Change.org has significantly altered how change is orchestrated worldwide since its launch in 2007. Today, with change.org, creating a petition online and being able to get thousands of signatures in days has become easy with the combination of social media and the passion of small groups of people. Change.org gives you an opportunity to support the causes you believe in and the social change initiatives that you want to get behind.
What users of change.org have realized quickly, though, is how to get pressure put on the issues they want, sometimes indirectly. A group called Groundswell began a petition to get Village Voice Media to sex trafficking on its website backpage.com, a site that openly supports prostitution, often of children. And while nearly a quarter of a million signatures were gathered, what a member of this group realized is that individual opinions may not make a difference to Village Voice Media. So one person began a second petition – encourage corporate advertisers to pull their financial support of Village Voice until backpage.com is shut down entirely.
That petition is getting traction, causing Best Buy to distance itself from Village Voice Media. Read the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal article about Best Buy’s stance by clicking here.
What does this teach us? First, that one group, one person, one signature can make a difference – and sometimes that one makes a difference more than a quarter of a million. What else does this teach us? Get to the money, get to the problem. Opinions don’t matter, but dollars do. It remains to be seen whether or not Village Voice will shut down its garbage can of a website backpage.com, but whatever the outcome, I want to applaud the individuals who started this fight and corporations like Best Buy for getting in the mix.
About the Author: Marcy Twete
Marcy Twete is the Founder and CEO of Career Girl Network and the author of the book “You Know Everybody! A Career Girl’s Guide to Building a Network That Works.” At Career Girl Network, Marcy provides women with information, resources, and networking to empower them in their careers and to advance the work of women in business as a whole. Prior to launching Career Girl Network, Marcy worked in numerous nonprofit organizations and as a consultant in the field of nonprofit fundraising, marketing, and community relations. Marcy is a graduate of the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph, Minnesota, and a native of rural North Dakota. She is the Vice Chair of the Chicago Board of Directors for Step Up Women’s Network in Chicago and a member of the Advisory Board for Girls on the Run Twin Cities, and is dedicated to advancing the work of organizations that move the needle for women and girls worldwide.
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