Some time in early 2015 some members of our local community group, Lockyer Community Action Inc. organised a petition on Change.org for a campaign we were running.

At the time those who set it up, and some of those who signed on to our petition, expressed some concern about the apparently money-oriented nature of the interaction.

At the time I recognised the feeling of unease about the way, some time after I’d signed a petition I’d frequently get an email with a message like:

You signed this petition. Help it reach 25,000 signatures.
Share this petition
or promote it by contributing $5 or more

Over the intervening couple of years that feeling has increased, but it’s only today that I finally decided to do something about it.  I googled “what is change.org?” and got a range of views on the organisation, with probably the majority pointing out that it is a “for-profit” organisation, rather than the “not-for-profit” that many people assume (a misunderstanding which the Change organisation doesn’t seem to do much to counteract).

Ben Rattray founded Change.org in 2007 and in 2010 it adopted its current petition mode.  Since then it has become one of the biggest sites on the Web for anyone seeking to pressure politicians, corporations or others with a public shame campaign.

How does it make its money?  According to Forbes.com in 2012, “Change.org charges groups for the privilege of sponsoring petitions that are matched to users who have similar interests. For example, when a person signs a petition about education and clicks “submit,” a box pops up and shows five sponsored petitions on education to also sign. If a user leaves a box checked that says “Keep me updated on this campaign and others,” the sponsor can then send e-mails directly to that person. It’s not clear from the check box that your e-mail address is being sold to a not-for-profit.”

And, or course, then there are the $5 donations that users are asked to provide to help promote the cause they signed up for.  I’ve always thought that was a bit strange.  You are in the business of helping people to create effective petitions and to spread them to a wide audience, so why do you need a $5 donation from me to make it more effective – and how will you do it?  That’s never explained.

The Forbes.com article in 2012 said that at that time Change.org had 300 paying clients, including Sierra Club, Credo Wireless and Amnesty International.

On their website Change.org explain that the business “is a social enterprise and a certified B Corporation. B Corporations are held to high standards of social and environmental performance, accountability, and transparency set by B Lab, an independent certifying group.”

They also publish a list of ways in which they make their money.  But I bet you never saw a link to that information on one of their web pages asking you to donate to promote a petition.

The Widipedia entry on B Corporations and their certification points out that “The B-Lab certification is a third party standard requiring companies to meet social sustainability and environmental performance standards, meet accountability standards, and to be transparent to the public according to the score they receive on the assessment. B-Lab certification applies to the whole company across all product lines and issue areas. For-profits of all legal business structures are eligible for certification.”

Read that last sentence again.

Soooo … have I changed my feeling of unease about Change.org’s business model?  No, but I now have a clearer understanding of what it is.

Will I continue to sign Change.org petitions?  Yes, when it is something that I feel is important and after I have carefully examined the petition and the body behind it and am comfortable that it is not “green-washing” of something unacceptable.

Will I “donate” (=pay) Change.org to promote a petition I have signed.  No.  Never have and never will.  But I won’t judge you if you do, because I think that there are trade-offs involved in so many of the social and commercial transactions we all have to make every day, and we each have the right to make our own judgements.

I hope Glenda doesn’t mind my moving her comment into a new blog post to make sure her ideas are visible to more people.  I know that many people don’t scan comments to blogs unless they are really interested in the topic under discussion.  Glenda says:

Hi thanks for your update on the dragons, I am at Minden and have also had a lot of activity with my plants I have so far counted 60 buds over 3 dragon poles and have so far had approx 15 flowers that opened,I also I have 5 fruit that are developing at a very rapid rate. I did very little pruning this year because of the long cool season I missed the opportunity as I did not want any further damage from frosts, my dragons have really been powering on and all of my buds are on old growth so far, I have given my plants a good soaking with “seasol” liquid fertiliser and today I am going to throw a handful of blood and bone around the base just to give them a bit of an edge. I have 6 new poles with the red flesh variety but I doubt that I will see any flowers this year, actually I am a bit disappointed with these plants as they seem to be a bit retarded with their growth so far, maybe next year for them. I am really looking forward to the plants peak in budding however my worst fear is that fruit fly will get the taste for the fruit, have you had any trouble in this area, I have read that fruit fly can be a problem. Like you I seem to have lots of ants that seem to be all over the buds so I am hoping that they deter the fruit fly ( your thought would be appreciated).

Here’s my reply:

That’s interesting about your already having 60 buds over three poles – I assume that is three plants?  I made the mistake of following advice that the red variety grow better on a horizontal beam whereas the white ones grow better on poles with “spreader” frames at the top.  The decision was also influenced by wanting to try growing them in a shadehouse and on a heugelklultur base.

If you are not sure what heugelkultur/hugelkultur is have a look at this site.  There are plenty of other sites on the net, but this one explains it well and is not too far from what we have done here.  I’ve been meaning to write something about the design of our beds, but every time I start I run up against the fact that while I was  I was too busy and too dirty and sweaty to stop digging and get the camera.

A general schematic of a heugelkultur mound incorporating a trench

Anyway, back to poles vs beams.  Our three plants are growing up the posts supporting two horizontal beams, each about 1.5-2m long. – see photo below  This doesn’t provide anything like the support for growing lots of branches that three posts with frames would have done.  I’m pretty sure this is why Glenda has 60 buds to our 29 (Glenda I’d love to have a photo of your poles to use here).

Beam trellis – in two sections (you can just make out the second section on the left).  This started out as one long beam, but that restricted access to the back of the garden too much so I cut out a section.  The area under the straw is the newly created heugelkultur bed – the area to the left under sweet potato was done about 12 months earlier.  The heaps of soil on the left have been dug and sieved from the 2nd Huegelkultur Shadehouse. Date of this photo is July 2013.

Other factors?

There is only about 20km between our properties, though Glenda might have an edge over our poor and stony sandstone soil.

The climate is pretty much the same, with the biggest difference being that because we are on a high ridge we never get frosts – the cool air slides off the ridge into the valley before the temperature gets down to frost level.

Another difference is that we are growing one of the deep red varieties, whereas I assume from what Glenda says she has a white variety.  The two varieties may have different numbers of fruit in our climate.

And of course, our garden has been pretty much neglected while we have been fighting the motocross facility proposal for the last two years.  I haven’t made a single batch of compost in that time.

Regarding fruit fly, we have never had a fruit fly problem with out Dragon Fruit.  I suspect that the thick skin offers some protection.  It’s also interesting that the parrots have not yet attacked our Dragon Fruit.  The shadehouse is not closed in, but only has 30% shadecloth draped over the frame and down to the blue batten you can see in the photo above.  Normally the parrots would find any interesting fruit in this sort of structure.

2015 has been one hell of a year, brought about by a proposal for a major motocross facility in our community.  Most of our time this year has gone into working with community members trying to get this proposal squashed.

There were a few posts on the fight earlier in the year, and in reality it took up much of the time of many people from mid-December 2014 when we first found out about it to the end of May, when the proposal was refused in the local Council by a seven/nil vote.

In our more hopeful moments we ventured to think that this would be the end of it: 232 objecting submissions to Council (vs 2 supporting submissions) and a resounding defeat in Council; you would think that the proponent might have realised that he had picked the wrong place and the wrong community.

Unfortunately the proponent appealed in the Planning and Environment Court in July.  Even though the Court rules require that appeals are progressed within six weeks (or three months depending on which document you read – but the six weeks seems to take precedence), there was no movement on the appellant’s part for some four months.  Since then they have undertaken to provide documents to all the other parties, but these have not been received more than one month after their own, self-imposed deadline for providing them.

The delay is very stressful for all concerned, and I cannot help wondering whether this is the intent of the delays.

But we will fight on.  Seven members of the community have elected to become co-respondents to the appeal, as has one non-government organisation – and of course the Council is the main respondent, since it is their decision that is being appealed.

Regardless of the ongoing motocross business, our attempts at living as sustainably as possible go on, and will be the focus of part of the posts on this blog from now on.

If you are still among our patient readers, thank you for your patience.  It is very much appreciated.  And if you are one of our new viewers who joined during 2015, welcome, and we will attempt to give you more of what has attracted you to this site.

Amazing as it seems, despite the fact that I managed only eight postings here since the beginning of the year, the readership continued go grow right through to October when it peaked at 1,665 views by 1,175 visitors for the month.

Since then numbers have slightly declined, with only 811 visitors so far this month (not surprising given the lack of new material) – though that is nearly twice as many as in January.  Year on year, we have had twice as many views and visitors in 2015 as in 2014, and four times as many as in 2013.