Ben Rattray

@brattray · Founder and CEO, Change.org

@iamcuan shifting political influence from parties and paid ads to the most trusted people in every community in america -- by making it easy for anyone to quickly source candidate recommendations for every office - from city council to mayor to state rep - from the people they most trust/respect. it might seem ambitious, but it is absolutely possible :)

Chaib Yusuf

@chaibyusuf · Creative Entrepreneurship Trainer

@brattray What are the best books you've ever read about changing ourselves & change in countries or organizations or comapanies ?

3 share tweet・a year ago

@brattray · Founder and CEO, Change.org

@chaibyusuf i think the best book on personal change, despite the seemingly silly title, is Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. it's brilliant, and the first two chapters in particular are some of the most empowering and thought-provoking you'll read.

upvote share tweet・a year ago

Danielle Newnham

@daniellenewnham · Founder, The Junto Network. Author

Awesome work you are doing with Change.org Ben, and I know many people whose lives have changed/been made better by using or reading the site. My question is - what petition has personally moved you the most and why?

@brattray · Founder and CEO, Change.org

@daniellenewnham the petition that's moved me most is probably the series of campaigns to end the ban on gay Boy Scouts, which was successful after 9 months and 2 million participants. one thing to note is that it was actually a swarm of more than 100 petitions on the site that helped win this ultimate victory - from petitions to companies to suspend donations to the Boy Scouts to petitions to individual troop leaders to come out against the policy (many of which were successful), and i think this is a sign of the future of effective social movements online - not single campaigns, but hundreds of distributed campaigns that chip away at a much bigger problem (as has been the past with more traditional offline movements).

3 share tweet・a year ago

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Mike Coutermarsh

@mscccc · Code @ Product Hunt

@brattray hey ben! Love Change.org. I feel like everyone I know uses it once or twice a year. I'm wondering if that's something you've seen as well & how do you go about increasing daily usage (if that's a goal)?

@brattray · Founder and CEO, Change.org

@mscccc YES! transforming our user experience from something that is episodic (where people sign a petition every so often when a major issue arises in the news or something happens in their community) to a more regularly experience is a major focus of ours this year. the opportunity is clearly in front of us - for any campaign that people join, there are a huge number of additional things that happen within that campaign and ways people can participate that we don't currently surface, and for any city, there are hundreds of relevant campaigns that have been started that we don't show people - and we'll be releasing features to address those opportunities in the coming months. (if you have any great product people you want to recommend, we're also hiring! :)

Theoharis Dimarhos

@theo_dimarhos · Marketing+Biz Dev at AngelouEconomics

Hey Ben! What have you found makes people sign/share/interact most? What are the tipping points?

@brattray · Founder and CEO, Change.org

@theo_dimarhos we've found two of the most important factors, which won't be surprising, are (1) compelling personal stories (which get people emotionally engaged) and (2) timeliness (which often rides the news cycle). when these are both present, it's a potent mix...

Zach Cmiel

@zach_cmiel · CEO, PoKoBros

Hello! Since you just released the new Change Politics platform, what do you think would be the next platform for change.org??

@brattray · Founder and CEO, Change.org

@zach_cmiel we have more ideas for extensions to change.org than we have time to develop, so we're going to take a first look at the response to Change Politics and go from there. but we think there are a huge number of opportunities for how to empower what will soon be hundreds of millions of people to create change using all of their resources (and not just their voice, which we've focused on thus far), so we'll be exploring these in the coming years...

Cuan-Chai Megghross

@iamcuan · Angel Investor, Brainyloft

@brattray What advice would you give to entrepreneurs of color?

@brattray · Founder and CEO, Change.org

@iamcuan one of the things not frequently acknowledged in the tech world is how important networks and personal relations are to things like raising investment (which, for almost any tech venture, is a necessary condition for success). this often puts people of color in a disadvantaged position, not out of intent, but because people of color are less likely to have access to these networks (although circumstances obviously vary by person). so the suggestion i'd have is to invest significant time reaching out to individual people (in particular entrepreneurs) to establish the sort of relationships and networks that are crucial for things like fundraising. this certainly isn't a panacea - there are systemic problems like unconscious bias that the industry needs to do more to address - but i think it's a valuable start.

Cuan-Chai Megghross

@iamcuan · Angel Investor, Brainyloft

@brattray What was one of the most moving stories to you that was posted on Change?

@brattray · Founder and CEO, Change.org

@iamcuan one of the most moving campaigns on the site was actually the first one we saw that went viral, started by a woman (ndume funda) whose partner had been subjected to "corrective rape" in south africa (an awful practice where men will rape lesbian women to try to turn them straight). ndume started a petition to get the government to take action, and despite having no connections she got 170k people from 150 countries to take action, embarrassed the government, and got them to pass a national task force to investigate and stop the incidence of corrective rape in south africa. this was the first campaign that showed us the incredible potential of even the seemingly least powerful people on earth to have immense impact.

Emily Hodgins

@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt

@brattray what has been the most memorable or stand-out moment of your career to date?

@brattray · Founder and CEO, Change.org

@ems_hodge when the Boy Scouts of America announced they would accept gay scouts for the first time in history, following a massive number of change.org campaigns on the topic