Planet Aid is a non-profit organization founded in 1997 in Massachusetts. Its primary activity is the collection of clothing and other household items for resale and recycling. It operates in 19 states, where it collects items through donation bins placed on sidewalks, parking lots, and other public areas. The organization has also received U.S. government grants to distribute food and other aid in several African countries.
Investigations have found discrepancies in the stated amount of Planet Aid's charitable expenses, as well as alleged links between Planet Aid and the controversial Danish organization Tvind, described as a "cult" whose leader, Mogens Amdi Petersen, is wanted on charges of fraud and tax evasion. Planet Aid has denied these allegations.
Planet Aid is an accredited charity by the BBB Wise Giving Alliance. However, the American Institute of Philanthropy's CharityWatch has given the organization an "F" rating, disputing Planet Aid's assessment of its charitable spending.
Video Planet Aid
History
Planet Aid is part of an international charitable organization called Humana People to People, founded in Denmark in 1977. Humana began as a door-to-door clothing collection drive aimed at helping people living under the rule of apartheid in South Africa. Planet Aid first began operating in the United States in 1997 by opening a collection center in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The organization later moved to Lowell, Massachusetts in May 1998, and also opened retail locations in Malden, Waltham, and Somerville.
In 2000, Planet Aid's operations spread to the Washington metropolitan area by placing its yellow bins in several cities in the area. By 2002, Planet Aid operated in about seven states in the US, reaching as far south as Winston-Salem, North Carolina. As of 2007, the organization operated in a total of 19 states which included several cities in Upstate New York. Several of the communities into which the organization had expanded and news reports on the charity's expansion became critical of the nonprofit's finances.
In 2014, Planet Aid filed a lawsuit against Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, one of an increasing number of cities that had passed a local ordnance banning charity collection boxes over concerns about litter and vandalism. In April 2015, a federal appeals court upheld an earlier federal court ruling that Planet Aid's collections bins constitute a protected form of free speech and struck down a local zoning restriction in St. Johns, Michigan that had outlawed all such collection boxes. Since winning its federal ruling, Planet Aid has sued several other cities with similar ordinances, and used the decision to force local leaders to craft regulations that allow placement of such boxes. Planet Aid's CEO Ester Neltrup told the Los Angeles Times that Planet Aid supports some regulation on clothing recycling, but opposes bans on donation boxes.
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Operations
Planet Aid collects used clothing through a wide network of donation bins placed on public and private property, donation centers, and curbside pickups. The group has collaborated with local businesses and other organizations to place bins on their property, with an aim to make donation more convenient and thus increase recycling rates. The group states that recycling used clothing and shoes contributes to reduced emissions of greenhouse gases and helps to reducing the amount of waste that municipalities must haul from residences. It was estimated as of 2008 that the organization collects and resells over 70 million pounds of clothing per year.
Charities like Planet Aid that collect used clothing sell them both domestically and on the international market. According to Planet Aid, the proceeds from resold donated clothes and recycled textiles are used to fund international development projects via organizations in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. As of 2015, 94% of its grant funding is directed to programs operated as part of the Humana People to People (HPP) Federation.
The US State Department sponsored an educational visit of Planet Aid's Elkridge, MD headquarters for a delegation of Russian recycling experts to learn how Planet Aid sorts and handles 100 million pounds of donated textiles every year and how they can develop similar practices and infrastructure in that country.
Africa
Planet Aid participates in a number of programs in Africa. In 2001, Planet Aid partnered with Johnson & Johnson in aiding the fight against the spread of AIDS in Southern Africa. In 2012, they partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture for the Farmers Club project, which provides school meals and teacher training in Mozambique and Malawi. These programs are run through Development Aid from People to People - Malawi (DAPP Malawi) and Ajuda de Desenvolvimento de Povo para Povo (ADPP), who, along with Planet Aid, are members of the Humana People to People Federation.
The DAPP In-Service Teacher Training Program in Malawi, supported by Planet Aid, was one of only three global programs to be awarded the UNESCO-Hamdan bin Rashid Al-Maktoum Prize in 2016.
They have also partnered with the World Initiative for Soy in Human Health program, run by the American Soybean Association, to provide nutrition education in Mozambique.
The U.S. Agency for International Development has partnered with Planet Aid to distribute food aid in Zimbabwe, awarding them 93.8 metric tons (92.3 long tons) of prepackaged food in 2011 and 112.6 metric tons (110.8 long tons) in 2012.
Thrift stores
On October 1, 2015, Planet Aid opened its first thrift store in Baltimore as part of a pilot project. The store employed 30 people and offered "tens of thousands of new items every week," in addition to serving as a donation center, according to an article from the Baltimore Sun. Proceeds from purchases in the store go towards Planet Aid's sustainable development projects.
Charity accountability
CharityWatch has given the group an "F" rating, stating that, according to Planet Aid's financial records, Planet Aid only spent 17% of its budget on charitable programs in 2015 (as opposed to the 84% claimed by the charity). In comparison, Goodwill Industries International, another non-profit organization that collects used clothes, spent 82% of its revenue from sales of donated items on charitable services in 2011, according to a spokesperson.
The WGA BBB Wise Giving Alliance (WGA) lists Planet Aid as an accredited charity. According to the WGA:
Planet Aid's position is that, by collecting and selling these products, it is keeping them out of landfills that have a negative impact on the environment. Based on this, Planet Aid considers costs associated with the bins used to collect items to be serving both a programmatic (recycling) and fund raising purpose.
Regarding this allocation of expenses, CharityWatch states:
In 2014 Planet Aid spent $28.4 million to collect and process these non-cash donations, and reported these costs as Program expenses. CharityWatch disagrees with Planet Aid's reporting [...] The expenses a charity incurs to raise donations, whether the donations are in the form of cash or non-cash items like donated clothing, are fundraising expenses, not program expenses.
Regarding Planet Aid's position on the recycling of used clothes, CharityWatch states:
In 2014 Planet Aid brought in almost $41 million from selling these items. This proves that there is a ready market of buyers willing and able to pay large sums of money to purchase used clothing, shoes, and textiles like the ones Planet Aid collects. It is ridiculous for this charity to assert that items worth millions and millions of dollars would end up in a landfill if Planet Aid did not collect them.
Alleged connection to Tvind financial crimes scandal
Media and government investigations have linked Planet Aid, through its board members and financial dealings, to a controversial organization from Denmark called the Teachers Group or Tvind, led by international fugitive Mogens Amdi Petersen. Tvind has been characterized by former members as a secular/political cult, and Tvind leaders have been prosecuted in Denmark for serious financial crimes, with two convictions in trials in 2006 and 2009, respectively. Planet Aid denies any such links, although they are a member of the Humana People to People Federation, an offshoot of Tvind, and several leaders of Planet Aid had been identified as having ties to Tvind and Mogens Amdi Peterson. Planet Aid co-founder and board chair Mikael Norling is a Tvind official, and he was present at the preliminary hearings for the Danish Tvind trials in September 2002. Marie Lichtenberg, the director of international partnerships at Humana People to People and Planet Aid, was identified by Danish law enforcement as a manager of Tvind's global financial operations. Josefin Jonsson, a founding director of Planet Aid, was also a founding director of IFAS, a foundation identified by Danish prosecutors as a front organization used by Petersen for embezzlement and tax fraud.
In March 2016, an investigation co-produced by the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) and the Public Radio Exchange reported that, according to interviews with "several (unnamed) insiders" of Planet Aid and associated Humana People to People member organizations, including "at least a dozen people inside" DAPP Malawi, "50% to 70% of the US government grant money was being siphoned away" to Tvind. Planet Aid denied these allegations, and filed a lawsuit against the Center for Investigative Reporting, alleging a conspiracy to interfere with Planet Aid's business. The USDA also issued a statement saying that "none of their formal compliance reviews, their ad hoc reviews, their site evaluations, or their audits of the Planet Aid projects have yielded any significant findings or concerns," although documents obtained by the CIR showed that a USDA program analyst who had visited the project in Malawi was concerned that the use of funds was ineffective and lacked transparency.
A follow-up report by CIR cited a 2001 report by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation that identified Planet Aid, Humana People to People, and DAPP as part of a network of organizations that diverted charitable funds for personal use by Teachers Group members. In response, the United Nations Children's Fund halted funding to these organizations. An August 2016 report by the British Broadcasting Corporation in partnership with the Center for Investigative Reporting led the United Kingdom Department for International Development to suspend payments as well.
References
External links
- Official website
- Planet Aid at Guidestar
- Planet Aid page at the BBB Wise Giving Alliance
- Planet Aid page at CharityWatch
Source of article : Wikipedia
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