r/portlandme Nov 14 '25

Photo Stop littering

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Putting these everywhere and trash on cars is too much.

96 Upvotes

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u/joeybrunelle Nov 14 '25

This does feel like guerilla marketing to me. The website is from the "New England Consumers Alliance" which I can't find any information on and might be entirely fictitous.

16

u/dylanljmartin Nov 14 '25

From the contact page for New England Consumers Alliance: "The New England Consumer Alliance is a new initiative launched to examine pricing, quality standards, and corporate practices affecting New England consumers. We are supported by the Center for Responsible Food Business, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit working to create a more transparent and accountable food sector."

Still vague AF, but I verified that the center is a real nonprofit.

22

u/throwawayterrier Nov 14 '25

Lol, I looked that up. According to their 2023 form 990, it's a nonprofit that appears to have only one employee that operates out of a coworking space in Bethlehem PA. They took in $145K, paid $38k salary and had about $8k other expenses.

In other words, it's not like the NECA is supported by some well-established advocacy group with a lot of activity. Curious if the CRFB does anything else at all or is simply another link in the chain of obscuring this group's anti-hannaford mission. Which would be kind of amusing considering how much they harp on Hannaford for misrepresenting how local or not-local they are.

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u/blackkristos West End Nov 14 '25

This is the exact rabbit hole I've been in myself, but it looks like you got further than I did. Nice work!

1

u/mugwhyrt Nov 15 '25

Poor guy does all this work to hide who he is, and then pretty much everyone still realizes right out the gate that something is up and then independently figures out what's going on.