Glad to see the HN community getting excited about this issue. In my professional capacity as the resident technologist at an activist-y non-profit, I have a few things to note:
1) Single issue organizations are quick to grow but hard to sustain. Once the first fight is over, how do you take your list and pivot to a new issue? People lose interest quickly unless there's a hook to keep them involved.
2) Petitions may seem silly, and many of them are, but some have actually had big successes. These are due more to the strategy behind them than the actual numbers; you have to find the right leverage point in the political process to make the numbers matter. They are also useful as signals to organizers that people are interested in an issue, even if they won't be successfully delivered.
3) Gamification in this space is hard. You're one step away from the "slacktivism" critique, and sliding ever closer with each point or badge you give out. For some examples of this being done well, see http://repurpose.workersvoice.org/
For the "3 actions you must take", the handwritten letter is probably the most impactful. Staffers tend to weight online signatures, phone calls, letters, and in person visits by increasing orders of magnitude of importance. Getting 100,000 signatures is now "worth" less than 1,000 letters, particularly as petition numbers continually increase.
> 1) Single issue organizations are quick to grow but hard to sustain. Once the first fight is over, how do you take your list and pivot to a new issue? People lose interest quickly unless there's a hook to keep them involved.
Instead of working to sustain single-issue organizations, a better strategy might be to reduce the friction to creating successful, short-term organizations in the first place. Something like an activist flash mob.
1) Single issue organizations are quick to grow but hard to sustain. Once the first fight is over, how do you take your list and pivot to a new issue? People lose interest quickly unless there's a hook to keep them involved.
2) Petitions may seem silly, and many of them are, but some have actually had big successes. These are due more to the strategy behind them than the actual numbers; you have to find the right leverage point in the political process to make the numbers matter. They are also useful as signals to organizers that people are interested in an issue, even if they won't be successfully delivered.
3) Gamification in this space is hard. You're one step away from the "slacktivism" critique, and sliding ever closer with each point or badge you give out. For some examples of this being done well, see http://repurpose.workersvoice.org/
For the "3 actions you must take", the handwritten letter is probably the most impactful. Staffers tend to weight online signatures, phone calls, letters, and in person visits by increasing orders of magnitude of importance. Getting 100,000 signatures is now "worth" less than 1,000 letters, particularly as petition numbers continually increase.