CALPIRG Reviews

Pros

- Great opportunity to learn people/speaking skills - Fairly easy to advance from canvasser to field manager or director - Teaches you how to be persistent after so many rejections

Cons

- Low pay, no benefits - Some people are extremely rude to canvassers - Emotionally exhausting to seem cheerful to strangers all the time - Having to work outside in the heat/cold/rain/dark often alone

Pros

Easy to get hired, rarely boring

Cons

Hard to make the quota, life depends on manager

Pros

Working with CALPIRG provides plenty of hands on communication experience, as well as many chances to improve organization and teamwork skills. The staff is also very friendly and energetic which make them great to work with. Finally, many of the campaigns that CALPIRG organizes are very successful, which provides comfort knowing that the work you put in is actually making a difference.

Cons

While working on many of the different campaigns, you will encounter a fair amount of rejection, whether it be from people who do not want to sign your petition or people who will completely ignore you etc. This part of the work can be quite daunting, however, if you can find a way to get past that, your work can still be rewarding. Also, this is an unpaid internship.

Pros

I got great experiences to put on my resume. As soon as I showed my competency I was put in charge of everything and anything needed. I went from being recruited to recruiting, training and supervising new interns in a matter of weeks, planning and organizing events, being the spokesperson for our campaign to newspapers, radio, and television, and generally being the organizers right hand (wo)man. These are experiences that just don't happen in a paid position without months or years of work leading up to it.

Cons

The organizers were over zealous and at the end of the campaign I felt taken advantage of. We were running a campaign on a college campus and they would obviously judge volunteers and interns who chose not to volunteer every waking second of their lives. I literally heard a volunteer say they had to cancel their shift because they had a big paper they had to write for class and the organizer responded with the words, "Well, if that's where your priorities are." Those words on their own are benign enough, yet they were said in a way that obviously judged the student for not choosing to volunteer. At the time I devoted myself completely because I thought the cause was just that important, that we were helping to save the world. Afterwords I wondered why I had let my life get so consumed.

Pros

Great learning and travel opportunity. You will learn public speaking, writing, storytelling, people skills, outreach and canvassing skills, and become a better activist.

Cons

Overworked and underpaid. They systematically lie to employees saying salary is ~33k (that is with your "bonus" that none of us ever received ). Salary is actually 22k, which is unlivable on in California. Expect to work 60 hours minimum per week, and only get Sundays off. In the summer they will force you to manage a canvass office working even more hours with more stress, away from home. They would be sued except they coerce employees into signing an arbitration agreement upon employment (you don't actually legally have to sign it, they just make you think you do.) Expect 30% or more of the job to be fundraising students for the campus PIRG.