Organizations that are Poverty Pimps/Perpetuating Poverty

[ChrisClark13]

I'm currently doing research on Poverty and I've come across the issue of "Poverty Pimps."

For my purposes a Poverty Pimp is any organization that puts up a facade of "Helping the Poor" in order to receive donations and funding so they can stuff their own pockets with the money they get.

I'm also looking for organizations that perpetuate poverty, meaning any organization/company that make silly/ridiculous amounts of money off of the poor and prefers that poor people stay poor so that they can make more money.

Here's an article to help show what I'm talking about when it comes to Poverty Pimps
http://www.infoshop.org/breakingglas...erty_pimps.pdf

The thing is though is that I can't find seem to find any names of organizations/etc (NGO, Charities, etc) that are accused of being Poverty Pimps or just of perpetuating poverty. (Other than Wal-Mart.)

[Doppleganger]

Organizations that fit your criteria tend to get killed by outside forces if their tactics are known. I can only offer two possible leads off the top of my head-

1. There was a case where Anderson Cooper/Wolf Blitzer of CNN gave screen-time to this woman, who was ostensibly running some kind of charity for animals (dogs?) or something, and was found to not be using the money for what she said she was. Cooper I believe drove to her property and she told him to talk to her attorneys.
2. The Kony 2012 organization that was brought up in the video supposedly doesn't do what it says it does.

Another possibility would be cash-advance organizations who take advantage of people who live paycheck to paycheck but can't accrue credit history, hoping to get them into perpetual debt and squeezing as much revenue from them as possible.

Sorry I couldn't give specifics.

[deoxys]

Yes, Invisible Children pretty much meets the definition of everything you're looking for from what I've read, as Dopple mentions.

I would also totally consider private student loan organizations with massive interest debt to fit your category as well.

[ChrisClark13]

I've just barely checked out the website for Invisible Children and I found a mention that led me to this site: http://www.charitynavigator.org
Invisible Children has a 3-star rating on their site, being docked points for just a couple of things.

On the subject of organizations that perpetuate poverty, both examples there are things that just make me feel sick because it feels like "s****ing on the little guy" at that point.
I've also heard that credit card companies don't want you to be a responsible credit card holder and that they would prefer it if you managed to rack up debts that you would end up paying for for the rest of your life.

[Izzy]

London's United Way is one of the biggest poverty pimps in town... Revenue Canada shows they collected $8,244,527 in donations (which is only a portion of the haul they made -total of $9,364,009). Now most people think, 'cause of the advertising, that this goes to agencies that help the poor. Not so, they only gave $5,579,648 to agencies.

So what does this mean? They spent $1,656,235 directly into their very own pockets. And less than 33% of the agencies they funded had budgets below $1,000,000. We sometime refer to this as the 'old boys network' and if you look at the composition of the Boards of these organizations with less than $1,000,000 in revenue - you will find the vast majority of them are predominantly led by women.

There's agencies in town that actually help the poor and their entire staff costs are under $30,000 - because it is the poor helping the poor - in spite of the poverty pimps... and guess how much they get from the United Way - ZERO. Well, except the UW keeps trying to copy their programs or fund someone else to do what is already being done.

Kid yourself not - Poverty Pimping is an industry in London.