Staff Blog
Is canvassing exploitative?
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We've all seen them. Plenty of us have friends among them, or know someone who used to do it. Some of you out there have done it yourselves.
Canvassing.
Every summer, the city streets fill up with young, eager, idealistic — and yet surprisingly aggressive — canvassers, working for advocacy organizations like Greenpeace, Environment America, Penn Environment, etc.
You might like them, or you might find them annoying. Personally, I tend to feel that if I'm going to donate to an organization, I'd rather pay directly than give some portion of the donation toward someone's commission.
But for the past couple of weeks, I've been arguing with a buddy about whether the nature of those jobs is itself exploitative. Another friend works at such a job, pulling incredible hours for compensation that might not be bad for a 40-hour work week — but it seems pitifully inadequate for the amount of time this person puts in.
My buddy says that it's not fair to evaluate these jobs the same way I would, say, working at McDonald's. The employees are driven by idealism, not just money, he says. They work for satisfaction of being part of a cause and for experience.
I, so far, don't buy it.
I'm curious: Any canvassers out there? Anyone just start the job? I'd love to hear what you think.
It depends on the org, but some are horrendous exploiters of the young and idealistic. I suggest checking out “Activism Inc” and Greg Bloom’s series on “Strip Mining the Grass Roots” http://www.mydd.com/user/greg%20bloom
IMO, it’s a huge scandal that the anti-union @ssholes at Grassroots Campaigns, INC (GCI) are allowed to work in politics in Philly when most political groups can’t get away with printing a single flyer without a union seal.
I think canvassing is exceptionally exploitative. I’m sure it’s not exactly the same across all organizations, but let me list a few reasons why I observed that PennPIRG (when I canvassed for them a long time ago) was an extremely exploitative organization.
#1 — They don’t pay minimum wage. Lots of folks stumbled into their office because they were looking for a job, pure and simple.
#2 — Insufficient training. Because the pay is commission-based, they don’t really care if you sink or swim.
#3 — They get value out of the folks that just work there for a week or two. Even if folks can’t cut it (as they’ve been insufficiently trained), they still hang out literature. At PennPIRG, they had people sign a form which said that if you left and didn’t pick up your paycheck, they could keep it. So they can get free labor.
#4 — Dishonest hiring practices. It’s very common for them to promise the world to kids out of college, and then make them manage canvassers or canvass.
#5 — Cultish behavior — because of the weird hours, it’s common for these organizations to create a cultural environment where people just hang out with other folks. So they don’t realize that it’s not a normal work environment, there’s social pressure to stay, and they can get away with bad HR practices that might not cut it other places.
Patrick Rapa and I were just approached by a canvasser who asked if we “had time for equal rights.” I said no. Patrick said he hated equal rights.
I was a canvasser for approximately 1 1/2 days in 2004. I worked for the Democratic National Committee. Can you blame me? It was 2004, Bush was running for re-election, and I was 19. I wanted to join to help John Kerry win, and I quickly realized all I was doing was panhandling.
That’s really all it is: Paid Panhandling.
Exploitative? Yes and no. People tend to elect to do this type of work, but in this day and age, its more likely that they do it because they can’t get anything else.
The way you’re taught to raise money is sickening; You constantly lie to the person that you don’t take money, when really you do.
Josh really did say everything better than I could, so kudos to him!
I canvassed for a year with Clean Water Action in 2004-5. I found it a rewarding method of supplementing my income. I felt that the work I did helped people and the environment. In no way would I consider it exploitive.
As for Josh and Larry, it sounds like he had a bad experience. I’ll counter him. I didn’t have a WOW or WIZ-BANG experience, I’d say mine was on the low side of average – I wasn’t the best canvasser (wasn’t the worse either). Though I’ve heard that PERG was horrible. I’d hate for people to get that impression about every canvassing group. To address Josh’s items:
1: Yes, they are commission based, and I know people who did quite well. I didn’t, but I understood that the organization couldn’t afford to pay me hourly if I wasn’t bringing in money. Now I run my own business. I’ll tell you something, if you’re not making me money (by extension costing me money) you’re fired. CWA worked to make sure you were making something when you weren’t bringing in the expected numbers. They also worked to re-train you (see #2).
2: CWA had quite a bit of training and even a yearly conference. In fact,canvassers spent about 30-45 minutes PER DAY working and training each other, REGARDLESS of seniority or management level. I believe this is the same in many organizations. SIDE NOTE: CANVASSERS ARE NOT TRAINED TO LIE!
3. I know CWA paid you those first few weeks regardless of performance. Anything outside of canvassing was voluntary – and it’s a non-profit with many people who are strictly volunteers. Basically, don’t canvass if you don’t strongly believe in the goals of the organization.
4: That’s just about every job. These people are passionate about what they do. I would be suspect of a job that doesn’t encourage people to move up to leadership roles (managing canvassers, etc). They made the same promises to me as well, and they didn’t all come true – mainly because my core passions weren’t in the environment. I don’t think they made empty promises though.
5: Every job has a cult-like place of employment. Cliques, politics, that’s everywhere. Add to the fact that most people share political and social ideologies and the bond is like to be stronger. It’s also very inclusive and friendly.
So, if you see a canvasser, whether it’s at your door on on the streets, be nice to them, often they bear extremes of temperature and humanity (some real a**holes out there) to support a cause they love and pay the bills. Talk with them about the issues and listen objectively, but try not to take too much of their time, they’re there to fundraise afterall. If you support the issue, give them a few bucks and maybe your signature.
While I agree with Dennis that Clean Water Action has a respectable method and climate in their canvassing efforts, and that the canvassers themselves aren’t to blame, let’s get down to brass tacks – PIRG/PennEnvironment and Grassroots Campaigns are the worst of the worst in exploiting their workers and spitting them back out.
The PIRG, including its environmental policy wing Environment America, is a monolith of state and college based chapters – and for as many staff they have on the ground, I’m wholly unimpressed with what they’ve accomplished. The Fund for Public Interest Research is their canvassing and fundraising wing which employs all of those bright-eyed and bushy-tailed canvassers you see in the summer. Grassroots Campaigns is a FOR PROFIT organization that contracts their workers out to other organizations like MoveOn and even Planned Parenthood. The fact that these organizations do business with GCI in how they treat their employees is shameful.
Josh hit all of the biggest points. They encourage and pretty much set up your canvassing day to go over the eight hours you are paid for that day – because it’s all for the good of the movement and having to suck as much money out of pockets of folks on the street or at their front door through fakey, scripted “raps”. Never do they try to get people involved through any sort of volunteer organizing if they can’t afford to give – if you don’t have the cash, then you don’t really care about the environment, right?
Having worked with the PIRG in a campus organizer position, which is a completely different story, I also had to canvass several days out of the year. These canvass directors were soulless, unhappy, and pretty much brainwashed into working those 70 hours per week. The way the PIRG “recruited” for new employees was shameful and disgusting. If they created a work environment that honored a person’s well-being and the ability to afford their cost of living, then perhaps the turnover rate would not be as astounding as it is. If they gave canvassers better training and a better chance to develop their skills, then perhaps they would not have to spend the amount of money they do on recruitment of new employees.
For more testimonials and accounts of experiences with the PIRG, please visit http://burnedoutbypirg.wordpress.com .
[...] at Philadelphia City Paper’s Clog June 20, 2009, 6:02 pm Filed under: Uncategorized Is Canvassing Exploitative?, Isaiah Thompson, [...]
I think that some of the tactics employed by some canvass groups set themselves up for disaster. Trying to get somone to give you 5 minutes of their lunch break is a lot to ask, especially if you are going to canvass them for some of their lunch $$$.
Some of the city’s canvass groups do wonderful work, so before you judge this book by its’ cover, you should try to google the organization, and see just EXACTLY what they are doing with their funding. Better yet, live a day in their shoes, and go out and canvass. I love it, it’s one way to help change the world.
I worked for the PIRG network for four years, and while I can certainly see and understand a lot of the complaints that folks have about it, I disagree with most of the negativity here. I really liked what Dennis said – he probably put it better than I could.
What it comes down to for me is this – canvassing is a really fucking difficult thing to do, but I’d also be hard pressed to find something that I was more proud of doing in my entire life. I spent two summers on the canvass – one of them as a “soulless canvass director” working 100 hours a week. But you know what? It was campaign work, and as anyone who has ever worked on a campaign will tell you, you basically give up your life to work on it. And when it comes down to it, I don’t regret it for a second.
As far as pay goes – I have never been nearly as well-paid as I was as a canvasser. And I’m pretty bad at talking to people I don’t know. I just paid attention to the training I got (which really was ample) and treated it like my job.
Finally, to the whole question of the article – is it exploitative? Yea, to some extent. But really, what job isn’t? And we’re all slaves to something or other, whether it’s a job or a car or a mortgage or a girlfriend or your parents, so I don’t know that it’s fair to single out canvassing.
I think that exploitation can be a very ambiguous term in this sense. How can someone really be exploiting you when you can quit at anytime. I worked for GCI (licensed off by the Democratic National Committee) for two straight summers and made a decent summer income. Sure i wasn’t making as much money as my waiter friends but I certainly felt better about myself at the end of the night.
These jobs also provide life experiences that are hard to get as a college student; this is something that can’t be measured in salary. Going door to door discussing politics offered me an opportunity to hear thoughts and beliefs that I had never considered. In addition, having face to face interactions with so many people is important. We live in a world where people skills are crucial for success in almost any job and what better way to enhance those skills than by spending 6 hours a day talking to people about important world issues.
Just wanted to thank everyone for the comments – this turned out to be a really interesting conversation. – Isaiah
I agree alot with Dennis’ comment. I still work for Clean Water Action and have for 2 years, and am now a field manager there. As far as PennPIRG goes, they have very different practices there than we do here. I wanted to add a few more things, I apologize if some of this overlaps.
1- We do pay minimum wage and heed to all labor laws, plus can get higher hourly wages based on performance. When promoted to field manager or a higher position like canvass director, you are salaried. Sure it’s not going to be the highest paying job ever, but again you’re not necessarily just in the non-profit business for well… profit.
2- Unlike PIRG, we first have observation days when someone applying for the job can walk around with a trainer and see if they like the job, and if hired they go through 5-20 days of training with a trainer (or field manager). We do daily office training as well as “skill shares” in the field where we go to doors with them for about an hour. I call that sufficient.
Side note – it’s not actually commision based, but there are bonuses for higher performance.
3- I know many people who have been with the organization for a long time. The previous canvass director was there 7 years I believe, and many others for a few years. We care if people sink or swim; if a staff member starts to do poorly and is at risk for losing their job, we even have trainers work with them.
4- We’d never force leadership on someone, but offer it as a promotion, a resume builder, and a real skill builder. I’ve learned so much from being a trainer and FM. Plus when promoted you go through a 2-4 week training plan and work with veteran leadership.
5- Well Dennis pretty much hit that nail right on the head. The option is there to hang out and many choose to, though it’s obviously not required.
Every job is going to have hard parts, and if you’re in it just for the money, canvassing probably isn’t for you. But it’s the job i’ve decided to stay with the longest so far, and it’s definitely been the most rewarding at the end of the night when you see the campaign victories rolling in.
Oh and for all you doubters – we don’t just fundraise. Our signatures give us weight in Congress when we go fight for public health and environmental legislation, and we have members write letters to (or call) their politicians which helps hold them accountable. There are also volunteer opportunities that come by, so we do alot of serious campaign work… feel free to check it out on our website. :)
Heather’s last point is critical: I think the groups that treat their canvassers best also treat their members the best and also do the most effective work. If you’re canvass isn’t working, for real, to involve people on the doors in the issues (as in, it’s not just fundraising), then you’re not running an organization as effectively as you could be and you’re letting both your staff and your members down.
Canvassing varies by Organization, but Clean Water Action sets a high bar and it really does deliver value both to those who do the walking and those who join.
Since Heather and I work for the same organization, obviously I agree with her. I’m not a canvasser (tho I do it from time-to-time). Mostly, I do the follow up work on the members the canvassers bring in. I’ll just say that the difference between organizations that have boots on the ground and those that don’t is night and day. I’ve worked for groups with 200 members and now I work for one with 130K in PA. Let’s just say that it’s a no brainer that I have more clout with all those members.
The discussion above has been good on the employment side. The part above that seemed silliest to me was the part about saying that “you’d just give to an org directly rather than let a lot of the money go to admin.”
The simple fact is that tons of money would never make it into the progressive movement without expensive fundraising approaches like canvassing. It would just be lost. And, from my perspective as an Organizer, more importantly, all those memberships would be lost. And then our orgs would have less clout to protect your air and water. People have to be ASKED, and asking them face-to-face is expensive and difficult, but worth it terms of clout it delivers to the causes.
Brady, Heather – Keep up the good work at Clean Water Action. I am a member, and impressed with your work. My biggest frustration with PIRG is that for the thousands upon thousands of members and donors they have, their action alerts are strange and impersonal. The Citizen Outreach Director for PennPIRG is also the same COD for other states!….it just doesn’t make sense. I agree with both of your points – maybe somehow, you guys can take over PIRG. :D
Hey everyone,
Thanks for all the enlightening comments! I’m with a small enviro organization that wants to build its membership. We’ve tried all sorts of non-canvass ways (tabling, events, acquistion mailings) and have a few hundred active members to show for it. We very much want to expand and to target congressmen/women and ask for greater protection in our state.
We’re considering a canvass. We feel that a canvass offers face-to-face contact on a larger scale than is possible any other way. I was a PIRG canvasser, canvass director years ago, and yeah, there were problems with some of the things they did (although I can’t agree with the most bitter comments.) I want to do it right this time.
As to the central question about exploitation: tell me the job that isn’t! And organizations that send out crews (payroll costs) in cars (rental/maintenance/gas/mileage/insurance costs)need to bring in some money to keep it up. Lots of nice, idealistic people can’t canvass well and wind up disappointed – unfortunate, but try to keep perspective about the big picture of non-profit citizen’s orgs. To us fundraising isn’t the main goal – getting citizen-members on the ground in key districts is.
After a quick scanning of people’s comments, I noticed that this hasn’t been mentioned (and forgive me if it has):
It seems the canvassing system also ran afoul of the U.S. court system.
The Fund for Public Interest Research, which, as someone mentioned above, is the fundraising wing of PIRG, was actually sued for poor labor practices (such as bathroom and meal breaks, 8-hour work days), not too long ago.
The class action lawsuit succeeded, and the Fund has had to pay a settlement to everyone who worked for them between 2002 and 2006 (in New York, California, and a few other states, that is). [full disclosure: a family member is among the beneficiaries of said settlement]
see also:
http://www.thefundovertimelawsuit.com/websys94.pl
Honestly, it all varies by organization. I worked as a canvasser with Peace Action West in 2008-2009 and really enjoyed it work the most part. The quota was not too high so many of the staff were actually able to hold the job for more than just a few days, and everyone was given an hour of training every morning.
My experience as a Canvass Director, however, was not as warm and fuzzy. Actually is was the exact opposite. I’d love to tell you what group it was for, but I had to sign an agreement when I worked with them not to talk about any of this, and god forbid I end up in court for breaking an NDA.
The quota was higher at this place than I’ve seen anywhere else, leaving canvassers completely freaked out wondering how long they actually have a job for. (Especially since the country is in a recession and jobs aren’t as easy to come by right now.) I’ve had canvasser break down crying on the street, in the office, and I assume at home as well. The job is not easy, but when canvassers are being pushed so hard they break it’s not funny.
I will say this, though. We’re trained to deal with it. During my training I learned to “convince” people that they want to quit (so the organization can get around actually firing someone), learned how to “motivate” a team with prizes, stickers, food, basically anything that would make a five year old happy. “Creating and Implementing” a “motivational plan” to “drive employees to perform” sounds great, right? Actually all that means is I was taught how to manipulate these people. I found the job absolutely disgusting.
Yet I did the job well for the short time I had it, putting in 60+ hours a week, more than anyone else in the office for pretty low pay.
I was fired after a month and a half. Though the office had two programs when I started, they closed one down after my first month and then had to let go of someone because they had 2 directors and 2 asst. directors in an office that should have no more than 3 directors TOTAL.
Not only was I fired, I was fired for reasons that simply were not true. When the other program closed, the director of that team became my boss and it was his word on how the office was functioning. He understood someone had to go and he and the two asst directors had been there for quite a while together. Let the slam fest begin! I was treated like absolute SHIT (pardon my language, please) after this shit. Belittled in front of my team, lied about to national, had my work files compromised, etc, etc, etc.
It was the worst handled, most back handed political situation I have ever been in in my life. But when people fear for the security of their jobs, some of them will do anything to make sure they’re not the one that gets cut. As for me, I just worked twice as hard as ever, doubling recruiting numbers and trainees. Yet hard work in canvassing doesn’t always pay off.
With that said, I moved all the way across the country only to be jobless in a place I’d never lived before after only 4.5 weeks in an office.
From my experience, I will say this: Canvassing, if done correctly, with respect for your crew, with respect for the people on the street, can be a wonderful occupation for a little while. It’s not something anyone is going to want to do past thirty, but it’s a good way to learn about the issues, US politics, and how it all works. But if handled incorrectly, all you end up with is a group of scared individuals, afraid they could lose their job at any moments, breaking down on the street, with a director who’s taught to manipulate their crew to get the most money out of them possible.
My best advice to anyone starting one? Do it for the members, not for the money. have a low quota that people can get to that still pays the bills for them, their office, and their benefits and leave it at that. Have a development department for high end donors (aka: people with money who will donate a lot) to keep yourself financially going. If you do it this way, you will still turn profit off the canvassing. People who are feeling good canvass better. That’s the simple truth.
Finally, please treat canvassers like human beings. Most of them are fresh out of college not knowing where to go next. Others are at your doorstep because the economy is terrible and they simply can’t find any other way to pay the bills. And finally, many of them are people who see the good in the world and want to help make our world better.
It’s a hard job, a job that people will treat you like crap for doing, where people scream at you on the street and tell you to “go get a real job”. But the truth is, that most of us don’t go online to look up charities or rights groups. Canvassing IS the way to raise awareness. So do it, but do it right!
The way we treat each other, the way we treat our canvassers, should be the first thing we look at when trying to change the world. You can’t change the exploitation of the poor, the homeless, the environment, etc, by exploiting the people who are holding up your organization. Canvassing is by far the hardest, most time consuming, most involved job I have ever had. But if done correctly, it can be the most rewarding job, too.
[...] The post drew a lot of comments, with people weighing in on different sides. Since then, partly thanks to those comments, I’ve come to think that the answer may be a little more nuanced than the question as I posed it. [...]
I WORK FOR AN NON-PROFIT IN NEW ORLEANS THAT IS TRYING TO RESTORE THE WETLANDS SO THAT an enough Katrina doesn’t happen and the group is the only one holding Oil and the Government responsible about. We do Canvassing but more to get the issue out and to talk to people because people still don’t know what is going even if they see the land disappearing each. When you live in a state dominated by corruption and companies having control the only way to get people to know about the issue and care is talk to them personally. And for all you Northerners this issue affects you to because if we losses New Orleans we lose 30% of the nation oil and 1/3 of the nation seafood.
I had a friend who was a canvassing director in DC for a few years after college. He worked well above 40-60 hours every week and it seemed like a grind that had nothing to do with the actual cause that they were supposed to be helping. He is currently living in Chicago working as a pizza waiter, with a daughter he has to travel to Fargo to see and he seems happier now than he was then.
I started canvassing back in 1984-85 and have worked in as many as 20 states most of it cross training. I was and still am a huge fund raiser and qualified trainer and field manager. I’ve retained a lot of canvassers throughout my years. I have seen the worst of situations and the best. Keep in mind the hugest factor about this work is politics itself. For every victory there are at least 10+ losses. Going door to door is when you finally come face to face with who you are. Is the job exploitive………yes, if the wrong person is in a managerial posistion. That means anyone from a trainer to a canvass director to a regional director to the top dog. Let’s face it, politically correct or not the bottom line is the rent needs to be paid and most offices have budget woes regardless of their affiliations and in the end if the canvass isn’t producing so goes the office.
Tom M of Wisconsin
It sounds like the distinction that people are making is between some organizations which use good grassroots or membership-based canvassing models, and others -the ones that I see on a regular basis in CC, at least- which simply ask for money. Upon a little more ‘research’ (going to Wikipedia), I found this brief for a book called “Activism, Inc: How the Outsourcing of Grassroots Campaigns Is Strangling Progressive Politics in America” by Columbia University sociologist Dana Fisher. Some interesting highlights:
“In the 1990s, as the funding for progressive causes waned, several national progressive groups decided to hire the People’s Project to run their own campaigning and fundraising on the assumption that it is more cost-effective (following the model of customer service and technical assistance for many corporations). Although the People’s Project is one of the largest, there are a handful of other groups running outsourced canvasses. “Together these canvasses maintain a grassroots base for approximately 25 percent of the largest membership organizations in the United States. …In the summer of 2003, they ran campaigns for the national offices of Greenpeace USA, Save the Children, the Human Rights Campaign, and the Sierra Club.” This kind of standardized canvassing model seems to make economic sense for national organizations that don’t have a built-in membership to tap into for fundraising…
Using a regimented and top-down structure, the Project trains its canvassers with scripted messages where the emphasis is on memorizing a script and not understanding the issues. The focus is on fundraising and setting monetary targets…
More important, instead of taking advantage of preexisting local progressive institutions and staff in local communities, the People’s Project chooses to ignore these networks by moving its campaign directors regularly…By hiring geoflexible young people who are not grounded in the localities and places where they are working this strategy can be counterproductive…
…So few national groups now run local offices that provide paid opportunities for idealistic young people, the People’s Project has become the gatekeeper for many entry-level positions within national progressive groups. But many, perhaps, too many, young people are being chewed up and spit out by this standardized model of activism that treats idealistic young people as interchangeable cogs in the machine of grassroots politics in America…
In a final chapter, Fisher compares the grassroots activism on the Left with that of the Right, which has not adopted this model of consolidation and outsourcing. Instead the Republicans work through pre-existing civic associations formed by churches and other locally grounded networks (“a volunteer army”), which they have successfully mobilized in the last two national elections.”
The brief can be found here http://www.sup.org/html/book_pages/0804752176/Press%20Release.pdf
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[...] The little post drew considerable response, including a links to a veritable mountain of writing on the topic, ranging from worker treatment issues to the canvassing model of fundraising itself and the companies and organizations behind it. [...]
It is true that some groups contract out canvassing and fundraising efforts. However, when you give to a canvasser, even if they are representing one of these groups, you are giving directly to the organization. Groups that fundraise and canvass this way do it because they don’t have the resources to run their own canvass. Also, these canvassers are dedicated to these causes, it isn’t like a game of progressive roulette with a new issue everyday.
Also, when you giving to the organizations who hire their canvassers directly IS how you give directly to the organization. Stop trying to make excuses.
Last but most definitely not least, canvassers aren’t trying to get donations so they can keep a part of it. Canvassers ask for donations because they have to meet a quota everyday or else they will be fired. If they make over quota, sometimes they will get a small percentage (with caps), but the vast majority of canvassers work very hard just to scrape by quota every night.