Why this, why now

Global poverty reduction was a real achievement between 1990 and 2014 — but it’s slowed sharply since, driven largely by the end of the growth engine (chiefly China’s transformation) that powered those earlier gains, with nothing yet replacing it for the places left behind.
That slowdown doesn’t by itself prove any particular kind of aid has failed. Stop Global Poverty’s case for a different approach rests on separate grounds: shifting long-term ownership and control to communities, not just funding the next cycle of relief.
Poverty has identifiable, structural causes — governance failure, corruption, gaps in civic and legal education, exploitative economic practice, and the long-term effects of historical extraction and unequal trade. A structural cause calls for a structural response.

Not just capital — accountability too

Alongside Direct Community-Led Capital Trusts, Stop Global Poverty is designed to run a second, equally resourced mechanism: the International Evidentiary-Referral Function. Rather than confronting governments directly, it's planned to gather and verify evidence of corruption and resource-revenue capture, then refer it to bodies that already hold real legal power to act — sanctions regimes, anti-bribery prosecutors, and international transparency initiatives — working alongside organisations already doing this work, not duplicating it.

This isn't live yet, and Stop Global Poverty holds no legal power to prosecute, sanction, or seize assets itself — its planned role is building credible evidence and routing it to those who can.

Direct Community-Led Capital Trusts

Any self-organising group of two or more people — rural or urban, an existing community organisation, or represented by a single applicant — will be able to apply. Capital, once disbursed, becomes the recipient group’s own property outright. Stop Global Poverty is designed to keep no ownership stake, no lien, and no ongoing claim.

  • Seeds community-owned enterprises in energy, water, food systems, land, and digital infrastructure — phased by country, starting with verified group intake and trust-building.

    Runs civic and legal education, government-accountability work, legal aid, and a free Public Library and Global Directory helping people who need it find verified local services near them.

    Does not plan to run palliative aid as a standing programme — that space is already served by, and is complementary to, established relief organisations.

    Is designed to fund and support independent bodies that hold governments and corporations accountable for corruption — through evidence referral to sanctions regimes and prosecutors, not by acting as an enforcement body itself.

  • Stop Global Poverty is being established as a New Zealand charitable trust — a structure chosen specifically for long-term mission protection over what's intended to be a 100-plus-year horizon, using the cy-près doctrine that stops a charitable trust's purpose from being redirected by whoever currently controls it.

    The Founder is planned to chair the board with one vote and a tie-breaking casting vote, plus a narrow, disclosed consent right over purpose changes and new trustees. Two independent, external-majority committees — Academic Grants and Allocations — are designed to make funding and grant decisions without the Founder in a controlling role.

    Want the detail? The full governance and operating framework this page is based on is available on request.

  • Donor gifts to Stop Global Poverty are split roughly 50/50 between the Regenerative Enterprise Model and the International Evidentiary-Referral Function and are designed to sit in a fixed six-month treasury hold. The yield that money earns is intended to fund Stop Global Poverty's own running costs; the principal is planned to be disbursed in full to community enterprises. Separately, gifts earmarked for Running Costs & Development will fund operations directly.

    Donor principal is designed never to be spent on staff, management, or property — only the yield it earns.

    This isn't open yet. Stop Global Poverty can't accept donations until it's a registered charitable trust — there is no donate button on this site, and there won't be one until that's true.

What Stop Global Poverty is

Stop Global Poverty is a project in the process of becoming a New Zealand charitable trust, built around a simple idea: people escape poverty by owning capital, tools, and decision-making power — not by receiving the same aid, over and over, indefinitely.

Stop Global Poverty’s long-term destination is what we call the Regenerative Enterprise Model: communities owning the core infrastructure they depend on — energy, water, food, land, and knowledge. The path there runs through Direct Community-Led Capital Trusts, which transfer capital and control directly to local cooperatives and producers, so ownership of what’s built stays with the community itself.