Choose your Decision Maker
A decision maker is a person in an authority position who has the ability to help implement the change you seek. This could include a politician, an influencer, or a business person. Once you have a specific goal for your petition, you can figure out who this person (or persons) should be. For instance, elected officials can help with legal issues, while a business leader could help make changes in the private sector.
Gather information about your selected decision maker to include in the petition. By including an email address for the right decision makers, you can let them know about your petition and give readers confidence that your petition can win.
Pick people, not a group or organisation
Unlike an organization, you can hold people directly accountable. Make your decision maker the person or people within an organisation who are responsible for your solution or who you need to convince. For example “Mayor Jane Smith” rather than “Parliment.”
Choose someone directly responsible
It’s better to target the people who can give you what you want rather than more senior, public figures. Someone directly responsible can make a decision and implement your solution faster. They are also more sensitive to public pressure because they aren’t used to it.
Include their email
Change.org will automatically notify your decision maker when a petition is set up and when it gets signatures. So it’s important to include the right email address. To find it you can:
Use internet searches and check inside PDF documents like conference presentations or board papers.
Use the company email convention and try variations. For example to contact Tallah Smith you might try t.smith@company.com, tallah@company.com, smith@company.com, tallah.smith@company.com. The email that doesn’t bounce is right!
Call and ask!