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The US Public Interest Research Group (also known as PIRG) is a political lobby group non-profit organization in the United States and Canada, composed of self-governing affiliates at the state and province level.

Contents 1 History 2 Politics 3 Funding 4 Labor 5 Criticism 6 State (and other) PIRGs 7 See also 8 References 9 External links 9.1 U.S.A. PIRGs 9.2 Canadian PIRGs 9.3 Other external links

The Pirgs started at the behest of Ralph Nader, who did a speaking tour of college campuses in the early 1970s. The Pirgs eventually branched out to the public sector, and Nader says he no longer has affiliations ^[1].

The PIRGs have employees around the country who lobby for political issues. Citing as their first major accomplishment, the PIRGS believe they were responsible for the "bottle bills" in the 1980s that require refundable deposits on beverage containers to encourage recycling. Recently, the State PIRGs have lobbied for legislation regarding the banking/loan industry, as well as the health care and pharmaceutical industries.

The PIRGs try to pass legislation through the employment of lobbyists. As non-profit 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 organizations, the PIRGs claim they do not engage in partisan electioneering (supporting or appearing to support any electoral candidate). The PIRGS claim they have, however, ran student voter registration drives on college campuses.

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 Environmental Groups, the Human Rights Campaign, and the Sierra Club. Canvassers are often 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 telemarketing centers operate on behalf of all of the state PIRG and Environment groups. 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 a labor dispute). 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. PIRGs claim they avoid any funding directly from corporations, believing such funding would restrict their autonomy.

There have been labor issues surrounding student funding along as well as canvass and telemarketing. 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. Former employees allege that they were paid below minimum wage and required to work more than a 40 hour work week. PIRG does not dispute this, arguing that they are exempt from paying canvassers minimum wage. There is currently a class action lawsuit from former canvassers regarding this issue.^[2]

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 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 (A summary of this book can be found at: "http://www.sup.org/html/book_pages/0804752176/Press%20Release.pdf")

The Fund has created a website to respond to a few of the criticisms raised by the book: http://www.canvassingworks.org/. 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 (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.

The organization that 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 plays a coordinating role.

The highest-profile 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. Canadian PIRGs operate on a different model then 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.

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
• [1]OPIRG
• OPIRG at Windsor
• Prince George PIRG (B.C)
• QPIRG at McGill (Quebec)
• QPIRG at Concordia (Quebec)
• Simon Fraser PIRG (B.C.)
• UWO PIRG (London, O

• Fund for Public Interest Research
• Grassroots Campaigns, Inc.

1. ^ Ralph Nader: A Biography By Patricia Cronin Marcello. 2004. Greenwood Press
2. ^ https://www.thefundovertimelawsuit.com/

The external links in this article may not comply with Wikipedia's content policies. Please improve this article by removing excessive or inappropriate external links.

• PIRG.org
• Arizona PIRG
• CalPIRG
• CoPIRG
• ConnPIRG
• Florida PIRG
• Georgia PIRG
• Illinois PIRG
• INPIRG
• Iowa PIRG
• MPIRG
• Maryland PIRG
• MASSPIRG
• PIRGIM (Michigan)
• MontPIRG
• MoPIRG
• NCPIRG
• NHPIRG
• NJPIRG
• NMPIRG
• NYPIRG
• Ohio PIRG
• OSPIRG (Oregon)
• PennPIRG
• RIPIRG
• TexPIRG
• WashPIRG
• WISPIRG

• UofA Edmonton, Alberta
• UofL Lethbridge, Alberta
• SFU Vancouver PIRG (UBC has no PIRG)
• Prince George Public Interest Research Group (UNBC), Northern B.C
• Ontario PIRGs
• Laurier Students' PIRG
• Concordia, Montreal, Quebec
• McGill, Montreal, Quebec
• Nova Scotia Pirg
• UQAM, Montreal, Quebec

• The Canvassers Union