How to drive social change at scale - with Nick Allardice - VP of Product&Design at Change.org - a podcast by Shamanth Rao

My guest today is someone with a very unconventional background. Nick Allardice is the VP of Product & Design at Change.org. Nick started his career as an activist - about as far from the world of tech products as you can imagine. He joined Change.org because it was a tech enabled social platform that could have larger impact than the world of activism that he was in. He led Change.org’s internationalization effort - and subsequently the campaigns team before heading up Change.org’s product team. In today’s very fascinating conversation, we talk about not just what truly drives social change and policy change, but also how growth strategies helped Change.org make a very dramatic transition in its business model. We dive into the mechanics of online activism and how technology & Change.org have fundamentally shifted the way we bring about social change. I’m very excited for this unique and unconventional perspective on growth & social change.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

• What inspired Nick to move from activism to a tech enabled social enterprise. the ambition and scale that comes from being a venture backed social enterprise that makes them more effective than non-profits.
• How public benefit companies sit at the intersection of for-purpose and for-profit - and how these can unlock exponentially more capital for doing good in the world than currently exists.
• There are numerous tools available to activists worldwide - protests, events, rallies, calling up politicians, lobbying the press - and more. Why Change.org focuses on petitions.
• Why Change.org’s lead-generation model wasn’t sustainable. What they found when they looked at their fundamentals and their competition. What their new revenue model was - and what strategies made a difference to their transition, and what were the key things they did to make sure the team’s culture changed.
• The common characteristics of petitions that take off. Change.org’s principle of ‘winning loudly’ - and how that is a principle behind magnifying petitions.
• How Change.org prioritizes countries that are socially important but have low revenue. How Change.org changed its legal structure to handle these things - and how Change.org isn’t a revenue maximizing entity even though it’s for-profit.
• What drives policy change? How petitions catalyze a constellation of media & offline coverage that magnifies the impact of the campaign. Why targeting companies is more likely to lead to change than targeting politicians.

Check out the full transcript and show notes here:
https://howthingsgrow.co/how-to-drive-social-change-at-scale-with-nick-allardice-vp-of-product-design-at-change-org/

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