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Networks that made change happen

Lucy Bernholz

• 2 min read


(Photo by Noah Sussman, Creative Commons license on Flickr)
I'm looking for examples of networks that have made some kind of positive social change happen. Ideally these are networks that:

  • Consist of unaffiliated individuals, not coalitions or alliances of existing nonprofits
  • Made something concrete, and socially positive, happen
  • Continue to exist after making a change - so they are more than "just" a protest group (this is the hardest one to find)

I want to be able to (oversimply) describe the impact like this:

"The X network made Y happen."

Here are some examples I know of or that folks have shared with me - along with my parenthetical questions about them.

  • David Pogue led a twitter campaign - "Take Back the Beep" - that changed how cell phone companies charge for accessing your voicemail. (but was it just a protest network?)
  • Beth Kanter's network of friends raised enough money to send a Cambodian woman to college (Do members of Beth's network know they are in something together or does only Beth know them all?)
  • The International Campaign to Ban Land Mines got international treaty signed and won the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize for its work (But it is more of a coalition of NGOs then an example of the definition I used above)
  • The Coalition for Airline Passengers Bill of Rights got NY State law changed in only 8 months (I don't know enough about their org structure to stand behind this example yet)
  • Twitter Vote Report monitored the 2008 U.S Presidential Election, sharing info on wait times and reporting on voting problems (See case study here http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/resources/publications/public_media_20_field_report_building_social_media_infrastructure_to_engage/)
  • The Peanut Butter Plan has more than 2300 individual members in its Facebook group and feeds homeless people in several cities one night per month. (There are pros and cons to this kind of volunteerism)
  • A network of environmental activists made Verizon apologize for sponsoring an anti-climate event on its Facebook Wall (protest and...?)

Thanks to everyone who shared those examples.

Please send me your sentences - I'll buy you a cup of coffee if I use them in the piece I'm writing (assuming you live somewhere in Bay Area or somewhere I travel to frequently. And assuming you drink coffee. Otherwise, I'll owe you one!)

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