The Fund, Canvassing, and Opposition

The Fund has been working to help change America for the better for nearly 25 years.  We played a part in helping to win a federal Superfund to clean up toxic waste (1986), a better Clean Air Act to protect our health (1990), protections for nearly 60 million acres of national forests in 2001 (protections recently reinstated!), a law requiring the state of California to generate a portion of its power from renewable sources (2002), and a similar ballot initiative in Colorado (2004) – and this is just the short-short list.  We’ve mobilized grassroots political action in the face of powerful special interests, and time and again, we've prevailed. We’ve worked hard, we've been strategic, and we've accomplished quite a bit.  I'm proud to have played a role.

Who started the Fund? A few people who were, at that time, working with the Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs). In 1982, most of the PIRGs were college-based groups, with students able to fund small numbers of professional staff to help them organize public interest research and advocacy projects. In many cases, these groups were small and getting smaller, as student activism waned in the years following the end of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.

To help revitalize the PIRGs, the people at the Fund figured out how to build a new base of support and funding. They organized and ran door-to-door canvasses, telephone outreach projects and direct mail programs that could reach citizens in communities and enlist their help in the PIRGs’ public interest campaigns.

As the PIRGs grew, the Fund expanded as well, launching joint efforts with new partners beyond the PIRGs. Since 1982, the Fund has helped raise over $400 million for progressive and public interest organizations, including state PIRGs, Sierra Club, Greenpeace, Save The Children, Human Rights Campaign, Southwest Utah Wilderness Alliance, Environmental Action, Toxics Action Center, and Green Corps.

Throughout the Fund’s work, the mission has remained the same. We all know our society faces big problems. We believe our political system can do a better job of finding and delivering solutions to these problems when more people are involved in the political process. Our future, to paraphrase an old maxim, is too important to leave to the few. Organizations that want to influence the political process, in turn, are more vital and ultimately more powerful when they can broaden their base, including their funding base.

The method we’ve chosen to accomplish this goal is to partner with organizations that share our values and our vision: to help them raise money and identify new members who will sign petitions, write letters to legislators or to the editor, become local volunteers or chapter chairs, and continue to support the work of the organization over time.

These members lend their organizations their collective legitimacy and political clout, their grassroots participation, and, if the organizations do things right, their ongoing financial support. What do members get in return? An independent information source, a route to making an impact on the fundamental problems of our time, and a position to identify with ­– a voice, in all the noise, that speaks for them.

Of course, the more we accomplish, the more the powerful interests we’ve taken on in these fights have tried to undermine our work, damage our reputation, or cripple us tactically. As we used to say in one of our recruitment posters, with adversaries like these, we must be doing something right.

It’s always more surprising, and sometimes more hurtful, when the attack comes from those who seem to share our values and vision for America.  Perhaps it shouldn't be. Progressives are notorious for focusing their barbs on one another: When the going gets tough, we don’t circle the wagons; we form circular firing squads. 

Here are a few things we know:

1) Canvassing is hard work. A lot of people start canvassing and don’t keep at it.   Most of these people – and we’re talking thousands of people each summer – will eventually get other jobs, live in neighborhoods, and answer a knock at the door themselves someday. When they sign up to become members, most will look back fondly on what they accomplished years ago as a summer canvasser. Meanwhile, a smaller group among the thousands who have worked on Fund canvasses– we can specifically document more than one thousand – are still working today in public service and grassroots politics. They didn’t get turned off. They got committed. Of course, canvassing isn’t the only way to engage young people in grassroots activism. But it’s a really good one.

2) We have a positive impact on the people we canvass.  After our canvassers meet them, they're more likely to notice that particular issue covered in the media, and more likely to talk to their neighbors about it.  And they're more likely to become a member the next time around.  And, then, of course, millions of them have been compelled to hand over a check, right there on the spot, to a near-stranger.  Many of them choose to keep their relationship with the organization exclusively on those terms---they contribute, and our partners work full-time on their behalf.   And, indeed, thousands of members decide to do more than that.  They write letters to the editor. They make phone calls and send e-mails to their representative.  They directly engage in the democratic process. 

3) Sending a young canvasser to your door is less organic than sending your next-door neighbor to talk to you over the fence between your backyards. And make no mistake: The Fund helps groups send young canvassers to your door. That doesn’t stop our partners or another other groups from also trying to organize you and your neighbors to get even more involved, too. In fact, Sierra Club, the PIRGs and many other groups are working to do just that. Organizing is not a zero-sum game.

The Fund staff approach our work as a craft, one that we subject to constant experimentation and improvement. Nor do we take an absolutist view of social change. There are many paths to a better future, and we’re glad when people find new ways to help all of us revitalize our democracy and build a better world.

People who share our vision and our values face myriad challenges in today’s world, including adversaries with far more money and far more control over the levers of power. We're proud that The Fund is helping to level the playing field for the good guys. We intend to keep canvassing, building stronger organizations, winning changes in our society, and training more activists to build more power and win more changes.

What do you think? And what else would you like to know about the Fund (aka FFPIR)? Send your comments, questions and suggestions to me at feedback@ffpir.org.