My Nonprofit Reviews

I am a PADI Professional dive instructor, rating IDC Staff Instructor, and have been a member of PADI for 13 years.
I always took it for granted that Project AWARE was a good and helpful organization...

Until I quit taking it for granted. After receiving several 'concerned' assessments from people I know in government positions, I undertook my own research. What I found was, for someone who had supported past fundraising efforts, humiliating.


*****Update as of Jan.27, 2015*****
I have received copies of PA's USA tax returns, and discovered that PA accounting lists all compensation for staff and paid board members as "program expenses" rather than as administrative costs. Form 990 shows actual direct giving for programs to be $9,500 for the last year available, 2012. The other $440,000 listed as program expenses was salaries, wages, and benefits for 2 paid board members and 6 paid staff. They did not say what the $9500 went to, because their giving fell just below the threshold for required itemizing of recipients. *******

Project AWARE does next to nothing except churn out materials that can be purchased by volunteers to get other volunteers to do work, and give PA credit for the event (such as debris clean-ups). They give a few grants, but they will not and do not keep any accurate expense reports, nor will they provide such information if requested (see BBB wise giving alliance report, which found the same lack of financial accounting as I did.) Dive instructors are provided with educational materials, and teach PA courses, but these are for-profit course offerings, and they are not expenditures, they raise funds. In fact, most of their events seem to earn more for the organization than the organization spends.

The organization mostly reports on ocean issues and reprints or paraphrases others' research and activity and then states support for these causes. They consider it an "action" to do this, because they are thereby "educating" people and making them "aware."
A quick look at their published, online 2014 "year in review infographic" seems to be very impressive. They obviously spend a lot of time and money on graphics used for touting their "accomplishments." But a closer look reveals the truth that they have really done nothing but put out information that is already available elsewhere, and get people to "like" them on facebook. If you think this is hyperbole, read their own "infographic" carefully and see the words they use:

They MOBILIZED people to write letters. How?
They MOBILIZED 4000 divers (volunteers) to pick up trash. They provided ??
They INFLUENCED the listing of sharks in the meetings of other groups. How?
They INFLUENCED EU litter policy. This one they said how: as one member of an international network of ngos. But what role did PA take?
They ACTIVATED 1900 divers to...take a pledge to protect the ocean.
They ACTIVATED 30,000 people to 'take action locally.' They did not elaborate.
They CERTIFIED 182 Instructors (who paid for the cert) to train debris removal volunteers.
They CERTIFIED 482 shark conservation instructors (who paid for the cert) who taught a total of 731 students (who pay for the course) how to be aware of the shark issues. That's 1.5 students per instructor. These certs all raised funds for PA, and solicit further donations in addition to course fees. Expenses, again, are not published or kept at all, apparently.

THAT'S IT!!! That is what they did last year, by their own accounting. How much did they spend on all of this? In the US, they spent around $450,000 on programs and collected in about $650,000. However, there is no accounting on how much of the expenses went towards salaries and expenses for travel, etc, for PA staff and administration. What we do know is that the CEO in the USA was paid nearly $100,000 last year. (see again BBB wise giving report.)

So Project AWARE basically mobilizes, activates, and influences others to do work, by creating web pages and literature which mostly claim credit for the work others do and by rewriting information already available elsewhere. In turn, dive centers get to promote themselves and their courses by displaying their affiliation with PA and often by receiving awards from PA for fund-raising efforts and for organizing trash pick-ups - These are activities which should be done by dive shops anyway, and would be done if PA did not exist.

But I left out the last accomplishment, which PA proudly touts In their "Infographic":
They INSPIRED 163,000 facebook fans and 24,000 twitter followers.
They INSPIRED 25 teams of volunteers to raise $52,000 for Project AWARE.
They INSPIRED 269 dive centers to...donate to Project AWARE, in exchange for "100% Aware" status and awards.


A quick look below at the very complimentary reviews of Project AWARE shows that 100% of these supporters are, in fact, PA affiliated dive shops and instructors who stand to profit from PA-related courses and who use their PA affiliation in their marketing. I do not believe that they are intentionally being biased and unaware of the reality. I believe they are decent people who just have no idea how PA is using them to legitimatize a very questionable organization. Anybody who seeks information on how PA is run and what oversight there is, especially in foreign countries, will find there is no such info on oversight and expenses.

This is all based on their own published information. What I have seen in fact in the field is horrifying. One example: On Koh Tao, in Thailand, Project AWARE is highly active in fund raising and course offerings, as well as several debris clean-ups every year. One shop, I will not name for fear of reprisal (this fear is very real on Koh Tao!), has walls full of PA awards for ocean awareness education. This same shop, and virtually all the shops on Koh Tao, meanwhile drain their waste water from laundry and showers directly into the ocean, and pile toxic construction/demolition debris in huge piles hidden on the hillside. There is no sanitation system for human waste that anybody could judge as sufficient, and much is drained into open cess pools and into the sea. The corals ringing Koh Tao have been damaged and are quite likely unsavable due to poisoning from pollution and monumental overuse by dive shops that routinely take literally 100s of divers a day - beginning divers, who are poorly trained in rushed 3-day courses - to small, fragile reefs. It is unbearable to see for anybody who is truly aware. Project AWARE seems to actually be contributing to this wholesale destruction of Koh Tao by helping to give an impression that the dive industry there is conserving, not destroying, the ocean environment.

Many will take offense at what I have written. Nothing I have said is not verifiable and mostly was taken straight from PA's own literature. As for Koh Tao, it must be seen to be believed. It is inconceivable until you have witnessed it firsthand.

BTW any attempt to report such abuses to PA or PADI is met with total and complete dismissal. Never mind that the "pledge" they 'inspire' people to take says, clearly, that any such polluting or damaging activities should be reported. That is, unless it is PA and PADI dive activities.

This organization is opaque, their accomplishments highly speculative and abstract, and their expense reporting is non-existent. I do not support them, and believe dive shops would be much better off severing affiliation and doing their own volunteer clean-up campaigns. dive shops who do actually care about the ocean and who maintain ethical and responsible practices should look at Koh Tao and other areas like it, and consider whether or not they want to be associated with that level of arrogance and duplicity on the part of PA and those local dive shops who are completely irresponsible.

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