and building a legislative caucus.

If they can move ideas through all of those stages, they can usher them into law. But just aggregating petitions is like asking 100,000 people what their dream house is and then claiming that you've done your part and now politicians need to solve the housing crisis.

There are some petitions on change.org which I, as a citizen, would like to petition against (rather than for). A petition may have huge support but it also may have huge opposition... that opposition is not shown on change.org. Not showing the opposition to an issue paints a skewed image that I hope politicians can recognise.

For example, if the evangelicals made a petition to ban abortions in USA, it could potentially get a lot of support but yet there is no way for others to show their strong opposition against that as well.

Create a petition for the opposite thing.

I think that's easier said than done. People are inspired to up-vote a petition if it has action... but what if you're position is that we just keep doing the status quo on an issue.

For example, you can imagine a petition saying:

"The gender pay gap is statistically $0.72 for female workers. I propose we simply SOLVE this now. Let's tax MEN and give the proceeds to women to even up this pay disparity".

Sadly, I've seen petitions like that and they are as absurd as my hypothetical above.... but you're asking me to make a petition saying:

"The existing laws around gender discrimination are plenty good. Let's keep with what have now"

Somehow I feel like my petition wont take off.

Spot within your example, I've actually written a petition for "Men should have the same rights as women, i.e. change X and Y in sectors Z and Z2". If downvotes were allowed, it would take a single feminist organization to sweep my petition, whereas it is difficult to gather men's votes.

I much prefer that downvotes aren't possible. I can work little-by-little and find the right message until I gather enough votes to lead a better campaign.

> For example, if the evangelicals made a petition to ban abortions in USA, it could potentially get a lot of support but yet there is no way for others to show their strong opposition against that as well.

Plus, even if somehow the evangelicals and those supporting them were to have the upper hand in terms of numbers, you still can't do things like ban abortions based on numbers alone. Basic, more modern human principles shouldn't be left to democratic vote (i.e. the voice of the majority). The right of a woman to have an abortion is a basic (and more modern, judging by recent history, if we exclude the Romans) human principle.

> > Basic, more modern human principles shouldn't be left to democratic vote

What process should be used to decide which are these modern human principles that are too important to be left to majority rule, and who gets to participate in that process?

Exactly.

It's a centuries old question. I for myself am a Kantian (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative) when it comes to morals (or at least I try to be one), but leaving aside what I believe, I think it is fair to say that majority rule has historically been against lots of things that we now see as being "morally good", so to speak.

It's a millennia old question, and still the best answer for how to produce collective agreements, on questions we do not collectively unanimously agree on, is simply to count the votes and do what most people want to do.

Yes, the majority has often wanted to do things we now think were reprehensible, and this is certainly an ongoing situation. But Churchill is still right: democracy is a terrible form of government, it's just that it's not quite as terrible as every other form we've tried.

And you haven't answered my question - what should we replace democracy with, and precisely how would that process work - and without answering that question it's tedious to make pronouncements about how much better some undefined alternative would be. G.K. Chesterton: "Revolutionaries are always right about what is wrong, and they are usually wrong about what is right." It's easy to see the flaws in something that exists in front of us. It's very hard to design something that would in actual fact be better.

I thing petitions is the wrong way to go about it... They are static copies of the author's complaint, ignoring the precise and subtle opinions of the public.

Compare that to this democratic tool: https://blog.pol.is/pol-is-in-taiwan-da7570d372b5 - collaborative consensus sounds more politically compelling that petitions

Is sama investing as an individual or is he investing through y combinator somehow?

If it's as an individual this can be interpreted as further proof that he is positioning himself to run for governor of cali in a future election.

he's only run YC for 3 years. Not knowing him personally; everything I've seen from him publicly points to him believing that he can do more as head of YC than in a public office like governor. I also suspect he believes that to do either job effectively it would be mutually exclusive. I think he is committed to YC short term; but maybe you are correct if you look pretty far downfield.

Curious to hear what some of the prior proof would be.

Details here: https://www.recode.net/2017/5/14/15638046/willie-brown-colum...

I wish there was a TLD that was regulated such that only a legitimate not for profit organization could have it, similar to .edu. Change having a .org TLD is incredibly misleading. It's not a non-profit, and no, B corporations do not count.

I too get annoyed when people don't abide by history as I know it.

Then realize it's a silly thing to waste focus on and move along.

I think you just described .ngo, though I've never actually seen one in the wild.

.ngo/.ong doesn't require official non-profit status, it just (in that dimension, there are requirements in other dimensions) requires an organization to be non-profit-focussed.

I don't understand the difference. You mean like a C-Corp might technically qualify if they happen to be focused on the public interest and not generating profits?

As a global TLD it surely makes more sense to look at what an organization actually does than just blindly go by what the local tax authority thinks.

> Change having a .org TLD is incredibly misleading. It's not a non-profit,

Even when there was a notional nonprofit requirement for .org, it was never enforced, and it hasn't actually existed for some time. It's only misleading to people who impute a meaning to .org that it does not claim and had never actually had.

I think people are intentionally misleading by using a .org though. Otherwise, why not do a .com? Clearly they believe and/or know there's some sort of "social" aspect to it.

Oh, you mean like academia.edu, which, even though it's a company, got an .edu domain?

With the rise in interest in political activism, it's worth reading Saul Alinksy's Rules for Radicals. All sides are moving towards utilization of the tactics and ethics contained therein, and it's helpful to understand how community organizing works in the age of mass media.

I truly cannot understand how such a non-profit website could implement Google analytics, which tracks the users. Any desire to sign the petitions disappears.

They could utilize piwik analytics.

The article describes Change.org as "a for-profit petition and fundraising website..."

That's a pretty entitled viewpoint. Block it, politically organize, or develop a better product that costs less in time.

A non-profit might be wasting money if they're trying to get piwik analytics working. Time isn't free.

I don't think it's worth tossing out such a statement without at least some justification of the tradeoffs and costs.

Do you think it is a smart deployment of capital and mindshare to spend money for server costs, eng implementation time, and devops time to maintain and scale piwik?

Do you think piwik will realistically work on a website with 180 million users and growing? From what I can tell, Change.org would be one of the largest piwik installations on the internet. Their site mentions they "know of several websites with 100 million pageviews per month".

If not piwik, is there something else?

How about no analytics at all?!

It's weird that GP is downvoted for suggesting that Google should not be given a free pass to spy on a site that contains sensitive information about people's political opinions.

You cannot run a massive, scalable website without analytics the same way you cannot run massive, scalable infrastructure without monitoring. It's like driving with your eyes closed.

This discussion got me thinking about releasing my own open source replacement for Google Analytics and how I would achieve that. Seems like such an interesting challenge.

Yes, lets have Gates investing our app, google provide stats, facebook for logings. What's wrong ?

Some companies make me laugh loud. How many petitions you really can take part, before you recognise that your facebook site is blocked and youtube account deleted.

I hope people could wakeup for reality.

Every time when Bill Gates kind of people invest on something, my alarm bells start to ring. Something is not right.

Agenda will change for sure, investors will change the company.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com