05/08/2026
My Artist friends, please be aware that though I value you and your art very much, I will not be voting for you in the "PEOPLES ARTIST" contest because it is a SCAM. And unfortunately you are doing yourself and your art a disservice by even entering it.
PLEASE READ:
After it launched, and I saw that it was a 'pay-to-win' model, where you can basically 'donate' as many monetary 'votes' as you want. This is the same scam as the annual "Face of Fear" contest.
The company that is running it is Collasal Fundraising.
Collosal Fundraising is a for-profit that uses these types of psuedo-competitions to raise money for charities who hire them to do so. In this case, Art of Elysium, an actual non profit in NY that focuses on providing artistic and creative outlets for those with mental and emotional challenges. That sounds cool. The way funds are being raised is not.
They always use a celebrity endorsement, in this case, Johnny Depp. (Ironic, as they are pirating funds and information from your friends and followers.)
The funds raised by this competition, through every person who 'donates' to give a vote, are being handled and distributed by a company called AIT(Action Initiative Team). AIT is a 501(c) non-profit who just focuses on handling finances for charities. They do so, and take a "situationally determined percentage based fee" (their words) for their services rendered on the backend.
Guess who owns AIT?
That's right. Collosal Fundraising.
Why would Collosal Fundraising basically pay themselves for handling the money on a competition that they are running? So they don't have to pay taxes on the money they skim off the top.
Every time a vote is cast, the Peoples Artist portal uses a two-factor identity verification process. This activity grants them your full name, email address, birthday, and any other information associated with the social media account you're choosing to verify your identity with. And in a world where most places only require 2 pieces of vital information to verify an identity, that's a lot of your info.
Now, in the contract/terms of service for the competition, Collosal does state that they do not gather this information with intent to sell it to third parties. However, not three lines later, they say that they reserve the right to distribute such information for any reason they see fit should such a reason arise.
Furthermore this scam scrapes your dignity by making you think you are so close to "winning in your catagory" by giving you false hope. Those categories are tiny, so if you knew that you were actually in 10,000 place, you wouldn't keep the grift going for them. So they keep dangling that carrot.
So yes, It's a scam made to harvest your data and profit off perceived charitable donations by doing what these types of competitions do best; target a group that intrinsically seeks validation for their efforts. They hire celebrities to be paid spokespersons to give themselves reach, and then grift.
This type of scam has been going on for years in the arts community, for music, arts, horror, etc. It's okay that you didn't know, I fell for it too years ago.
So please dont be discouraged. You and your art are valuable. You are taking precious time away from making art to feed a machine designed to scrape your soul. Keep putting yourself and your art out there. Not for a "prize", but because your art is needed. And those who want to support you can do it in many other practical and helpful ways.
If you so desire, email them to remove your information and your art. They are using your art against you and others.
And yes, you can research this information for yourself.
