Change.org Charge: Membership, Cancellation, and Refunds

A Change.org charge on your credit card is almost always one of two things: a one-time payment to promote a specific petition, or a recurring monthly membership that funds the platform. You can cancel any recurring membership immediately in your account settings, and you can request a refund from Change.org within three months of the charge date.¹

Which Change.org Charge Do You Have

Check the descriptor on your statement. A recurring membership typically shows as CHANGE.ORG *MEMBERSHIP C.ORG/BILL CA. A one-time petition promotion shows as CHANGE.ORG *PETITION C.ORG/BILL CA. Some statements list the company as “Change.org, PBC.”²

If the word “MEMBERSHIP” appears, the charge will repeat every month until you cancel it. If it says “PETITION,” it is a one-time payment that should not repeat on its own.

Why the Membership Charge Often Surprises People

The most common source of confusion happens right after a one-time petition promotion. Change.org’s own support documentation says that once a user pays to promote a petition, the site presents a screen offering a monthly membership, and users who do not “carefully review this screen” may accidentally agree to recurring charges.² The membership is a separate product from the petition promotion, but the two are presented back-to-back.

The Better Business Bureau lists 72 complaints against Change.org, PBC over the past three years, with 36 closed in the 12 months before June 2026. Fifteen are categorized as billing issues. Several complaints describe the signup interface as using “deceptive designs” that lead users to enroll in monthly payments unintentionally.³⁴

Under Change.org’s Terms of Service, consenting to a membership authorizes the company to charge your payment method each month “without further authorization from you until cancelled.” If the card on file expires or is declined, the terms allow Change.org to attempt another payment method stored on the account.⁵

How To Cancel a Recurring Membership

Cancellation takes effect immediately, and no future charges occur after it is completed.² There are two ways to do it.

Log in to Change.org and open the Manage Contributions page at change.org/account_settings/contributions, then select the option to cancel your membership.⁶
Open the confirmation email Change.org sent when the membership was created. It contains a link to manage or cancel the subscription, which helps if you cannot access account settings because you were not logged in or had not verified your email at signup.²

If neither method works, contact Change.org support at help.change.org/contact-us or by emailing help@change.org.¹

How To Request a Refund From Change.org

Change.org accepts refund requests for both membership charges and petition promotion payments if you ask within three months of the charge date. Contact support using the email address tied to the transaction. If you are not sure which email you used, provide the last four digits of the card charged, the date and amount of the transaction, the card brand, and the name on the card.¹

For charges older than three months, you can still contact support, but a refund is not guaranteed. Change.org also reserves the right to deny refunds it considers abusive or fraudulent.⁵

One important sequencing note. If you have already opened a chargeback dispute with your bank, Change.org has said it cannot process a refund on its end and will direct you to continue through your financial institution.⁴ Try Change.org’s refund process first, and use the bank dispute route if that fails.

Disputing the Charge Through Your Bank

If Change.org does not respond, or if the charge is older than three months, you can dispute it with your credit card issuer. Federal law gives you 60 days from the date the first statement containing the charge was sent to submit a written dispute to your issuer’s billing inquiry address.⁷

Your dispute letter should include your name, account number, and a description of the charge you believe is an error. Certified mail with a return receipt gives you proof the issuer received it. Once the issuer gets the letter, it must acknowledge it within 30 days and resolve the dispute within 90 days. While the investigation is pending, you do not have to pay the disputed amount, and the issuer cannot report the disputed charge as delinquent to credit bureaus.⁷

What a One-Time Petition Promotion Charge Is

If your statement shows “PETITION” rather than “MEMBERSHIP,” you paid to promote a petition, and the charge is one-time. The money pays for the petition to be shown as an advertisement to other Change.org users on the site, in emails, and across the platform. How much you contribute determines how many times the petition is displayed under a cost-per-thousand-impressions model, and most purchased impressions are delivered within 30 days.⁸

Two details often catch people off guard. The money does not go to the person who started the petition or to any organization tied to the cause. It goes to Change.org to fund distribution.⁸ And despite the “.org” domain, contributions to Change.org, PBC are not tax-deductible.⁶

Refunds for promotion charges follow the same three-month window and process as membership refunds.¹ If the “PETITION” charge appears more than once on your statement, you likely also have an active membership tied to the same account, and you will need to cancel that separately using the steps above.

1
Change.org. Requesting a Refund
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Change.org. Understand Charges From Change.org
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Better Business Bureau. Change.org PBC Complaints
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Better Business Bureau. Change.org PBC Complaints – Page 2
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Change.org. Terms of Service
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Change.org. Change.org Membership Program
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Federal Trade Commission. Using Credit Cards and Disputing Charges
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Change.org. How Promoted Petitions Work