PIRGIM Public Interest Research Group In
Q: What is PIRGIM?
A: PIRGIM is a statewide organization
founded by students at the
Q: After
the MSA allocation, where will the money go?
A: The money will be transferred to Student PIRGIM, a
non-profit corporation directed by a Student Board of Directors. Student PIRGIM will directly pay staff and
operating costs.
Q: What does the student
Board do?
A: The student Board has three major responsibilities:
ΠChoosing which campaigns to run from semester to
semester
Approving the
budget
Ž
Hiring the PIRGIM
staff
The student Board operates
like any other board: they make major organizational decisions and delegate day
to day operations to staff.
In addition to its formal
decision-making role, the Student Board of PIRGIM also serves as a training and
leadership development body. Staff work with
student directors to develop campaigns, organizing and
advocacy skills.
Q: Who sits on the Student
Board?
A: The Student Board is composed of students elected by
the chapter. Anyone involved in the
chapter is welcome to run for a board position, and any UM student is welcome
to be involved in the chapter.
In states where the Student
PIRG has multiple chapters, each chapter has a certain number of seats on the
board. The number of seats for each
chapter is
based on the level of funding their school contributes.
Q: Who hires the
Organizer?
A: The Student Board of Directors oversee the recruitment, hiring and
oversight of organizers and all PIRGIM staff.
The Student Board usually performs this role by hiring the PIRGIM
director and then transferring the authority of hiring the rest of the staff to
the PIRGIM director. Organizers receive over a month of training in their first
year on staff and are overseen by Organizing Directors with years of organizing
experience.
Q: How is
PIRGIMs money spent?
A: PIRGIM's budget is devoted to
winning campaigns researching issues, exposing problems, promoting solutions
most of which goes to hiring staff of professionals. In addition to staff,
the rest of the budget is given to various operating costs that make our
students and program staff effective with publications and supplies, rent,
etc. Students determine PIRGIMs
budget each year by serving on the Board of Directors.
Q: What are the priorities
for the next few years?
A: PIRGIMs
priority is to protect the public interest by advocating and organizing around
issues that are important to Michiganders.
Recently, most of our work on and off campus has focused on issues
surrounding tenants rights, consumer protection,
affordable higher education, the environment, and democracy issues. Our top priority is expanding the rights of
renters a lot of students are forced to pay too much for housing that is
sub-standard with very few services from their landlord. PIRGIM is committed to bringing stronger
tenants rights to
Q: Do students on each
chapter decide what issues to work on?
A: Yes. Students pick the campaigns every year both
on the statewide level and on each individual campus. The PIRGIM Student
Board approves all the policy decisions and campus campaigns. PIRGIMs policy platform includes a variety
of public interest issues ranging from environmental issues like clean air,
clean water and wilderness protection; higher education issues like federal
financial aid and
state based funding; consumer issues like renters rights, privacy protection,
health care and bank fee advocacy; and democracy issues like campaign finance
reform and same day voter registration.
For the most part, PIRGIMs on campus campaigns are usually focused on
the statewide issues that are the state's largest problems higher education,
the environment, democracy and consumer issues.
Q: Why does PIRGIM work statewide?
A: The problems that
Q: Why does PIRGIM need so much student fee money to
run its campaigns?
A: Two reasons the money is
important because its what allows us to run campaigns and hire staff. Most of what PIRGIM works on is city-wide,
statewide, even national in scope, and to run a
campaign that lowers tuition, or wins better renters rights, students need to
have money to hire staff and coordinate campaigns.
Student fee money to run these campaigns is also important
because when
students fund
PIRGIM, that means that students run the program, control the
issues, and
make the decisions. That's important,
because when students are
directing the
organization, they own the campaigns, the goals, and the
victories
completely, and that makes the entire experience better for the
students
involved.
