Public Interest Research Group

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The Public Interest Research Group (also known as PIRG) is an advocacy non-profit organization in the United States and Canada, comprised of self-governing affiliates at the state and province level.

1 History
2 Activism
3 Funding
4 State (and other) PIRGs
5 See also
- 5.1 References
6 External links
- 6.1 Canadian PIRGs
- 6.2 Other external links

[edit] History

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 [1]. The State PIRGs began as a student movement on college campuses, but with increasing success, were able to branch out to include regular citizens as well.

[edit] Activism

The PIRGs across the U.S. have trained student and citizen activists around the country to seek social change in the areas of environmental protection, consumer protection, and political reform. One of the first major accomplishements achieved by the PIRGS was the 1980s 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. Recently, the State PIRGs have helped push through legislation on banking/loan industry reform, as well as health care and pharmaceutical industry reform.

PIRGs focus on the passage of legislation using professional and student/citizen lobbyists. As non-profit 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 organizations, the PIRGs do not engage in partisan electioneering (supporting or appearing to support any electoral candidate). They do, however, run student voter registration drives on college campuses, working to increase youth civic engagement, particularly in politically important states.

[edit] Funding

Student PIRG chapters are typically funded through either a waiveable or a mandatory student fee assessed to each student at the college or university. However, this funding system is somewhat controversial due to the political nature of PIRG work. Nationally there were several attempts to remove the PIRG chapters from college campuses, with several being removed, several being retained by majority vote of the student bodies, and many student PIRG chapters reinstated on the contingency that they would solicit their funds directly from individual students rather than by addenda to tuition.

Along with student fees, state PIRGs are funded through three additional sources: canvass revenues, tele-marketing revenues (via the Telephone Outreach Project or TOP), and grant funding.

The citizen membership of the PIRGs is largely built through canvassing people door-to-door, or in high-traffic public areas. The Fund for Public Interest Research, the national canvassing organization created by the State PIRGs works to build membership for many of the nation's largest progressive non-profits, including: the State PIRGs, the State Environmental Groups, the Human Rights Campaign, and the Sierra Club. Canvassers are generally college students during the summer when the canvass operation is expanded, while canvasssers generally have a more varied background in the few cities where there is a canvass during the non-summer months. Canvass offices vary drastically in size depending on location and time of year with the largest having between 75 and 100 employees during summer months.

The TOP centers operate on behalf of all of the state PIRG and Environment groups. There are currently two TOP locations (Portland OR, and Boston, MA with the Los Angeles, CA TOP having been shut down following a labor dispute). These call centers have a fluid workforce similar to the canvass.

There have been labor issues surrounding student funding along as well as canvass and TOP funding. Attempts have been made by campus staff, telephone outreach staff, and canvass staff to unionize. Each of these efforts have been successfully stopped by the PIRGs.

Finally, the individual state PIRGs apply for and receive grants from a variety of different non-profit foundations, along with receiving disbursals of funding from grants received federally. PIRGs are scrupulous about avoiding any funding directly from corporations however, believing such funding would restrict their autonomy.

[edit] State (and other) PIRGs

The State PIRGs are independant state-based public interest advocacy groups, but the vast majority belong to a federal network known as U.S. PIRG. The State PIRGs have also been responsible for creating a number of other public interest non-profits including, but not limited to, Greencorps, the Toxics Action Center, Environmental Action, the National Environmental Law Center, Earth Tones, and the State Environment Groups. These groups remain affiliated with varying degrees of closeness.

The organization the encompasses all PIRG, "Environment," and spin-off groups is known as NAOPI, or the National Association of Organizations in the Public Interest. This larger, umbrella organization play a coordinating role.

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.

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)
LSPIRG(Wilfrid Laurier University)
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: