Petitions are an excellent way to garner support for a cause you care about, to collate a database of potential future followers, and to put a spotlight on an issue of importance within your community. As a method of mobilizing, petitions are relatively simplistic to execute, making them a worthwhile investment of time and resources for any NGO, political candidate or organization hoping to build a support base. To make sure your petition gets off on the right foot, it’s important to have the right tools in place from the beginning of your petition- creating process. Online petition platforms are one such tool that can make the process of launching a petition far smoother, and in this article, we’ll be examining some of the key benefits posed by this type of tool and the impact it can have on your action’s overall success so that you can feel ready to invest in this asset ahead of starting your petition campaign.
What is a Petition Platform?
A petition platform is a singular location, typically online, in which a petition can be managed, shared, and signed. Platforms of this nature are accessible to both your volunteer team and signatories and allow for different degrees of access that can be granted depending on the type of information needed by each. Within this online space, you can easily customize your petition to reflect the needs of your action, add different filtering options, and, in some cases, connect it to a mobile app supported by the platform. Increasingly, petition platforms are becoming the primary means of creating and controlling petitions and have served to simplify the entire petition-creation process greatly.
Ways in which petition platforms have simplified this process:
Singular space for storing all information:
Petition platforms operate as a one-stop-shop for all your petition needs; instead of dividing up your petition management functions across multiple spaces, petition platforms serve as a singular location in which you can complete all of these functions, including keeping track of signatures, analyzing your petition’s progress and storing your signatories’ contact details. This makes the entire process far simpler to manage.
Analysis tools:
As mentioned in the last point, petition platforms allow you to analyze your petition’s progress. This is something that is both difficult and time-consuming to do manually, however with a petition platform, you are provided with regular updates on your petition’s progress. This will allow you to gain important insights into how well your petition is performing, and from this, you can easily adapt your canvassing techniques to more effectively spread the word about your petition.
Easily shared online:
As petition platforms are websites in which your petition is contained, your petition can be rapidly shared to a much broader audience than if it was available only in a physical format. Not only can you now share your petition more easily within your own community, with the help of the internet, your petition can be shared to people far beyond your own area and gain far reaching support for the cause you care about!
Easily shared by your volunteers via the mobile app:
As mentioned at the outset of this article, some petition platforms contain not only an online platform but a mobile app that corresponds with the web platform. When your team of volunteers downloads this app, they can then easily access the petition and begin gaining new signatures at any time, anywhere, via their mobile devices. This greatly increases the chances of gaining the number of signatures needed to achieve the change you’re advocating for, and within a much shorter time frame too!
Conclusion
Whether you’re a hopeful political candidate, an NGO or a grassroots movement, there are huge benefits to creating a petition. That’s why this means of mobilization is growing increasingly popular, and why you and your team of volunteers should strongly consider investing your time and resources into creating one. But before you do, make sure to look at different petition platforms available to you and the ways in which they can help your petition-creation journey. For all the reasons given throughout this article, and for many others, petition platforms are certainly a worthwhile investment for anyone hoping to create an effective petition, and one of the key ways to ensure the success of your campaign to gain supporters, donors or even just to spread awareness for the causes you care about.