Change is proud to introduce the Campaign Success program
The Campaign Success program is a new product offering from Change that allows petition starters to receive real-time coaching and feedback on their petition through simple SMS texting. Since its initial launch at the beginning of 2020, the Campaign Success program has dramatically increased the number of petition victories on the Change.org platform and has empowered thousands of petition starters to be successful digital organizers.
Providing support to petition starters isn’t a new concept here at Change. In fact, we have been providing direct support to petition starters through our campaigns team for several years. Many of today’s most impactful petitions across the entire web achieve their success precisely because of the tireless efforts of our campaigners who work around the globe to amplify the voices of organizers. Unfortunately, our campaigners have historically only been able to provide direct advice and coaching to less than 1% of our petition starters.
However, with the introduction of the Campaign Success program, Change’s ability to offer free campaign advice to more petition starters has increased dramatically, resulting in successful petitions like the campaign to rename the University of Cincinnati’s “Marge Schott Stadium”. Overall, the Campaign Success program has been a testament to how ordinary people can use digital tools to drive real-life social change.
The Campaign Success program has grown to include over 20 digital campaigners who leverage cutting-edge tools built and maintained by teams of engineers, product managers, designers, data analysts, and QA specialists. The Campaign Success team coaches thousands of petition starters a month across the U.S. and Canada and already has concrete plans to expand to all English-speaking countries in 2021.
The program is growing fast, but you might be wondering, “how on earth did all this happen in just a year?!!”
How we got here
Anna Saulwick, Former Chief of Staff,
Current Director of the Campaign Success Team
In the fall of 2019, Campaign Success was just a theory Anna had to better support the numerous petition starters on our platform. Anna tested the idea by texting any petition starter she could find (who consented to give their phone number) free advice on their petition. Anna soon found that petition starters quite liked her support. Anna began to recruit others, such as Sylvia Rolle, our email marketing manager, and she quickly discovered that the petition starters they texted were far more likely to stay engaged with their campaign than starters who did not, and that starters who received support were far more likely to achieve victories.
The early success of Anna’s idea quickly gained support from Change’s executive team, and at the beginning of 2020, we launched the Campaign Success pilot to further experiment with and validate the opportunity.
The pilot quickly proved that it was successful enough to become a full-fledged program. In May 2020 the team grew rapidly to 10 campaigners. These campaigners worked to develop, test & iterate on categorized scripts as well as to discover more efficient ways to give individualized support to our diverse audience of petition starters.
Since the summer of 2020, the Campaign Success team has been consistently expanding and growing in all aspects. The team currently offers support to 4000 petitions a week split between 20+ campaigners, all while actively implementing equitable strategies to ensure that the most marginalized among us have a voice in making change. Feedback from users has been filled with gratitude for the work the team does, and many starters are impressed by how our digital campaigners are able to individually care so much for the change that petition starters want to see in the world.
Anna Saulwick has said this about the breakout success of the Campaign Success program:
This is an excellent multidisciplinary team drawing on the talents of campaigners, product managers, engineers, designers, and data analysts. Together we built a pilot program to validate user demand and show that we could deliver real value to tens of thousands of organizers every month; and then we built a solid permanent team to keep on pushing to find new and better ways to help people make change.
Hear From The Team
Question: Anna, the Campaign Success program has grown immensely, and is shaping up to be Change.org’s most successful outreach program. Where do you see the Campaign Success program going from here?
Anna’s answer:
The future! I’m excited about a couple of things. First, I’m excited about all the impact this team can make in the world: we help regular people learn how to pick up and use the tools of activism to make their communities better, safer, and fairer. So, as the program expands globally we are not only able to help more people to achieve change, but we’re also able to build organizing capacity right throughout our societies.
Second, I’m excited about all the great things the team is going to do: we’re focused on learning everything we can about our users and what works to help them win their campaigns, so that we can offer coaching that increases both motivation and skill. We’re also working on adding new communication channels, and more points of entry into coaching, so that coaching is as accessible as possible.
Camille Cobbs, Member of the Campaign Success Team
The summer of 2020 was defined by the largest protests for racial justice in US history. At the same time, Change.org saw two of its largest-ever campaigns from starters demanding justice for the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
Question: Camille, the Movement for Black Lives has spurred many organizations, including Change.org, to seek to become “anti-racist”, committing significant resources towards racial justice issues and shifting their cultures to be more equitable. How do you think the Campaign Success program has helped with Change.org’s commitment to anti-racism? What opportunities do you see for Campaign Success in this area?
Camille’s Answer:
Campaign Success has been uniquely positioned throughout the BLM movement. We are some of the first to see a racial justice petition when it is created, and get to guide petition organizers as they begin their journey to make change. We have worked alongside grieving mothers who’d lost their sons to police brutality, allies that had witnessed discrimination happening to their friends, and even those wrongfully incarcerated hoping to draw attention to their case.
This sometimes difficult, yet highly rewarding work allows us to give organizers the tools they need to make change happen. With every victory, we get closer to creating a more equitable world.
As we look to the future, we want to make sure we are equipped to uniquely address racial justice petitions. This means training our team to work with those who experience the trauma that results from racist acts, ensuring our services are accessible for those who need it, and providing the correct tools that can empower organizers to reach their victory.”
Lourdes, Member of the Campaign Success Team
Question: There are twenty members of the Campaign Success team, who offer 1:1 coaching every day to people who make petitions on Change.org. Lourdes, why have we staffed a team of campaign experts to do this work? Could we get the same result with a how-to guide or an automated / robot response?
Lourdes’s Answer:
What makes us unique is that we’re able to bring a high level of attention and personalization to helping our users that simply could not be achieved with automated messaging or by using a bot. Every petition is unique, and our coaches are able to read the petition, understand what it’s trying to achieve, and give solid tactical advice to help the petition starter to reach their goals. And by connecting with our users we are able to give them confidence and knowledge so they can go out and advocate for their cause in the most effective way possible.
Next Steps
The Campaign Success team is filled with passionate and talented people like the ones you heard from above. The Campaign Success program is growing every day, and empowering people everywhere to make the change they want to see in the world.
You can give the Campaign Success program a test drive and meet our Campaign Success team personally by starting a petition on Change.org at: www.change.org/start-a-petition. And be sure to follow Change.org on social media to stay up to date with the new ways we’re leveraging technology to empower change-makers!
