Activists no longer need to go door to door asking for petitions. A number of online tools can connect you to like-minded individuals quickly and easily via online petitions.
An online petition can not only show strength in numbers, but done well, it can lead to further, more powerful action. There are many online petitions – some with millions of signatures. Signing these is a simple way to show your support. Online petitions work best when people take further actions beyond signing.
Online petitions versus street campaigns can save a lot of time and legwork for nonprofits.
They can be an outlet for people who wouldn’t normally get involved in a cause, but it’s best to be leading people away from “slacktivism” and to more and more significant actions – one step after another.
Online Petitions – Define Your Goal
There are many types of goals for petitions. Your goal with the online petition can be to convince a decision maker to take a certain action, to build up a list of people interested in a cause, to spur additional action and fundraising and/or to convince the media the public cares about a topic. Whatever your goal, make it a SMART goal – specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound.
When putting together your online petition, it’s important to think about your target audience and which platforms are best for them. But it’s also important to think through which tool can help move them down your impact funnel to take more significant actions for your cause.
Should Your Online Petition Be On Your Website?
This is a key decision. Sending people to your website might not be as simple to set up as some of these tools, but it offers you more control. If you decide on a paid marketing campaign, you can also retarget the people who end up on your website with Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, etc.. While it does offer more control, maybe your website isn’t a high quality site that people can quickly trust. In that case, you might not get the same amount of visibility or it will just be difficult to make the petition look as clean as it looks on another platform.
If you do want the petition on your website:
- You could use forms that your content management system offers and simply set up a page.
- You could try this with a plug-in if the content management system you use has a robust plug-in marketplace – such as WordPress.
- An embedded form from a trust-worthy third party could also make sense. You could have more control plus gain more visibility on the platform. Embedded forms are more universal – you can usually use them effectively independently of how your website is set up. While you lose some control, you do gain ease of use and the user experience will likely be better as well. Your nonprofit’s website was likely not set up for online petitions specifically, but these embedded petition tools are and can help extend your website.
What Further Actions Should Online Petition Signers Take?
If you want to follow up with signers via email, it’s important to choose your petition tool carefully. If you host in on your site with a sign up form there, you might not get the same visibility. There’s many people on email lists on petition websites that will get updates about related petitions or are looking on the site for petitions to sign – it’s an audience that’s ready to act. Plus, it’s an audience that might not be aware of your cause. so you can use these platforms to increase your base.
Sometimes signing simply isn’t enough. What else can signers do?
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Also, you want your petition to be highly shareable. This is an easy further action people can take. They can let their networks know they signed and encourage others to sign too.
Many platforms make this easy. You want to try to have inspiring and encouraging words about sharing in a thank you for signing follow-up with them.
You also should follow-up with signers – you can send occasional milestones and updates via the platform you choose, on social media. If you collect email addresses, you can do this over email too.
Make sure you let your petition signers know you appreciate their signatures.
In these follow-ups, you can further encourage sharing. You could also think about fundraising, or ask people to write their representative, or educate themselves further about a cause with an article/video, or encourage people to join a rally or volunteer. Think through which are important to your cause and a strategy to promote them. Keep in mind, after people take the smaller actions, you can encourage them to take bigger ones.
Lastly, if you want to target people in a particular location to give the petition to an elected official, then you might have more trouble without knowing where they are based.
Choosing An Online Petition Tool
There are a number of free third-party options such as change, care2petitions, avaaz, ipetitions, move on and gopetition. These could all get more signatures and more visibility than just hosting it on your website with a form.
However, it might not be possible to download the emails afterwards. If that is essential to the actions you want people to take after they sign, then you might want to think through other options.
There are some paid options such as dogooder that could let you collect emails. Their networks are not quite as large though as Change.org. Plus, you would be paying for this service. It might be worth it though, to have a clean, easy set up and access to a third-party network plus emails.
Some online petition tool tips:
- With care2petitions, you can embed the free petition on your website. This could be a great way to not only have a page on care2petitions and gain traction there, but also have more control over how it is set up on your site. It also has a very large network.
- You can also embed a dogooder action on another site. This is a paid platform, but it could be especially useful for a political campaign. It doesn’t cost much and might be worth it if you want to collect email addresses.
- There is also a free versions of gopetition and if you get their premium services you could get access to emails – it’s fairly affordable if your petition takes off.
- Change is a massive platform and you might get the most visibility there.
When you choose a tool think through:
- How can you contact signers? Can you send emails? Can you send out updates?
- What is the follow up with signers like? Do they have an option to donate? To take further action? Do they make it easy to share?
- How much more exposure will it provide? Do they have many people on the site? Do they invite people to more petitions over email?
- How easy is it to set up and how is the user experience? Test it out for yourself first.
- What is the cost? Many are free, plus you could find some free options.
- You might also want to consider a more niche site for particular petitions. This can help you better target your audience plus on many of these sites you can find for and against campaigns.
Marketing Your Online Petition
Once you have your goal, your tool chosen, your audience and call-to-action defined, it’s time for a marketing plan.
First off, make sure the petition page itself is very compelling. Inspiring text plus a video/image showing its importance can go a long way. In a succinct way, express the “why” for people. Try to draw out an emotional and intellectual connection for people to latch onto. A good petition in the right hands can market itself. Learn more about how to use compelling images/video and call people to action for your petition.
Online petition marketing ideas
- If you are a nonprofit, you should consider the Google Ad Grant. $10,000 monthly as an in-kind advertising grant can go a very long way.
- You should also try to get the media involved. You can contact local media and national media, plus put together a press release. If it’s related to a news story, you might want to follow up with the journalist.
- Promote it to your email list.
- Promote it on your website – perhaps even in the main menu.
- Social media is of course crucial as well. You should post videos and images about it. You might also ask people to share why it was important for them to sign it.
- Try to get media influencers involved.
- A paid campaign might be worthwhile as well – think through a marketing budget.
Online Petitions For Nonprofits Conclusion
If you have a trustworthy website, need information on petition signers or don’t want to pay for a service, then hosting it on your site can be a great option. You will just need to work a lot harder on marketing it. Perhaps you really just want to reach as many people as possible. A free platform with millions of users – many of whom are looking for petitions to sign – could be worth it.
Done the right way, an online petition can get more exposure on an important issue and lead to crucial actions. For many causes, it’s well worth pursuing.