openPetition

What openPetition does

openPetition is a Berlin-based, non-profit civic technology platform operated by openPetition gGmbH that enables citizens to create, sign, and submit online petitions to political representatives, parliaments, and decision-makers across more than 57 country-specific domains and 28 languages. The core platform provides petition management with public listing, quality standards enforcement, signature collection, geographic signature mapping at postal-code resolution, and a debate space for pro and con arguments. Supporting modules include HomeParliament (a parliamentary monitoring database), E-Voting (electronic voting functionality), a Petition Widget for NGO partners to collect signatures on their own sites, and a Signature List Upload feature for offline-to-online petition migration.

The platform is built on standard web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, WAI-ARIA) hosted on Hetzner Online GmbH servers in ISO/IEC 27001 certified German data centers powered by 100% renewable energy. Analytics are handled by Matomo with anonymized IPs, identity verification uses eID via MTG AG, and donations are processed through FundraisingBox (euro) and FundraiseUp (non-euro). The platform is GDPR-compliant and has documented accessibility compliance under the European Accessibility Act.

openPetition is 100% donation-funded, advertising-free, and completely free for all users. It generates no revenue from user fees or advertising; its sole revenue stream is voluntary donations. The organization is politically neutral and licensed under Creative Commons (cc-by-sa). Its sole disclosed executive is CEO Jörg Mitzlaff, and the company has no parent, no subsidiaries, no disclosed funding rounds, and no disclosed headcount. The business model is structurally constrained by its non-profit status, limiting growth capital but reinforcing mission alignment with democratic participation.

Name

openPetition

Legal name

openPetition gGmbH

Website

https://openpetition.org

Company type

Private

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

openPetition is a Berlin-based non-profit digital petition platform that enables citizens across 57+ countries to create, sign, and submit online petitions to political representatives, operating on a 100% donation-funded, advertising-free model with supporting civic engagement modules like HomeParliament and E-Voting.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Headquarters

HQ city

Berlin

HQ country

Germany

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Infrastructure, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. Donations: openPetition is a 100% donation-funded organization. The platform is advertising-free and relies entirely on financial support from users and donors. Donations go towards petition work and ensuring the operation of the non-profit platform. Online donations are processed via FundraisingBox for euro currencies and FundraiseUp for non-euro currencies.

Pricing tiers

Distribution channels3 records

Marketing channels5 records

Core offering

openPetition is a free, non-profit, advertising-free web platform that allows citizens to create, sign, and manage online petitions addressing political and social issues, and to submit them to decision-makers, parliaments, and authorities. The platform supports 57+ country-specific domains in multiple languages, offers moderated quality standards, public debate spaces, geographic signature mapping, and exposes embeddable widgets for partner NGOs to collect signatures on their own websites. The company is 100% donation-funded and operates as openPetition gGmbH headquartered in Berlin and offers additional modules such as HomeParliament (parliamentary engagement) and E-Voting (electronic voting).

Product overview

openPetition is a digitally-native civic participation platform structured as a core petition product supplemented by several modular sub-products and features. The core openPetition Platform enables citizens across multiple countries and languages to create, sign, and submit petitions to political representatives, parliaments, and decision-makers. Supporting modules include HomeParliament (a parliamentary engagement and elected-official statement database), E-Voting (electronic voting functionality), and a Petition Widget (embeddable signature collection tool for partner NGOs). The platform also offers a Signature List Upload feature for offline-to-online petition data migration, and a Newsletter subscription for platform updates. The platform is built as a multi-country, multi-language service covering dozens of countries and regions, with petitions organized by topic categories and administrative regions.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• Werkstatt Digitale Demokratie: A digital democracy workshop brand used in the company address

Products and services

• openPetition Platform A politically neutral, non-profit, and free digital petition platform that enables citizens to create, sign, and submit online petitions to political representatives, parliaments, and decision-makers across multiple countries and regions. Includes moderated quality standards, public debate spaces, geographic signature mapping, and embeddable widgets for partner NGOs.
• HomeParlament A module enabling citizens to engage with and monitor their parliamentary representatives, including a database of statements made by elected officials.
• E-Voting A module providing electronic voting functionality for citizens to participate in democratic processes online.

Quantifiable outcome

• 17 million users engaged with the platform
• +1 more outcomes

Segments1 record

Ideal customer profiles2 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration6 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Three partnerships are on record, tiered core.

• Hetzner Online GmbHcoreTechnology or IntegrationHetzner Online GmbH provides hosting services for openPetition's web servers. The data centers are ISO/IEC 27001 certified and located in Germany. All web servers of openPetition are powered by 100% renewable energies.
• FundraisingBoxcoreTechnology or IntegrationFundraisingBox handles online donation payment processing for euro currency transactions. It guarantees complete data protection, legally compliant data storage, and secure SSL encrypted transmission of donation data stored in European data centers.
• Partner NGOscoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCooperating partner NGOs use openPetition widgets on their own websites to collect signatures for campaigns. These NGOs can export signature data and contact supporters directly (with consent). openPetition occasionally sends petition recommendations from cooperating partners to supporters who have agreed to receive such communications.

Scale indicators3 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• Avaaz: Avaaz is a global civic campaigning platform that runs online petitions alongside email-driven advocacy campaigns. It targets the same engaged-citizen demographic as openPetition across Europe and the Americas, with comparable multi-language coverage and cross-border campaign infrastructure.
• Change.org: Change.org is the largest global onlinepetition platform operating on a freemium B2B/B2C model. It directly competes with openPetition in Europe and globally, offering similar petition creation, signature collection, and decision-maker outreach tools across many of the same countries openPetition serves.
• 38 Degrees: 38 Degrees is a UK-based non-profit campaigning organization that runs petitions and member-driven advocacy campaigns. It is directly comparable to openPetition's model of an independent, donation-funded, multi-issue civic engagement platform and competes for similar European progressive audiences.
• Care2: Care2 is a long-running online petition and activist network, originally focused on health and social causes but now broader. It offers signature collection, petitions to decision-makers, and an activist community comparable to openPetition's, with multi-country reach in Europe and the US.
• Campact: Campact is a German non-profit civic campaigning organization focused on petitions and political mobilization. It directly competes with openPetition within Germany on progressive political issues, overlapping on use case, language, and target audience.
• CitizenGO: CitizenGO is a global civic-society petition and mobilization platform with strong European and Latin American presence. It is comparable to openPetition in providing multi-country, multi-language petition infrastructure aimed at influencing legislators and policymakers.

Emerging players

• Decidim: Decidim is an open-source digital participation platform for municipalities and civic organizations, supporting petitions, votes, and assemblies. It overlaps with openPetition's civic-participation functionality and represents a complementary/competing open alternative for public-sector deployments in Europe.

Others

• openPetition partners — FundraisingBox: FundraisingBox is a German donation-processing platform used by non-profits across Europe. As openPetition's donation processor for euro markets, it sits in the same civic/non-profit ecosystem and is a useful comparable for benchmarking donation revenue expectations for the platform.

Broad incumbents

• MoveOn: MoveOn is a US-based progressive civic-action organization operating petitions alongside email campaigning, organizing tools, and member-led groups. While US-focused, it shares the same petition-product DNA and engaged-citizen target audience as openPetition.
• openPetition (Civic-tech arms of larger NGOs): Large international advocacy NGOs such as Greenpeace and Amnesty International run in-house petition infrastructure at a scale comparable to openPetition, serving overlapping causes and audiences. They are direct substitutes on the supply side of civic petitioning and represent both a competitive and partnership channel for openPetition.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Facebookfacebook.com/openPetition
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/openpetition

Compliance6 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about openPetition