StartChange.org is a 501(c)4 advocacy group. Our mission is to bring together the efforts of thousands of people in online campaigns to create progressive outcomes offline. At StartChange.org, we seek to engage the energies and the ideas of the more than 150,000 who have joined our email list. Together, we will fight to make sure our media is fair, businesses are honest, and our government is not radicalized.

Our History
StartChange.org is a successor to the StopSinclair campaign, a successful online effort to prevent the Sinclair Broadcast Group from running an hour-long attack on John Kerry on TV stations across the country in October 2004. During the StopSinclair campaign. 152,407 signed the online petition, 3595 people contributed $165,603 to pay for targeted print and TV ads in Ohio and Nevada, and hundreds more came to rallies.

The StopSinclair campaign began on October 10 in response to an LA Times news story that ran the day before. The Times had reported that Sinclair Broadcast Group planned to force the 62 television stations it owns and operates to air the anti-John Kerry program Stolen Honor. Within 36 hours we had registered and launched www.StopSinclair.org. In ten days, we collected more than 150,000 online signers, and organized successful rallies at Sinclair corporate headquarters in Hunt Valley, Maryland and in front of the White House. Our site also served as a clearinghouse to help the public identify Sinclair shareholders and advertisers and alert them to the company’s extraordinary plan to try to air a program that was in essence an attack ad for George W. Bush’s presidential campaign. A week after launching the site, we asked our petition signers to help pay for full-page newspaper ads and 30-second television ads in Ohio and Nevada markets where Sinclair has stations. In five days, we raised $165,603 online.

Our petition, rallies, and advertisements were featured in more than 415 news stories and covered by major media including CNN, Fox, MSNBC, The Washington Post, Time Magazine, and The Associated Press.

Ultimately, Sinclair backed down and ran a far less biased program than the new reports indicated Sinclair had originally planned. The show was widely panned as boring and uninformative. The informal coalition of groups working independently had Stopped Sinclair.

StartChangePAC
StartChange PAC is a sister organization of StartChange.org. StartChange PAC is a political action committee that seeks to shift the debate in Washington and help elect progressive politicians through online rapid response campaigns. You can learn more by visiting StartChangePAC.org.