The Fund for the Public Interest (formerly known as the Fund for Public Interest Research and generally referred to as the FFPIR or "the Fund") is a 501(c)(4) non-profit organization that runs the public fundraising and membership operations canvassing for several political nonprofit organizations. The FFPIR name reflects its origins as the fundraising arm of the Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs). Since the early 1980s, the Fund has also canvassed for other groups, working very closely with the Sierra Club, among others, but retains a special relationship with the PIRGs and other groups under the PIRG umbrella; many PIRG employees direct Fund offices during the summer, many Fund offices share space with PIRG offices, and significant organizational infrastructure is shared between the Fund and the PIRGs.
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The Fund was created in the 1980s to raise money and build membership for the State PIRGs. The Fund is now one of the largest grassroots political fundraising networks in the country, running more than 70 field offices for groups like the State PIRGs, the Sierra Club, Human Rights Campaign, and Environment America.
FFPIR grew out of a MASSPIRG initiative campaign to pass the Bottle Bill where they first used door-to-door canvassing. The development of a membership and funding infrastructure independent of the campus chapters that had been until that time the center of the PIRG infrastructure reversed the decline in resources and influence that the PIRGs had been experiencing at that time, and initiated a shift in the PIRGs' organizational model that saw the previously campus-bound groups convert themselves into a mass-membership lobbying organization.[1]
Today, most state PIRGs use the Fund to execute their door-to-door, street fundraising and telephone fundraising and membership drives. The PIRGs claim they have more than 400,000 active members. The Fund's partner groups have grown significantly as well; for instance, more than half of the Sierra Club's current membership of 750,000 was recruited by the Fund. FFPIR hires paid canvass directors to lead canvass offices in selected locations around the country. The locations are negotiated between FFPIR and its partner groups. In turn, these directors hire canvassers to raise money for the Fund's partners. Fund canvassers can receive a base weekly wage as well as 25-35% of all the money they raise over the weekly quota. The weekly fundraising quota averages between $90.00 and $150.00 per day depending on location. Until very recently, if the canvasser was unable to obtain the weekly quota, he or she was paid a fraction of the money they fundraised in lieu of the weekly wage. This often resulted in below minimum wage pay for the employee. The Fund has recently begun paying canvassers a guaranteed minimum wage and paid training day in response to a large class action lawsuit brought by current and former employees.[2] FFPIR balloons in size (both in terms of the number of field offices and the number of canvassers per field office) during the summer months. The growth is largely due to hiring large numbers of college students for summer canvassing jobs.
The book "Activism, Inc.: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America" by Columbia University sociologist Dana Fisher, is based on her study of a sample of Fund canvass offices during the summer of 2003. The Fund is the core of the study, and clearly identified even while masked in the book as the People's Project.[3] The Fund has created a website to respond to a few of the criticisms raised by the book.[4]