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Create a petition

Let's dive into one of Wings's most powerful features: petitions.

Why petitions?​

Petitions are a very powerful tool to raise awareness for a cause and to build a movement, as typically more than half of users signing a petition also subscribe to future email updates.

It is not uncommon for nonprofits who usually only get a handful of subscribers per week, to gain thousands of subscribers with a petition campaign.

The petition strategy: characteristics and variations​

Petitions usually consist of the following elements:

  • The petition itself is typically a dramatic public appeal, asking citizens to support your urgent public appeal to a figure of authority to act in a certain way.
  • It can be presented as a petition, but also as a manifesto one can support, a public letter one can co-sign, et cetera.
  • Petitions work on many levels: they raise awareness, harness public condemnation, build public pressure, and help you organize and recruit supporters and activists.
  • A petition should have a theory of change – it should simply make sense that signing a petition might help you achieve your goal. This goal should appear attainable, be time-bound, measurable, somewhat limited in scope and dramatic.

Petitions: special settings​

Petition campaigns have a couple of special options:

  1. By default, petitions display a counter that shows the number of people who have signed. You can hide this counter by ticking this box.
  2. You can offset the displayed number of signatures by any number. This is especially handy if you also collect signatures on paper, or if you have transitioned from another petition tool.

General settings​

Petitions and other campaign types share quite a few characteristics. Therefore, head over to the general Creating Campaigns page for more information about setting up and launching your petition campaign.