Running a petition

A petition collects public signatures behind a cause and, optionally, delivers them to a named recipient — an official, an institution, anyone your organization wants to put support in front of. Petitions live at Actions, then Petitions in the workspace sidebar.

Creating a petition

Select New petition. Give it a title (this generates a URL slug you can edit) and a signature goal. Petitions are created as a draft with public visibility, and saving takes you straight to the petition's edit page to build out the rest.

Building out the petition

On the edit page you can set:

• Description and an optional cover image.
• Signature goal — drives the progress thermometer on the public page.
• Deadline (optional) — once it passes, the public page stops accepting signatures and shows the petition as closed instead.
• Visibility — public (anyone with the link), members (signed-in members of your org only), or private (staff only, useful while a petition is still being drafted).
• Publish status — draft, published, or archived. A petition only becomes signable and publicly listed once it's published (and visibility is public). Archive a petition once it's run its course to take it out of active rotation without losing its signature history.

Recipients are the people or offices the petition is addressed to — add a name, title, jurisdiction, and (optionally) an email or mailing address for each one. Recipients aren't delivered automatically: once you've sent a petition to its recipient however your organization actually does that (email, mail, hand-delivered), come back to the recipient's entry and select Mark delivered, with optional notes.

Only owners and admins can create, edit, or delete a petition; anyone with access to Petitions can view the list.

How signing and confirming works

Visitors sign from the petition's public page with their name and email (city, state, and ZIP are optional) and can opt in to updates from your organization. After they submit, OrganizeOS sends a confirmation email — the signature only counts toward your goal, the public signer wall, and any recipient delivery once they click the link in that email. This double opt-in step is what makes a signature count trustworthy: your organization can stand behind "10,000 signatures" because those are 10,000 people who actually confirmed. Signing again with the same email later doesn't create a duplicate.

For the visitor-facing walkthrough of this flow, see Signing a petition.

Signatures and export

The edit page shows a running count of confirmed signatures. Select Export CSV to download every signature on record — name, email, city, state, ZIP, signed-at and confirmed-at timestamps, and whether they opted into updates. The export includes signatures still waiting on confirmation too, so you can see who hasn't confirmed yet. Use it to hand signatures to a recipient or to review support before marking a recipient delivered.

If your organization has chapters

When your organization has descendant chapters, a Broadcast to N chapters toggle appears when creating or editing a petition. Turning it on makes the petition visible on every descendant chapter's petition list, and — depending on each chapter's own settings — on their public site too, while still crediting each signature to the chapter whose link the signer actually used.

Why this matters

A petition is often the easiest way for someone to publicly back a cause before they're ready for a bigger ask. Confirming signatures keeps your count honest, and tracking recipients and delivery means a petition doesn't just accumulate names — it turns into something you actually handed to the person it was addressed to.