OnPoint Advocacy... what they won't tell you

First, their parent company is Democracy Data and Communications LLC. DDC Advocacy - Your Integrated Issue Advocacy Partner

Here is their website:
On Point @ Home

I worked for them for a handful of hours before quitting. The first problem was the training, which they claimed would take about 4 hours. However, the trainer was calling on a magic jack phone which dropped the call several times throughout training. Then the training took over 6 hours on the phone with NO break. Once done, they gave us a briefing of their current project. As many of you know, I'm very into politics. They state that this position is writing letters to representatives on behalf of people. The problem is finding people who are willing to talk to you and listen to all of your questions as well as your explanation of what you're calling about. For many of these people, it's the first time they've heard about the issue you're calling about, you're asking them to form an opinion based on the information you give to them. Most people won't go through all of that.

My BIGGEST problem was the dishonesty though. Because I'm very into politics I was already very aware of the issue that they had us calling on. As I read through the script that I was supposed to explaining the situation I noticed that there were SEVERAL inaccuracies and flat out lies. Obviously, this made me incredibly uncomfortable. A lot of the people doing the work either didn't care or had no idea that the information they were feeding these people was wrong. After about an hour I quit, I spoke to an older gentleman who was very nice and taking everything I said as truth. It made me absolutely sick to know that they had a lot of employees not only sold on their version of what was happening but now I had to call and convince others of it? No way. During training a lot of the people who already worked for the company were claiming that they didn't know much about politics before working for them, but now they were very well informed. Hardly! They just trusted the information that was fed to them by their employer, because we all know political lobby's are completely unbiased. :RpS_ohmy:

The pay was decent, and if you're not bothered by that kind of thing then the job shouldn't be a problem for you. But they do advertise it as writing letters, when in reality most of your time you'll be placing telemarketer type calls trying to get people to talk to you about what's going on. Personally, though, I couldn't do it.

Can you be more specific on what this deal is..

What are you calling to say?

They were having us tell people that they wouldn't be able to purchase a truck or SUV with the cap and trade law that was passing. Not even kidding, and people believed it too.

You're calling on behalf of lobby's from Washington and talking about current bills in the house or senate. You try and get people worked up over the issue that the lobby is trying to stop or support and then get the person to agree to allow you to write a letter on their behalf to their representative. Once you get the person worked up and they agree to the letter, you start asking them questions and write a letter based off the answers they give you. Once you write the letter you submit it and a copy gets sent to the person. That person either OK's it or says there are problems with it and send it back to be changed. Once the letter is given the OK it's sent to their representative in Congress. Hope that helps! I'm off to a barbecue and get fireworks!

This brings back memories of a summer spent "canvasing" for a local advocacy firm. In my case it was door to door but aside from that it sounds alot like Lisa's story. We'd start out the day in a meeting either discussing what ever issue we were setting up solicit for, or just sitting through the kind of "rah rah" pump you up session that any sales staff knows far to well. Then we'd be loaded in a van and we'd bounce the script off each other till they'd drop us in what ever neighborhood we'd be working that evening. We were paid minimum wage plus a percentage of what ever donations we'd bring in, if we didn't bring in enough, we'd be let go.

It really was just a sales job. I may have come in with higher ideals but very soon you either focus less on the petition signatures and more of the receipt book, or you find yourself needing another job. I never found out what percentage of the money brought in actually went to issue advocacy, but enough local and state politicians trotted through our office that I know that we passed for what ever legitimate was in that context. The problem was they recruited idealistic college kids because we'd work cheap but any time we disagreed with that evenings script we were told to grow up or go home. It was just a commission sales job where you appealed to peoples social conscience, but you couldn't afford to retain one of your own because you'd never know what issue you'd be selling tomorrow.

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Originally Posted by GlimDropper

This brings back memories of a summer spent "canvasing" for a local advocacy firm. In my case it was door to door but aside from that it sounds alot like Lisa's story. We'd start out the day in a meeting either discussing what ever issue we were setting up solicit for, or just sitting through the kind of "rah rah" pump you up session that any sales staff knows far to well. Then we'd be loaded in a van and we'd bounce the script off each other till they'd drop us in what ever neighborhood we'd be working that evening. We were paid minimum wage plus a percentage of what ever donations we'd bring in, if we didn't bring in enough, we'd be let go.

It really was just a sales job. I may have come in with higher ideals but very soon you either focus less on the petition signatures and more of the receipt book, or you find yourself needing another job. I never found out what percentage of the money brought in actually went to issue advocacy, but enough local and state politicians trotted through our office that I know that we passed for what ever legitimate was in that context. The problem was they recruited idealistic college kids because we'd work cheap but any time we disagreed with that evenings script we were told to grow up or go home. It was just a commission sales job where you appealed to peoples social conscience, but you couldn't afford to retain one of your own because you'd never know what issue you'd be selling tomorrow.

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Well, I'm back for now. We'll see how it goes. I wanted to comment that a lot of their workers were from the South. Many seemed OK to just believe what they were told, not to be mean but they were gullible. They talked constantly on the training call about how they didn't know anything about current events before getting the job, but now they knew so much about what was going. In all reality, they only knew what they were being told was happening, it was as if they really trusted these lobbies. But anyone who's really looked into politics knows better than to trust ANY lobby at all.