In the United States and Canda, Public Interest Research Groups (also known as PIRGs) are non-profit organizations for civic engagement by college students. For each U.S. state or Canadian Province, its PIRG is a self-governing affiliate. Many of the U.S. state PIRGs are affiliated with the Fund for Public Interest Research ("the Fund").
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U.S. PIRG is the National lobbying and grassroots arm of the State PIRGs, a Federation of Statewide Non-Profit, Non-Partisan public interest advocacy organizations.
"U.S. PIRG is an advocate for the public interest. When consumers are cheated, or the voices of ordinary citizens are drowned out by special interest lobbyists, U.S. PIRG speaks up and takes action. We uncover threats to public health and well-being and fight to end them, using the time-tested tools of investigative research, media exposés, grassroots organizing, advocacy and litigation. U.S. PIRG's mission is to deliver persistent, result-oriented public interest activism that protects our health, encourages a fair, sustainable economy, and fosters responsive, democratic government".[1]
The State PIRGs emerged in the early 1970s on college campuses across the country. The PIRG model was proposed in the book Action for a change by Ralph Nader and Donald Ross, who was a law student with an internship with Nader. Ross became the director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, Inc. (NYPIRG).
MPIRG (Minnesota) was the first state PIRG to incorporate (on February 17, 1971), and today is one of the few to remain independent from USPIRG and the Fund.[2] Students in Oregon (OSPIRG) and Massachusetts (MASSPIRG) and other states and Canadian provinces then incorporated PIRGs. The PIRGs are responsible for many of the Bottle Bills (container-deposit legislation) in the U.S.
After students organized on college campuses for nearly 10 years, the different State PIRGs established the D.C. arm—U.S. PIRG—to advocate for change on the national level. Nearly simultaneously, the PIRGs founded the Fund For Public Interest Research (FFPIR), the fundraising and citizen-outreach arm of the PIRGs. The Fund hires canvassers to go door-to-door or stand on street corners and fundraise for their respective organizations by signing up members and collecting donations (or membership dues). There are roughly 60 Fund canvass offices across the country.
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 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. Student fees are used only to support Students PIRG chapters.
State PIRGs are funded through three sources: door and street canvass revenues, tele-marketing revenues, and grant funding.
The citizen membership of the PIRGs is largely built through fund raising door-to-door, or in high-traffic public areas. The Fund for Public Interest Research Group, the national canvassing organization created by the State PIRGs, works to build membership for several other national non-profit lobby groups, including: the State PIRGs, the State Environment groups, the Human Rights Campaign and the Sierra Club. Canvassers are often college students during the summer when the canvass operation is expanded, while canvassers 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 Fund and the telemarketing centers operate on behalf of all of the state PIRG and Environment groups (excepting MPIRG NHPIRG and NYPIRG). There are currently three telemarketing locations (Portland OR, Boston, MA and Sacramento, CA with the Los Angeles, CA telemarketing center having been shut down following an attempt to unionize). These call centers have a fluid workforce similar to the door and street canvass.
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.
There have been labor issues surrounding street canvassing and tele-fundraising. Attempts have been made to unionize by staff from telephone-outreach projects and canvasses. Each of these efforts have been unsuccessful. Former employees allege that they were paid below minimum wage and required to work more than a 40 hour work week. These issues are the subject of a class-action lawsuit from former canvassers. The Fund for Public Interest Research pays its canvassers a minimum hourly wage in addition to any incentive pay they earn from fundraising. On Oct 12th the employees of the Telephone Outreach Project's Portland location won an election to have a union and are fighting for a contract. The Fund has responded with firings and what many would consider a refusal to negotiate in good faith.[3] [4] [5]
The book Activism, Inc: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America[6] by Columbia University sociologist Dana Fisher, is based on an ethnographic study she did in a stratified random sample of Fund canvass offices during the summer of 2003. Fisher charges the corporatized fundraising model (of which the Fund is an example) with mistreating idealistic young people by using them as interchangeable parts and providing them with insufficient training; Fisher also believes that the outsourcing of grassroots organizing by groups like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace to organizations like the Fund has led to the decay of grassroots infrastructure and opportunities for involvement on the left.[7]
The Fund has created a website, Canvassing Works, to respond to some of the criticisms raised by the book.[8] The site includes testimony by former Fund staff who have moved into leading roles in other progressive organizations and other progressive leaders, including U.S. Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, Dr. Woody Holton (Associate Professor of American history at the University of Richmond), and Randy Hayes of the Rainforest Action Network.
Some State PIRGs are independent state-based lobby 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, Green Corps, 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. However, at least two PIRGs remain autonomous operations; MPIRG (Minnesota PIRG) and NYPIRG, the latter supporting activities of U.S. PIRG while maintaing its independence and its governence by its student board.
The organization that encompasses all PIRG, "Environment," and spin-off groups is known as PIN, or the Public Interest Network. This larger, umbrella organization plays a coordinating role.
The highest-profile PIRGs are MPIRG (Minnesota PIRG), CALPIRG (California PIRG), MASSPIRG (Massachusetts PIRG), NYPIRG (New York PIRG), and OSPIRG (Oregon State PIRG). Outside the United States, PIRGs can also be found in Canadian provinces, such as the Ontario Public Interest Research Group, the Alberta Public Interest Research Group (APIRG) and the Nova Scotia Public Interest Research Group. For a more complete list of PIRGs in Canada see pirg.ca . Canadian PIRGs operate on a different model than U.S. PIRGs. Canadian PIRGs are student run and the majority of their funding comes directly from students. Most, if not all, Canadian PIRG's operate on a consensus decision making model. Canadian PIRGs are independent of each other although some efforts have been made towards collaboration.
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