Change.org

A Change.org is Gonna Come (to Your Non-Profit Org)

By Micah L. Sifry and Joshua Levy

Change.org — the social network that seeks to connect people around social issues — recently announced a major new addition to its platform. Calling itself the “Ning for nonprofits,” the site now lets nonprofit organizations create “branded networks” that can tap into Change.org’s community of users but retain their own look and feel.

Ben Rattray, Change.org’s founder, has spent the past year building up the community on the site, and the announcement represents a second phase of the sites’ development as well as a response to the needs of many nonprofits and also for Change.org to tap into a larger user base.

Recently, we had a chance to catch up with Rattray by phone, and here’s what we learned.

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Joshua Levy, 11/12/2007 - 1:39pm

A good piece in today’s New York Times looks at the frenetic amount of philanthropy taking place online, with a particular look at how young people are using Facebook, and it includes a quote from PdF contributor Allison Fine.

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Raise Money on Facebook: Four Fundraising Applications You Need to Know About

By Peter Deitz

In June 2007, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg announced the release of FBML, a scripting language that assists developers in creating custom “applications” for the popular social network and its 40 million active users. Within days of the announcement, developers at Change.org, ChipIn, and Firstgiving chartered their courses for Facebook. Their common goal: to create applications that would add unprecedented fundraising capabilities to the most ‘sticky’ web site in history.

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afine, 08/22/2007 - 4:34pm

In my Inbox the other day I found a link to the new Presidential Matchmaker on Change.org. "Find out which presidential candidate most matches your views" promised the email. So, I went and guess what, Change.org thinks I should marry Hillary Clinton. And they're right, I am a huge Hillary fan and recently sent her a donation!

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Joshua Levy, 08/22/2007 - 10:19am

Discovering the major and minor edits made to candidates' Wikipedia profiles; Jonah Goldberg argues against the idea that the web is inherently suited to liberals; surprising findings about the effect of Facebook and MySpace on political opinion; Change.org gets into the presidential quiz game; Newt launches a new site called "American Solutions"; and the difficulties of registering and logging into candidates' sites.

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Micah L. Sifry, 06/06/2007 - 9:10am

[Yesterday, I spent an hour on the phone with Joe Green, co-founder of Project Agape, a still-partially-in-stealth start-up that is developing political social networking tools and platforms. It launched with a major new application built for Facebook Platform, called Causes. In the interview, Green talks about what he learned from his first experiment in building an online social network tuned around politics (See my March 2006 PdF article "Essembly.com: Finally, a Friendster for Politics"), his theories of online organizing, new features that Causes is going to roll out, tools Project Agape is building for MySpace and elsewhere, how to deal with privacy concerns, and how Causes differs from Change.org.]

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