PIRG stands for the Public Interest Research Group. We stand up for the public against powerful interests when they push the other way, winning concrete results on real problems that affect millions of lives.

Whether it’s stopping the overuse of antibiotics on factory farms, overturning Citizens United to get big money out of our democracy, protecting consumers from unsafe or unscrupulous practices, or other problems, the conventional wisdom says that issues are either 'liberal' or 'conservative.’ But these problems affect people all across the political spectrum. And our solutions aren't ‘Republican’ or ‘Democratic’ — they're just common sense. The challenge is that powerful special interests have used their enormous resources to gain influence within our political system, while casting doubt on our solutions.

So how do we overcome this challenge? We start by doing our homework. We break the problem down and make sure we can win the argument on the merits — that’s a given.

But we also need to inform the public, get attention for the problem, and show that people are with us — because we know that even government officials and business leaders with the best of intentions act differently when they know the public is paying attention and asking them to do the right thing.

Visibility alone isn’t enough. In every campaign with PIRG, we need people to mobilize political and public support. We build broad coalitions with other groups and communities who care about solving the problem — regardless of whether they’re on the left or right side of the aisle. We take our message to the media, making sure the public and decision makers know this is an issue they should be paying attention to. We build an online following, mobilizing them to make sure we’re putting political pressure on the right people at the right time in the right way. And we go out and raise the financial support it takes to achieve our goals, and build for the future.

We take this non-partisan, fact-driven, result-oriented approach to all of the campaigns we work on. And these strategies have been effective for more than 40 years. We’re hiring people to join our team, and help us win concrete results on these real problems.