Change.org the world's largest social change platform with over 80 million users in 196 countries announced today that it has raised $25 million Series C investment from technology, business, entertainment and media business leaders in an effort to grow its team, improve its technology and further its growth. Changes.org has brilliantly aligned its social mission with investor who possess the skills and the network that comes with building from the ground up and leading global enterprises.
As a Certified ‘B’ Corporation , Change.org is held tod high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency set by B Lab. It has been named among the top 10 percent of social good companies with a positive impact on the community.
Change.org campaigns are as greatly varied - from a petition requesting to pass the "Michael Brown, Jr. Law" to begin equipping police with body cameras to saving a Pakistani mother from death accused of blasphemy - than the global communities that it serves. And with this latest Series C investment, Change.org plans to expand its engineering team to improve upon its technology to address the needs of its users globally.
In the coming year, Its engineering team will develop a mobile app to enable people to take immediate action based on their location or real-time news; to build tools that will connect directly elected officials with its activists citizens and finally localization development through better translation tools.
Investors participating in this Series C round include:
* Ali and Hadi Partovi (co-founders, Code.org)
* Arianna Huffington (founder, Huffington Post)
* Ariel Poler (chairman, Textmarks)
* Ashton Kutcher & Guy Oseary (A-Grade Investments)
* Bill Gates
* Bryan Johnson (founder, Braintree & OS Fund)
* Dan Rosensweig (CEO, Chegg)
* Diane Tang (fellow, Google)
* Evan Williams (co-founder, Twitter & Obvious Ventures)
* Gideon Yu (former CFO, Facebook & YouTube)
* James Currier (co-founder, Tickle & Ooga Labs)
* Jeff Weiner (CEO, Linkedin)
* Jeffrey Walker (ret. co-founder & managing partner, JPMorgan Partners)
* Jerry Yang (co-founder, Yahoo! & AME Cloud Ventures)
* Joe Lonsdale (co-founder, Palantir)
* Jonathan Sackler (Chairman, Kokino LLC)
* The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
* Katie Stanton (vice president of global media, Twitter)
* Lorna Borenstein (founder & CEO, Grokker)
* Louis Eisenberg (Facebook)
* Michael Birch (co-founder, Bebo)
* Dr. Mortimer D. Sackler Family
* Nicolas Berggruen (Berggruen Institute)
* Omidyar Network
* Rick Segal (Managing Partner, Rethink)
* Reid Hoffman (co-founder, Linkedin)
* Richard Branson (founder, Virgin Group)
* Sam Altman (president, Y Combinator)
* Shawn Byers (MITS Fund, LLC)
* Trawalla Foundation
* Uprising
* Warner Philips (founder and managing partner, KW Forever Ventures)
Impressive.
I am a social journalist covering technology innovations and the founder of RushPRNews.com, an international newswire.
All author postsAt Culture, Religion & Tech, take II in Miami on October 29, 2024
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Today as citizens of the world, we face a daunting array of social and environmental problems ranging from health care and civil rights to global warming and economic inequality. For each of these issues, whether local or global in scope, there are millions of people who care passionately about working toward a solution but have no way of connecting with each other to advance a common goal.
Change.org aims to transform social activism by serving as the central platform that connects likeminded people, whatever their interests, and enables them to exchange information, share ideas, and collectively act to address the issues they care about.
To augment the power of the grassroots networks that develop through Change.org, we help connect these networks to the many nonprofit organizations that are already working to advance worthy causes around the world - over 1 million in total. We facilitate dialogue and collaboration by creating a social network around each nonprofit, thereby allowing people to participate in ways never before possible - by posting ideas and suggestions, engaging in direct dialogue, and organizing communities of donors, volunteer events, and rallies.
What we are proposing, in short, is a fundamental change in the way people engage in social issues. We hope you'll join us in transforming this vision into reality.