Change.org, you’ve got to change your practices!

You might have noticed – and even supported – Glossy Team Sunrise (GTS), established to save Glossy Black Cockatoo habitat at Sunrise from destruction. As members of the team leading this advocacy and action, we have been truly humbled by the support and comments from the wider community.

But, unfortunately, some of our supporters might have been duped by Change.org – a San Francisco based online business that bills itself as “the world’s platform for change”.

Change.org took it upon itself to seek donations from people signing a petition organised by us at Glossy Team Sunrise to seek the names of supporters, not collect funds.

It’s not just us, though. Change.org is misleading supporters of all individual causes that access its site. It’s tantamount to a scam.

The site asks people who sign petitions to ‘complete their signature’ by ‘chipping in’ to help the cause. The strong suggestion is that the cause will benefit from these donations. But in fact Change.org retains all the funds, won’t even disclose the amount contributed nor provide any details about how the funds are being used.

Glossy Team Sunrise is seeking to protect an endangered Sunrise Beach glossy black cockatoo habitat from clear-felling and we’re doing it through a program of community awareness as well as negotiation with the developers and Noosa Council.

As the petition took off and became widely shared, my alarm bells went off when a friend called to tell me she’d donated funds. I was alarmed because our group had decided not to raise funds at this point.

We then realised that Change.org was surreptitiously acquiring these donations.
Donors felt scammed and I feel our credibility has been undermined. I wouldn’t want anyone else to have this happen to them.

I have subsequently engaged in a long and unsatisfactory exchange with Change.org, which has said it ‘could look into changing the wording’ on its site, but I don’t consider that anything other than a sop.

Change.org have developed a successful platform to support ‘the greater good’ and I understand software development is costly. But I believe piggy-backing the generosity of donors in this rather oblique way is harmful to the grass roots activism Change.org dependent on. Change.org’s lack of transparency and accountability needs to be called out.

Change.org has, at our request, removed the ‘Chip in to promote’ key from our Save the Glossies petition. But it has refused to give details about how the already raised $400 would be used.

Change.org is a certified BCorporation and was named ‘2018 Best For The World Honorees’. I have asked BCorp to look at the issue and will ask the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission to have a closer look, too.

In the meantime I thank all Glossy Team Sunrise supporters and signatories for their generosity and we hope something good will come from it.