I had a lengthy phone call from someone claiming that Global Alliance for International Advancement were an agency that put people in touch with UN Projects and did all the paperwork so you could focus on delivery. They would even be prepared to advance you the payment if you couldn't wait for the UN to pay out. This all sounded OK except the guy rambled on and on (I'd had a late night and was content to snooze at the phone; believe it or not, this call took 1 hour and 40 minutes). Eventually he got to the bottom line: $2500 for 5 years' membership, because the whole thing allegedly is funded by member subscriptions to avoid conflicts of interest. Fine, I said, let me think about this for a bit. Then the hard sell started. You aren't worried about the amount of money are you, I mean I would insult a person of your standing if I suggested you couldn't afford $2500. (Actually he was insulting me by suggesting I would hand over any cash without time to assess the value proposition but never mind.) At this point I started to get annoyed (I'd caught up on my sleep). He then offered an alternative of a 2-year membership for $1600 and if I really didn't want to pony up all the money at once, I could pay it in 2 annual amounts. But they guaranteed that if I was dissatisfied by the value delivered in 18 months, I could get my money back. Fine, I said, I'll think about it. Then he started asking me for credit card details, which I declined. It ended with him telling me I should email their info address with his name mentioned so he could send me more details. The reason for the hard sell? If they worked through 100 potentials and only 7 or 10 signed up, it was a lot of work.
Now, here's where I have major reservations:
1. No reputable organization is going to insist that you hand over credit card details before you've been able to do some kind of due diligence (and I also note they wanted my CV or resume to confirm membership: they would knock me back after taking my money?).
2. I was more than a little turned off when told that evidence that they were reputable was that they dealt with a large well-known bank. So do I. That means nothing. In fact "reputable" and "bank" don't sound so good as a combination these days.
3. When I did a web search on them, I only found
1 site not directly linked to them (in fact the one the telemarketer referred me to) that mentioned them with any content at all that wasn't negative. There's
one article repeated in various places alleging they are telemarketing Who's Who scam, and their telemarketers mostly earn on commission, and are fired if they can't make a sale in their first 3 weeks. I also found job ads for interns and telemarketers (confirming that they are incentivized).
4. Worse, their web site has
no content indicating any projects or other activity that would justify the claims of what they do. A genuine nonprofit would have non-confidential outcomes to back its claims (completed projects, projects in progress, past work of directors, etc.). All the content is vague and hard to link to specifics for example they claim to provide access to the "International Carbon Emissions Group". A google search on exact words (put the words in quotes) only turns up the GAIA site. There's a section on the web site pointing to "members in the news". The stories' dates do not match those on the web site, and are generic business stories, with no indication of a connection to GAIA.
5. The telemarketer told me to look them up at the New York Department of State as evidence that they were a nonprofit, so I duly did that. They applied for
registration on 20 May 2008. So they haven't been going long enough to have a major track record, but long enough to have
some track record.
When I sat back and thought about it, the amount they are charging seems wrong. It's too much to charge if you are an agency finding work for people, but not enough to cover the research and paperwork costs they claim they are covering. Even at the most expensive rate of $800 a year, once you subtract out overheads, there isn't much left to do things like sift through huge numbers of UN projects, write up proposals and handle the financial side – which is what he told me they do. What's more, if they think that managing projects on a commission basis introduces conflict of interest, why do they think it's kosher to sell "memberships" on a commission basis?
That I was expected to hand over money with no record of any claims as to the service offered was the real clincher.
Update: they referred me to one
Isaac Goodine as a reference. I emailed him, and had no reply. He appears to be a member of that distinguished stratum of society that parades
bogus awards to certify achievement.