change.org

This website does a lot of petitions - in fact the whole site is all about petition creating, signing, and publicizing - but other than spreading awareness, are there any concrete outcomes from them?

I don't really see or hear about a lot of these petitions resulting in goals or objectives really being met, particularly when they are on larger scope issues like the death penalty in California or anything related to Congress and international matters.  I'm sure they help for more of the local issues, but am unsure about the others.

I suppose it is useful for giving people a sense of accomplishment - simply by clicking the "SIGN" button, they feel like they did something, took some sort of action, and could even pass it on to others if they really wanted to be proactive.

This is fine, but I just don't know how useful some of it is.  Is it just a waste of time and resources for this website to dedicate whatever time or efforts to those broader scope issue petitions?

Not even really think there's an answer - only change.org would know.  Meanwhile I do feel fine "signing" these.  If it does happen to make a difference then yay for that.