Is poverty-action.org legit or a scam?
Innovations for Poverty Action is a verified, long-standing non-profit research organization with high trust ratings and no history of fraudulent activity.
Analysis Summary
No threats detected
All checks passed. This site appears legitimate — but always stay alert for phishing even on trusted domains.
Website Preview
Automated page render — captured in a safe sandbox. What an ordinary visitor would see when loading the site.
MT Intelligence
The domain has been active for over 23 years, which is a strong indicator of a stable and established organization. Our analysis confirms it is the official website for Innovations for Poverty Action, a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit. The site is recognized by major independent charity evaluators and has a clean record across our antivirus network. We found no evidence of phishing, malware, or deceptive practices. The organization's transparency regarding its finances and global research projects further reinforces its legitimacy.
Web Research Findings
Our live research agent queries scam-report databases, consumer-review sites, news coverage, and general web search for poverty-action.org, then cross-checks business-registration records and look-alike domain patterns. Everything below is pulled from what it actually found.
- Official website of Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), a nonprofit research organization founded in 2002 by economist Dean Karlan, focused on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) for poverty alleviation.
- Registered as US 501(c)(3) with EIN 06-1660068; tax-deductible contributions noted on site and IRS filings.
- Recognized by Charity Navigator (3/4 stars), GiveWell (standout organization in 2011), and The Life You Can Save (trusted charity).
- No scam reports, fraud complaints, or negative Reddit discussions found in targeted searches for scam/fraud/phishing.
- Organization has global offices, partners with World Bank, J-PAL, governments; has conducted 900+ evaluations published in peer-reviewed journals.
- Site includes warnings about fake job postings (only uses @poverty-action.org emails, never charges fees).
- Domain age of ~23 years (8416 days) aligns with founding in 2002; active on LinkedIn, X (@poverty_action), Facebook with substantial following.
- Wikipediaopen
"GiveWell published a review of IPA and listed it among six standout organizations... The Life You Can Save rates IPA as a trusted charity backed by evidence."
- Charity Navigatoropen
"Innovations for Poverty Action has earned a 3/4 Star rating on Charity Navigator."
- Glassdooropen
"3.6 based on 245 ratings. 58% would recommend to a friend."
Registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit (EIN 06-1660068), founded 2002 by Dean Karlan. Files Form 990 with IRS; recognized by Charity Navigator, Candid, and Wikipedia.
Antivirus Engines
Security Scans
Checked against the major public blocklists used by browsers and security tools — no hits.
Contact Verification
We fetched the page and looked for real-world contact details. Legitimate businesses almost always publish an email on their own domain, a phone number, and a postal address. Scam shops usually don't.
- No postal address visible on the page.
- Contact email on the site's own domain (cvu@poverty-action.org).
- Phone number listed (06-1660068).
- Links to 4 social profiles.
Domain & Encryption
Redirect Chain
- 1301http://poverty-action.org/
- 2200https://poverty-action.org/
Server Reputation
Still, stay alert
No major threat indicators — but a clean scan does not guarantee every page is safe, and phishing emails routinely spoof real domains.
- Double-check the exact URL in your address bar
Confirm you are actually on poverty-action.org and not a lookalike like p-overty-action.org.com or an IDN homoglyph.
- Use a password manager
Password managers only auto-fill on the exact domain they were saved for — they refuse to fill lookalike domains, which is the single best phishing defence.
- OpenDiscuss this site on the forum
If you have first-hand experience with this site — good or bad — share it with the MalwareTips community.
Reputation Sources
How this domain rates across independent threat-intelligence and blocklist providers.
Referenced Domains
Outbound domains this page links to or loads resources from. Each links to its own security scan.
Safety FAQ
Common questions about this site, answered directly from the scan data above — so the answers always reflect the latest verdict on this page.
- Our automated security review found no threat indicators on poverty-action.org. The site appears legitimate based on the signals we checked, but always stay alert for phishing emails that spoof real domains.
- poverty-action.org passed our automated security checks with a trust score of 93/100. No antivirus engines or major blacklists flagged the site at the time of the last scan.
- Yes. poverty-action.org presents a valid TLSv1.3 certificate issued by Let's Encrypt · R13, expiring in 45 days. Note that SSL only encrypts the connection — it does not guarantee that the site itself is trustworthy.
- poverty-action.org is 23.1 years old, registered on 6/14/2003 through GoDaddy.com, LLC. Scam domains are often freshly registered — a site under 6 months old warrants extra caution.
- No. All 92 antivirus engines in our malware network report poverty-action.org as clean.
- No. poverty-action.org is not currently listed on the major browser blocklist feeds that modern browsers use.
- poverty-action.org resolves to an IP operated by Pantheon in US (usage type: Content Delivery Network). Hosting location alone doesn't make a site good or bad, but unusual geography for a brand's claimed country is one of many signals we weigh.
- This is a permanent record of the scan run on June 30, 2026. The verdict and evidence above reflect that scan and do not change on their own. If circumstances around poverty-action.org have changed, MalwareTips staff can run a fresh scan, which re-runs every check from scratch and publishes an updated report.
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