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CHUCK HAGEL, Barack Obama’s nominee for defence secretary, is attracting brickbats because he joined a campaign to eliminate nuclear weapons. Sweden has scrapped an old law requiring the sterilisation of anyone who has a sex change. In Rio de Janeiro, plans to demolish a popular high school to make way for Olympic buildings have been put on ice. These apparently unconnected events all have one thing in common. The campaigns involved (Global Zero, All Out and Meu Rio) were incubated by Purpose.com, a young company headquartered in New York.The business was co-founded by Jeremy Heimans, who calls himself a “movement entrepreneur”. Mr Heimans previously co-founded Avaaz, a campaigning group focused on poor countries, and GetUp!, a citizens’-rights group in his native Australia. Those were charities. Purpose aims to make profits, though not necessarily to maximise them. Like another big petitions business, Change.org, it is structured as a B Corporation, the American legal term for a for-profit company with a social mission. It has a non-profit arm, which incubates protests and accepts donations. This is cross-…
