Public Interest Research Groups
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Public Interest Research Groups (also known as PIRGs) are political non-profit organizations based in various locations across the United States and Canada. The PIRGs were started when Ralph Nader did a speaking tour of college campuses in the early 1970s calling on students to form stable, lasting organizations with professional staff to work on public interest issues. MPIRG (Minnesota) was the first PIRG to organize, and today is one of the few to remain unaffiliated with U.S. PIRG. The PIRGs were originally based on University campuses, but later found that the novelty of student research had worn off on legislators As a result they reached out to local citizens and became organizations with additional membership drawn from the public-at-large.
The PIRGs across the U.S. have trained student and citizen activists around the country to seek Nader-style social change in the areas of environmental protection, consumer protection, and political reform. Perhaps the most notable PIRG accomplishment has been the passage of several "bottle bills," familiar to U.S. citizens because they provide for deposits on beverage containers that can be refunded to purchasers if they are turned in for recycling. The Bottle Bill is still the most effective recycling law in the country (these laws are so well-known that they provided the basis for an episode of the Seinfeld television sitcom).
The Nader/PIRG doctrine is that the way to create positive social change is to provide individuals with the information and tools they need to take responsibility for their lives and to participate effectively in their communities. PIRGs focus on the passage and enforcement of legislation using professional and student/citizen lobbyists. As a nonpartisan organization, they do not work directly on election campaigns, although (like many nonpartisan organizations with a particular point of view) PIRGs have been known to run voter registration drives to sign up additional voters sharing their point of view. The most recent of these efforts, the New Voters Project in 2004, focused on states that were competitive in the presidential race, like Oregon, Nevada and New Mexico.
PIRGs receive their funding via two main mechanisms. Campus PIRGs originally were funded through student government fees like other student organizations. As PIRGs are political (though nonpartisan) organizations, this funding mechanism proved to be controversial among politically conservative and moderate students because the funds go to support left-wing environmental advocacy, and are often hidden in tuition payments where the students may or may not be able to opt out of paying the fees (though more schools have adopted the policy of allowing students to opt out of paying the fees to the local PIRG). The chance to opt out of paying PIRG fees often goes unnoticed and may be in the fine print of registration forms, leaving most student to unknowingly pay an extra fee to a group they probably know nothing about. Because of these reasons, the fees were challenged on several campuses with mixed results.
The citizen membership of the PIRGs is largely built through canvassing door-to-door in liberal and/or affluent neighborhoods. (The Fund for Public Interest Research, the national canvassing organization created by most of the PIRGs, also utilizes "street" canvassing, or fundraising in high-traffic areas and at liberal events, although usually on behalf of non-PIRG clients.) Canvassers describe an issue (or "campaign") on which the PIRG is working and ask donors to make a financial contribution and join the organization as members to help fund and support the work being done.
The PIRGs are independent state-based organizations, but have created some national organizations through which various subsets of the PIRGs collaborate. National PIRG staff tend to determine the strategies and structuring of PIRG organizations (many state PIRGs have no staff of their own), with oversight for each state PIRG provided by a citizen and/or student board. PIRGs also have set up a variety of affiliated organizations, such as Green Century Capital Management, which offers a number of mutual funds and Earth Tones, an internet service provider and wireless and long distance phone company.
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[edit] State (and other) PIRGs
The highest-profile and most successful PIRGs are OSPIRG (Oregon State PIRG), MASSPIRG (Massachusetts PIRG), CalPIRG (California PIRG), and NYPIRG (New York PIRG). Outside the United States, PIRGs can also be found in Canadian provinces, such as Ontario, Canada.
State PIRGs in the U.S. cooperate on federal issues through U.S. PIRG, an organization collectively operated by the state PIRGs to influence federal policy.
United States:
- AkPIRG (Alaska)
- Arizona PIRG
- CalPIRG (California)
- CoPIRG (Colorado)
- ConnPIRG (Connecticut)
- Florida PIRG
- Georgia PIRG
- Illinois PIRG
- Indiana PIRG
- Iowa PIRG
- MaryPIRG (Maryland)
- MASSPIRG (Massachusetts)
- PIRGIM (PIRG in Michigan)
- MoPIRG (Missouri)
- MontPIRG (Montana)
- MPIRG (Minnesota)
- NCPIRG (North Carolina)
- NHPIRG (New Hampshire)
- NJPIRG (New Jersey)
- NMPIRG (New Mexico)
- NYPIRG (New York)
- Ohio PIRG
- OSPIRG (Oregon)
- PennPIRG (Pennsylvania)
- RIPIRG (Rhode Island)
- TexPIRG (Texas)
- VPIRG (Vermont)
- WashPIRG (Washington state)
- WISPIRG (Wisconsin)
Canada:
- APIRG (Edmonton, AB)
- GRIP-UQAM (Montréal, Québec) (the only francophone PIRG in the world)
- LPIRG (Lethbridge, AB)
- Nova Scotia PIRG
- OPIRG (Ontario, Canada)
- OPIRG Provincial (Ontario)
- OPIRG at Windsor
- Prince George PIRG (B.C)
- QPIRG at McGill (Quebec)
- QPIRG at Concordia (Quebec)
- Simon Fraser PIRG (B.C.)
- Vancouver Island PIRG
- WPIRG, University of Waterloo
- YPIRG at York (Toronto, ON)
In the past couple of years several state PIRGs have formed environment-specific counterparts, with the intent of allowing the organizations to focus their efforts more effectively. These have more easily identifiable names than the acronym "PIRG", but use the PIRG model of canvassing, outreach, and lobbying. These include:
- Environment California
- Environment Colorado
- Environment Maine
- Environment Maryland
- PennEnvironment
- Environment Georgia
- Environment Texas
- Environment Illinois
- Environment Michigan
- Environment Ohio
- Environment Florida
