2025: Year in Review
As we wrap up 2025, we’re looking back on some of the great work ControlShift has helped to power. It’s been a busy year for many of our customers as they work for a more progressive, just, and fair world. Here are some of the campaigns from the past year:
🇦🇺 In Australia, the Victorian Trades Hall Council uses their Megaphone platform to campaign for workers rights and benefits. In 2025, they and one of their partner unions, the Australian Services Union, won a 3.5% pay rise for community and disability services workers. They also worked together to protect aged care services, which saved 300 jobs and ensured that elderly residents would maintain access to support services.
🇦🇹 In Austria, people who work physically demanding jobs are eligible to retire at 60, while the retirement age for non-physically demanding jobs is 65. Carolin, a nurse, launched a petition on mein #aufstehn to have nursing reclassified as physically demanding to match its strenuous nature. More than 195,000 Aufstehn supporters joined the call. Multiple in-person events and a survey of nurses sponsored by the Aufstehn team followed. Eventually, the petition was delivered to the Social Minister. And they won! Nursing is now classified as physically demanding, allowing nurses to be eligible for retirement at 60 instead.
🇦🇹 Also in Austria, a woman was assaulted and then turned away from a hospital without an examination or forensic collection. A lawyer saw the news coverage of this event and created a mein #Aufstehn petition calling for the establishment of a violence clinic. She and the Aufstehn team rallied allied organizations and more than 9,000 supporters. Together they pressured the leaders of Upper Austria and following their efforts, the deputy governor announced that the clinic would be established.
🇫🇷 In France, Greenpeace France (via their GreenVoice platform) launched a campaign opposing a proposal to grant Paris Saint-Germain more than 120 acres of land in a nature preserve for their new stadium. The campaigners were very concerned about the impacts this project would have on biodiversity and air quality. After more than 10,000 supporters joined the campaign, PSG announced that they would no longer consider the proposed site.
🇫🇷 Also in France, Greenvoice supporters launched a campaign to stop the government from cutting night train service to Berlin and Vienna. With the trains carrying more than 65,000 passengers in 2024, the campaigners didn’t want passengers to fly instead given environmental impacts. More than 95,000 supporters signed the petition and the campaigners also organized in-person protests to save the trains. With the groundswell of support, a new Paris-Berlin night train was announced.
🇩🇪 In Germany, Berlin planned to cut funding for violence prevention projects, despite there being thousands of cases of domestic violence, stalking, etc. per year. A social psychologist launched a petition on Campact’s WeAct to stop the cuts, and more than 18,000 supporters joined the campaign. After a month of campaigning, the government announced that they were reversing the cuts and would instead expand the support programs.
🇩🇪 Also in Germany, a petition was created to push back on massive budget cuts to a program that has offered free language classes to new immigrants for more than 50 years. This cut would have meant cancelling almost all language classes. A user created their petition on the WeAct site and more than 65,000 supporters joined the fight. Together, the petition creator and her supporters demonstrated in front of the Bundestag before delivering the signatures to a member of the education and budget committees. After the demonstration, it was announced that the funding cuts were reversed.
🇭🇺 In Hungary, a petition was launched to push back on a plan to sell one of the largest and most valuable development areas in Budapest to foreign developers. The project was to build luxury skyscrapers in the area, while also requiring Hungary to loan money to the investors and without undertaking any public consultation. The campaigners wanted locals to have a say in how the land was developed – with an eye to affordable housing and with environmental impacts appropriately considered. After more than 25,000 supporters joined the campaign, it was announced that the government was no longer backing the project and the land would be available for purchase by the city.
🇮🇪 In Ireland the government had announced that state-funded hormone replacement therapy (HRT) would be made available to peri-menopausal and menopausal women. Then they walked it back. More than 1,500 Uplift supporters jumped into action to ensure that the government followed through on the previous promise, and within a month, state-funded HRT was available.
🇮🇪 Also in Ireland, Camogie players and supporters came together to push back on an outdated rule that prevented the girls and women who play the sport from wearing shorts. After more than 6,500 supporters joined the campaign, the Camogie Association announced that players would be given the option of skorts or shorts.
🇳🇿 In Auckland, New Zealand students receive discounts on public transit. For students below the university level, tickets are discounted by 40% but for university students, the discount was only 20%. This led to some university students spending more than a third of their budget on public transit. The Auckland University of Technology Students Association created a petition on Our ActionStation and after more than 4,500 supporters joined the appeal, the Auckland Transport announced that university student rates would now be discounted by 40%.
🇷🇸 In Serbia, a newly-rebuilt train station canopy collapsed killing 15 people. This was the catalyst for more than a year of (ongoing) mass nationwide protests against governmental corruption, which protesters blamed for the shoddy construction work. In March of 2025, one of the (if not, the) largest protests in Serbia’s history took place in Belgrade with more than 100,000 protestors in attendance. During the protest, hundreds of protestors reported that the government used a sound cannon against protestors, which is illegal in Serbia. After the government denied the use of the weapon, Kreni-Promeni, launched a petition calling for a UN investigation into the use of the sound cannon. The campaign was massive, with more than 500,000 people joining the call. While the campaign and the protests continue, special rapporteurs from the UN responded to the campaign by requesting additional evidence and responses from the Serbian government.
🇷🇸 Also in Serbia, Kreni-Promeni launched two major campaigns opposing new mining projects. The Jadra Valley is “bordered by mountains, surrounded by water and known as the most fertile land in Serbia,” and yet the Serbian government agreed to allow a foreign company to establish a lithium mine in the valley. Kreni-Promeni launched a petition to revoke the license. This kicked off a multi-year campaign, including in-person actions, court cases, and more than 300,000 supporters taking action. This year, the mining company announced that they were halting the project. The strong opposition was making the project too costly to pursue. Similarly, the Kreni-Promeni team was also working to prevent a new copper and silver mine that would threaten the water supplies of the third largest city in Serbia. After more than 20,000 people joined the call to action, the planning commission withdrew the mining plans.
🇸🇪 Simret Tekiewas fighting for a residence permit that would allow him to stay in Sweden. His wife had been killed in a mass shooting, which caused the migration board to pause his application for residency. He and his four children were grieving and stuck in migration limbo. Nearly 25,000 Skiftet supporters came together to support Simret’s cause. After the petition hit the media, the migration board announced that he’d be allowed to stay.
🇨🇭 In Switzerland, Tox Info Suisse Foundation raised an alarm: the Poison Control Center hotline, which provides advice to people, including doctors and parents, who have questions about accidental ingestions or other poisoning emergencies, risked being shut down due to lack of funding. The foundation partnered with Campax to rally support. More than 115,000 people joined the call asking the government to provide the necessary funding. After 5 months of campaigning, the government agreed to allocate CHF 1.1 million to keep the hotline open.
🇿🇦 In South Africa, a listeriosis outbreak led to more than 200 deaths and more than 1,000 people falling seriously ill. In the years since the outbreak, Amandla supporters have been campaigning for justice for those affected. While that fight continues, in 2025 Tiger Brands announced that they would be making advanced payments to those with urgent medical needs.
🇬🇧 In the UK, more than 93,500 38 Degrees supporters came together to ban the use of NDAs to silence employees reporting harassment and discrimination. MP Louise Haigh spearheaded the campaign, which also included in-person signature deliveries to parliament and an event connecting MPs to victims. Following the campaign, banning the misuse of NDAs and protecting whistleblowers were included in the bill.
🇬🇧 Also in the UK, the Midlothian Council announced that they’d be cutting funding for musical education basically in half. The Educational Institute of Scotland started a petition on Megaphone, the project of the Trades Union Congress. Nearly 3,000 supporters joined the call to protect musical education after which the council restored the funding.
🇬🇧 The Trades Union Congress also prevented the closure of three day centers aimed at providing support and community to adults with learning and/or physical disabilities, dementia, etc.
🇺🇸 In the US, Starbucks Workers United launched the largest Starbucks strike in history. They also organized a petition pushing back on a new dress code for baristas. Under pressure, Starbucks reversed its course on parts of the dress code, allowing durags, bonnets, and colorful socks.
🇺🇸 Also in the US, EveryLibrary continued their work to increase library funding and block proposed book bans. They use their Fight for the First platform to support local campaigning. Some of their wins this year include: returning books to a school library in Elizabeth, Colorado; preventing the closure of a library in Lebanon Township, New Jersey; and blocking a bill that would have censored research databases in Utah.
🇺🇸 Also in the US, the Franklin Pierce School District was deciding whether to renew their contract with the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office, which had already announced that it would collaborate with ICE (in opposition to Pierce County and Washington state laws). A MoveOn member launched a petition calling on the school board to not renew their contract with the sheriff’s office and instead invest the money in educational and community programs. Together, they were able to successfully pressure the board, and the contract was cancelled.
🇺🇸 Red Wine and Blue is working to organize suburban women for progressive causes. In 2025, their network grew to more than 800 local groups, which hosted more than 4,000 events attended by more than 80,000 people. Their organizing had real, on-the-ground impacts. In North Carolina alone, 15 of their members won offices in local elections.
These campaigns are just a slice of the great work we saw in 2025. A big congratulations and thank you to each of these organizations, and all of our other customers, who have dedicated so much time and energy to making the world better, safer, and more progressive. We’ll be with you as we work together for big changes in 2026 and beyond!
+++++
In addition to the excellent work shown above, we’ve also been hard at work improving ControlShift. You can see the full list of changes in our changelog, but here a few of our biggest updates:
- We spent months working on a major overhaul of our local groups features. The changes include major updates to the design of public and organizer-only group pages, new features for group organizers, easier communication options for admins, and more security options for groups.
- We rolled out organization-sponsored events and petitions giving organizations more options for their official actions.
- We added new post-action flows for event attendees and petition signers, making it easier for organizations to customize what a user sees after taking action.
- We updated the email supporters pages for petition and event creators. The updates allow them to more easily understand the process to update their supporters and look back on previous messages.
- We changed the event and petition creation flow for organization administrators, giving them additional options and allowing them to bypass the moderation queue.
- We’ve expanded Themes to support more customizations, including email customizations by theme, to power coalition work, microsites and other organizing goals.
We’re proud to stand with this global community of progressive organizations and we’re looking forward to continuing the work in 2026!