The irony is that HRC's staff is actually union.  They are a SEIU shop.  They rely very heavily on the Fund to fill their membership rolls.

At this point I am not sure how much leverage the blogosphere has with HRC.  They have been completely ridiculed.

I worked for a unionized fundraising vendor, and it worked just fine until it was sold to a bigger corporation looking to weaken the union, the Share Group is still unionized, but the union is much weaker then it once was.

BTW, the bottom line is important to a fundraising vendor, all the other crap is just hype to keep the fundraisers feeling good and motivated to do what they do.

Is this for real?

The first thing you need to know to understand the situation is that we, PIRGers, do not think of ourselves as managers - we are organizers. (Even though, once you get down to it, we are precisely managers.) And we don't really think of the canvassing and the fundraising as "labor"--it's honorable sacrifice for which we happen to get paid a little bit. And it's great that we get paid--we're doing work that truly good people would volunteer to do out of the true goodness of their hearts. Since we're getting to do it full time and getting paid for it, these jobs are almost a privilege. And there's no more important work than the work that we do, so we have to do it all the time.

Because that sure sounds uncomfortably like PIRG has a lot of the signifying markers of a cult (e.g. communal and totalistic in organization, aggressive in proselytizing, systematic program of indoctrination).

Just a thought here..

It seems to me that progressive activist groups of any kind should welcome unionization as a matter of course.  This includes outfits whose primary role is fundraising.  As a start, this would mean setting firm policies that unions will be recognized on a card check basis.

This should be a litmus test for whether a group is really progressive or not.  I'd like to see some research into which groups are unionized and which aren't - and which have union-friendly policies in place.  PIRG, MoveOn, Working Assets, NARAL, environmental groups?  Is there a good resource listing which groups are and aren't unionized?

On a related note I'm getting tired of seeing the membership giveaways from many of these groups (umbrellas, tote bags, t-shirts and so on) arriving with "Made in China" labels.  If a group is really progressive they would go out of their way to make sure their giveaways and fundraising items are union made.

This issue is important enough to me that I'm in the process of drastically scaling back which groups I support.

Great diary. Recommended.

Long time PIRGER here - from a canvass director all the way to senior professional staff:

I will say two things:

1) Yes, PIRG has a very cultish environment. It is not even "us" vs "them" as in public versus private interests.  It is PIRG against all comers including other enviro groups etc etc.  Additionally the top leaders of PIRG make very good money while requiring a vow of poverty from everyone else.  Doug Phelps is a millionaire.

2) The big problem with PIRG is that it is dominated by a very small group of individuals at the top who zelously guard their image of PIRG and will destroy anyone who comes in the way of that.  For PIRG to really change they will need to remove those folks and I am happy to name names cause I believe in what PIRG is trying to do and I do not believe in those individuals

Oh ahisma, where art thou?!

FinneganOregon (and any other concerned PIRG/Fund veterns) -  please be in touch with me at lockse(at)gmail.  We would like to be in touch with you.

I was a very brief canvasser out of that same L.A. office, and was identified as a "problem worker" when I came back one day on my first week with a credit card donation. The canvass director preferred to throw that $100 (for the Sierra Club) away rather than have it go through online or through the telephone office.

Some might be zealous for the cause, but in my experience personal payoff was a bit more of a motivator for the L.A. canvass office.

WOrked for PIRG for 7 years, from canvasser, to canvass director, to Press and lobbying...

BUT i worked for NYPIRG, which is seperate and doesn't use the traditional PIRG model from other states.  I never heard much about any of these issues there, we worked crazy hours for little money but we all loved the causes and the people.

Why don't we just get going with the MyDD Party? See, we just tell everyone we started in the Joe Lieberman Party, but then Joe refused to endorse our anti-Wal-Mart plank? Let's take a page from Alex Jones, just to make it all wild and woolly as can be. So we pay people with little gold ingots! This nasty old PIRG thing has been continuing for 120 years. Enough already. The PIRG people think they are God's gift to progressivism? Maybe they need to go to Iraq. I went through this whole goofy mill 30 years ago. The times, they are a-changing. They didn't do squat about Bush. That was our job, and we did it, dammit.

Hi,

I have worked with canvasses or an org who that has a canvass for many years until recently.

I think that some of the comments here are on target, but many are uninformed. To me, the bottom-line most important point that should be made is that all employers should pay minimum wage. To me, the idea that an org can argue that they not pay min wage because people should care so much about the campaign that the money isnt important, is wrong. I have heard that argument made in the past -- especially when I was a field canvasser.

As far as the rest of the arguements -- you should start off deciding whether paid canvasses should exist at all or not. Every business -- for profit or non-profit has to have a model that works.

You cant complain that the canvassers arent being paid $20/ hr and arent unionized and then complain that too much money goes to the canvassers. Its simple math. They should be paid min wage with some commission, understand the difficulty of the job, and be treated with respect.

Also, some of you may not know this but just about every form of fundraising for non-profits has a huge amount of initial overhead. For example, with direct mail fundraising about 1% or less is returned meaning that a whole lot of money goes into putting together large amounts of mail that never comes back. Thats expensive too. Also, good canvassing is much more than fundraising -- its getting an important message out to thousands of citizens a year and hopefully generating political support as well.

I dont get the "cult" thing either. I think the reason why it might seem that way is that often canvassers are very young and wind up making friends with their co-workers and make that their social scene. They can of course quit whenever they want. In all my experience in canvass orgs, people came and went all the time with very little "cult-like" pressure to stay.
If someone has no sense of self without their job, I think they might have bigger issues.

Anyway, if you care enough about this issue, focus on the minimum wage part. If a business cant pay min wage, they have a model that is not fair to its employees.

I'm a former assistant director for the door canvass and I have some serious concerns regarding the safety of canvassers going solo, at night in unfamiliar neighborhoods.  I remember bringing this up during "mindset meetings" (remember those!) with senior staff, and the answers I got were basically a) most incidents are of the dog bite variety, b) canvassers aren't encouraged to go to houses that make them uncomfortable, and c) canvassers shouldn't go inside a house.

One night I walked up to the door of a nice, well-lit, suburban house that did not make me feel at all uncomfortable.  Unfortunately though, the man who answered the door was disturbed enough to threaten to rape me... yes, these people are out there.  Luckily it was only a verbal threat and I walked away from it.  But I knew then that the issue isn't the appearance of the house, it's the fact that the canvasser doesn't know what type of person will answer the door.  And even if a canvasser doesn't walk inside, they could still be yanked inside right?  

Needless to say, my supervisor did not encourage me to discuss this incident with my canvassers.  Although I was disappointed with this response, I was definitely still in "excuse mode".  I quit a few months later and I am very, very grateful that nothing else happened to me or to any of my staff while I was still there.  I know it would have rest heavy on my conscience if any of my canvassers had been hurt and I had failed to keep them fully informed and safe.

Has anyone either personally experienced or heard about other scary incidents like this?  I think that anyone considering a canvassing job should be reminded that they're not protected by some sort of invisible PIRG safety shield, and should know that there are risks far more serious than a dog bite.
     

I posted this in Greg Bloom's diary, but I thought it was appropriate for here as well.

I worked for the PIRGs for well over a decade, and after reading various blogs and stories regarding how they treat their employees for several months, I thought I would add my comments. I had many good years at PIRG and think the staff has done and continues to do some great work, but I think it's important to give some insight to not just how unfairly PIRG treats its employees, but also the hypocrisy of Doug Phelps and his senior management team, who act like a 1970's Soviet politburo by enforcing numerous rules to control staff while not applying those same rules to themselves.

Here are some examples:

PIRG staff in major cities are expected to house (without compensation) out of town staff who come in for meetings to save the organization from having to put them up in hotels. If you live in a city like Boston, Denver, or Santa Barbara, you could end up having to house 2 or 3 people up to 2 months out of the year. In the 1990's, PIRG paid Susan Rakov, one of Doug Phelp's prized assistants at the time, $300 a month to compensate her for housing staff throughout the year. That's $3600 a year, and she only got it because she was Doug's primary loyalists and enforcers.

For many years, staff were expected to pay for their hotel rooms at PIRGs December meetings in December. But Doug Phelps never had to pay for HIS room. PIRG always paid for it.

PIRG paid for Phelps' cell phone throughout the 1990's when other staff had to foot their own cell phone bills.
When Phelps rented a house in Santa Barbara, PIRG paid for part of his rent because he sometimes worked from home. No other staff enjoyed that luxury even though many of us worked from home. And up until very recently PIRG staff had to pay for ALL their cell phone calls, and many still due because of PIRG's confusing and bureaucratic reimbursement rules.

PIRG staff have had to pay for their own gas when they drive to regional meetings and retreats for many years. Phelps always got reimbursed for his own gas.

Any PIRG staffer can tell you of the bureaucratic BS they had to wallow through to get approval to get a new fax machine or copier for the office. The battle for the $300 to buy the equipment could last for months, and more often than not, the request would be rejected. But when Phelps wanted $3 MILLION in 1996 to buy ads for his pet campaign finance reform initiative, he got the money instantly. And the initiative got creamed at the polls anyway.

Everyone both in and out of PIRG knows that PIRG pays much lower salaries than anyone in the nonprofit movement. A key cornerstone of PIRG philosophy that everyone is supposed to blindly follow is that PIRG pays lower salaries so it can hire more people to more work to bring about social change - you can do more with 2 people making $20,000 a year than 1 person making $40,000 a year. PIRG also prides itself on the fact that it has strict pay ranges that keep everyone within a particular range so people with the same level of experience will always make the relatively same amount of money. It also gives management a convenient excuse if someone wants more money. Anyone who has asked for more money in PIRG has heard the familiar line "we can't give you more money - that wouldn't be fair to all the other people who have the same level of experience". But PIRG conveniently overlooks this policy when it is to its advantage. When I worked there, I saw many examples of people who asked for more money paid much more money than others with the same level of experience because PIRG management didn't want them to leave staff. The best recent example of this occurred when Doug Phelps offered an advocate a $20,000 raise to match an offer that she got from another organization. The advocate ended up leaving anyway, but if she had stayed, she would have been paid WAY more than anyone other advocates with her experience. Phelps has also used payoffs from Grassroots Campaign Incorporated (GCI), the for profit canvassing group he started, to pay off PIRG staff to keep them from leaving while allowing him to keep salaries artificially low. A few years ago, when a talented regional canvass director was going to leave staff over more money, Phelps authorized GCI to pay him a $3000 "bonus" to compensate him for work he did to help train GCI's canvassers. PIRG didn't have to change its salary structure, and since GCI is a private company, no one would see the payment in its books. How convenient.

Another example of PIRG's hypocrisy is its annual subsidized staff retreat in Aspen. Every year, PIRG pays for virtually all the costs of a week long Aspen ski vacation for any staff who want to attend. When I worked at PIRG, people in the financial department told me that PIRG spent between $200,000 and $300,000 on the event, and that was decade ago when PIRG had about half the staff it does now. Since the Aspen vacation has been going on for over 20 years now, it is reasonable to say the PIRG has spent several million dollars paying for lots of staff to get drunk, ski, and have sex. If PIRG truly followed its salary policy, wouldn't you think it should be using those millions of dollars to hire more activists and bring about more social change? I'm not saying that saying for the Aspen vacation is wrong but it certainly not consistent with the PIRG mantra of spending money meagerly so that it can hire more activists. You can't be righteous about how little you pay staff and then spend millions on vacations.

Another PIRG irony - long known for being one of the stingiest organizations with regard to giving money to many local campaigns with other groups, PIRG is actually one of the richest nonprofits in the country. Many PIRGs, including those in California, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey, Washington, and Oregon has literally millions of dollars in the bank. Some of these PIRGs along have in excess of $5 million. But local PIRG staff directors have no control over this money. In fact, you will never see it in their bank accounts. That's because most of the money has been generated by years of canvassing, which most people know is done for the PIRGs by the Fund for Public Interest Research (started and controlled by Doug Phelps), and as the Fund collects the money from canvassing, it puts it in Fund banks accounts, not PIRG bank accounts. So if you look at MassPIRG's financial statement, you may see a few hundred thousand dollars, but you won't see the millions of dollars that is in the Fund canvassing account for MassPIRG. MassPIRG will never get any of this money without the approval of Doug and key senior staff. And if you work for a foundation, you will never know how many millions a PIRG has because it will not show up in its financial information.

I think the most disingenuous thing the Doug Phelps has done was to pimp PIRG member names for his two for profit organizations - Telefund Inc. and Grassroots Campaigns Incorporated. By using the names, as well as many of the fundraising techniques, of the PIRGs, Phelps has become extremely wealthy. He owns 2 multi-million dollar houses in Santa Barbara, CA as well as a very expensive loft in Denver. Meanwhile, while Phelps is making millions from his private fundraising operations, he is manically determined to keep staff salaries as low as possible and continues to make staff wait up to two years to wait for salary increases. Ironically, PIRG uses the fact that it doesn't sell its member list to other organizations as a selling point to potential donors, but I guess that rule didn't apply to Doug. The funny thing is, for years, Phelps has made it well known to PIRG staff that he doesn't take a salary from PIRG, but the only reason he quit taking a salary was to prevent any conflict of interest from him running GCI, a private companies that runs political campaigns, and PIRG, which is nonpartisan.  Of course, while he gallantly refused to take a salary from PIRG, the money from his 2 private companies kept pouring in.

I get the point of this essay is to give some more insight as to how hypocritical Doug Phelps and PIRG upper management actually are. And even though most of the examples that I have noted are about Phelps, his senior staff cabal are just as guilty as they know what goes on yet continue to ignore it. They righteously spout that one of the key things that makes PIRG different from other groups is that PIRG staff hold itself to rules and higher standards than other groups, but they don't hold themselves to the same standards that they expect staff to follow. This has to change. Clearly, there is a lot of impetus for change coming from outside PIRG, but nothing will change unless PIRG staff force it.

doonesbury

I am a recent ex-fund director and would be very interested in having the sources for the claims you made about Doug Phelps.  I have seen the finacial statement of his Mutual Fund Company, and know about the Aspen trip and a few other hypocritical stances you mentioned in your post, but some I had not heard before and would love to know your resources.  You can email me at mattmason1307(at)gmail(dot)com if you have time.  Thanks!