The "model" runs everything. Management/senior staff prioritize numbers and expediency over people. I was hired to help direct a canvassing office, and was shocked on the first day to find out that senior organizers firmly endorsed sending out canvassers, including young girls (as long as they were 18 or older) out to canvass ALONE in the dark in unfamiliar neighborhoods. Mind you, by the time I left staff, the sun went down at 6:45, but the canvassing shift ends at 9pm. When I and other directors in training expressed concern about safety issues concerning this, our concerns were blatantly shot down and ignored because they went against the expediency and effectiveness of their canvassing model. Moreover, during our training, one of the directors got hurt because she couldn't see the driveways and sidewalks in the dark. We were assured that flashlights would be supplied, but they weren't until at least a month later.
Second point about safety: the office I directed in operated in a CO area that was highly conservative with white supremacist roots and a lot of homelessness and joblessness. Moreover, it was not a densely populated urban area like Denver, which would be highly lit with streetlamps and activity; it got dark immediately. Throughout the course of our campaign, not one but FOUR of our canvassers had guns pulled on them at the door, including one of the directors-most during the later half of the evening. When I asked my supervisor about shifting the canvassing hours to earlier, so that we might preserve the SAFETY of our canvassers, she refused, as well as telling me that if people of color don't feel comfortable canvassing with us for fear of their safety, then this job is not for them, and that there was nothing she or anyone could do about it. The reasoning I was given for this was that there was no evidence based on canvassing success and rates to move the hours earlier-or in other words, numbers over people.
Final point: I was given extremely high recruitment goals for the fall campaign and was pushed to exceed those by my Canvass director and the same supervisor above, and then a month later told that we did not have enough neighborhoods and doors to knock on to continue to send out all of those people I had just recruited. Their solution? Lay off the unneeded staff, move one of the three directors, and fire one director (me). I was given no reason for their decision other than "it's not a good fit" though I asked them for the exact reasons for the dismissal. Major targeting team oversight. Needless to say, anyone who is not upper-level staff is completely disposable.
This organization values numbers, politics, and results over the safety, experience, and wages of their staff.
And finally, everything in the other reviews about the wages is true. Directors are expected to work 90-100 hours a week, with no day off, and host after work "socials" at 10pm almost every day. The lowest level staff, the canvassers, are paid anywhere from $10-16 an hour-nearly twice as much, if not more than the directors are paid hourly, because the directors are salaried staff.
And finally, directors are encouraged to let people go if they don't meet the daily canvassing standards, even if the neighborhoods are extremely spread out, poorly lit, difficult terrain, crossing highways, or hidden with conservative gun-touting residents. Regardless of age, fitness, education, etc. everyone is expected to meet the same standard. The "model" does not account for individual variance, or even local context.
This organization is a poor excuse for progressive ideals; it operates more like a chinese sweatshop than a paragon of democratic ideals. Avoid at all costs if you're actually interested in human decency.
