TEDxTeen - Jeremy Heimans - Aim Higher Than President

Jeremy Heimans (@jeremyheimans) is co-founder and CEO of Purpose.com, the world's leading incubator for social movements and new experiments in mass digital participation. Jeremy has been building movements since he was a precocious little brat in his native Australia, running media campaigns and lobbying politicians from the age of eight on issues like environmental degradation and nuclear proliferation.

His voice has since broken but those global problems persist, so Jeremy co-founded Avaaz.org, the world's largest online political movement with more than 15 million members, and GetUp.org, the Australian political movement with more members than all Australia's political parties combined.

Jeremy now leads the team at Purpose, which has built movements to fight cancer with LIVESTRONG, worked with Jamie Oliver on a national effort to transform our food culture, and launched AllOut.org, a new global movement for LGBT people and their straight friends and family.

The World Economic Forum at Davos has named Jeremy a Young Global Leader and in 2011 he was awarded the Ford Foundation's 75th Anniversary Visionary Award. In 2012, Fast Company named him one of the Most Creative People in Business. Jeremy's career began with strategy consultants McKinsey and Company. He is a graduate of Harvard University and University of Sydney, and is a citizen of Australia and the Netherlands.

• Category

  Nonprofits & Activism

[indigoDroog]

I've watched this video countless times and I think I'm in love with Jeremy Heimans. 

[realstreetninja]

"Don't build the movement around you, because if you do, when something goes wrong with you, when people lose faith in you, the whole movement doesn't fall apart"

If only Jason Russell of Kony 2012 had seen your TED talk lol!

[aagilly]

I know the family - his brother Ralph is a world-class painter/portraitist.

[1996balletdancer]

You contradict yourself because you say that it's a bad thing that Obama is pressured and he can't make huge sweeping changes and yet the way your organizations got things done was by pressuring people in government. The great thing about the American system of government is that the president is pressured into doing the will of the people and that's a good thing not a bad one!

[jheimans2]

Great question, Ereshkigal - short answer is that many of these movements are member-funded - ie through small online donations for specific campaigns and to sustain the organizations themselves. It's a great model when it works because it liberates you from dependence on large donors and reduces time spent on fundraising overall, which often plagues NGOs and distracts them from their core missions.

[Ionathan Noblins]

please message me if you've got something :)

[Ereshkigal Inanna]

I'm not sure if you ever look at these, but if you do, or if someone else reads this who has some ideas, please send me an email:

reshinanna@gmail.com

(and thank you!)

[Ereshkigal Inanna]

Thank you so much, this was brilliant, it is what I want to do- help people get together, have conversations, and work to create change. What I'm wondering is: How does your business model work? If people can become members for free, how do you make enough money to keep yourself and the business going?

[Nikhil Shrivastava]

dude nobody crashes the plane that rises above, but the smaller vechiles that are in road or even big one's are easily crushed, so to be one of them on the ground, they will crush you fast.

[JLdaydream]

"Democracy is the best form of government." Is this a fair statement?

[Nick Newborne]

are u a girl

[Nick Newborne]

same for me.