Hidden Hunger Global Review 2.0: Donations = retail?

BehindMLM first reviewed Hidden Hunger Global back in October of 2014.

Two prime takeaways from the review were the involvement of Ruel Morton, former top earner in the FHTM pyramid scheme, and a murky retail offering.

Mid last year a reader left a comment on our Hidden Hunger Global review, informing us that

Ruel Morton is no longer affiliated with Hidden Hunger Global in any way.

The whole comp plan has been re-tooled. Perhaps it would benefit your readers for you to do an update.

With a new compensation plan and Morton out, today we’re publishing an updated Hidden Hunger Global review.

Is Ruel Morton still involved in Hidden Hunger Global?

Despite reader Ray Burton’s comments above, I was unable to independently verify Ruel Morton is no longer affiliated with the company.

Furthermore, Corporation Wiki currently lists Morton as the sole Director of Hidden Hunger Global.

Purportedly Corporation Wiki’s data was sourced directly from the Texas Secretary of State, last updated January 8th, 2016 (as at the time of publication).

I did try to verify the data myself, but the Texas Secretary of State website wants me to sign up and pay fees (no thanks).

Morton doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the running of Hidden Hunger Global (CEO Duncan Dodds is still in place), but he does appear to remain the sole owner.

The Hidden Hunger Global Compensation Plan

Details of Hidden Hunger Global’s prior compensation were sketchy. It appeared to be a ten level deep unilevel structure, with “phases” and a fixed 10% commission paid out.

Hidden Hunger Global are now still using a unilevel compensation structure, however they are much more transparent with the specific payouts, levels, etc.

Hidden Hunger Global Affiliate Ranks

There are eleven affiliate ranks within the Hidden Hunger Global compensation plan.

Along with their respective qualification criteria, they are as follows:

• Associate – sign up as a Hidden Hunger Global affiliate and maintain at least 1 PV a month
• Managing Associate – recruit one affiliate and generate at least 6 PV a month
• Senior Associate – recruit at least two affiliates and generate at least 16 PV a month
• Executive Associate – recruit at least three affiliates and generate at least 50 GV a month
• Director – maintain three active recruited affiliates and generate at least 20 PV and 100 GV a month
• Managing Director – maintain three active recruited affiliates and generate at least 20 PV and 200 GV a month
• Senior Director – recruit and maintain at least four active affiliates and generate at least 20 PV and 400 GV a month
• Executive – maintain four active recruited affiliates (one at the Senior Director rank or higher) and generate at least 20 PV and 800 GV a month
• Managing Executive – maintain four active recruited affiliates (two at the Senior Director rank or higher) and generate at least 20 PV and 2000 GV a month
• Senior Executive – maintain four recruited Senior Director or higher ranked affiliates and generate at least 20 PV and 5000 GV a month
• Global Executive – maintain four recruited affiliates (two at the Senior Director rank and two at the Executive rank or higher) and generate at least 20 PV and 10,000 GV a month

PV stands for “Personal Volume” and is sales volume generated by retail customer orders and a Hidden Hunger Global affiliate’s own purchases.

For the purpose of rank qualification, at least 50% of the required PV must come from retail customer sales orders.

GV stands for “Group Volume” and is sales volume generated by an affiliate’s downline (including an affiliate’s own PV).

For the purpose of rank qualification, only 70% of the total volume required can be counted from any one unilevel leg.

Retail Commissions

Hidden Hunger Global pay out retail commissions on products purchased by non-affiliates.

How much of a commission is paid out is determined by the total amount of PV an affiliate generates from month to month.

• 0 to 49 PV = 10% retail commission
• 50 to 99 PV = 12% retail commission
• 100 or more PV = 15% retail commission

Power Pack Bonus

Hidden Hunger Global market what they call “Power Packs”, ranging in price from $199 to $799.

These products carry their own bonus commission, in addition to regular commissions paid out via the Hidden Hunger Global compensation plan.

How much of a bonus commission is paid out is determined by which of the three offered Power Packs is purchased:

• Power 15 ($199) – $15
• Power 35 ($399) – $35
• Power 80 ($799) – $80

Power Packs can be purchased one-time or recurring monthly (autoship).

Residual Commissions

Residual commissions in Hidden Hunger Global are paid out via a unilevel compensation structure.

A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate a the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):

If any level 1 affiliates go on to recruit new affiliates of their own, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.

If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.

Hidden Hunger Global cap payable unilevel levels at seven, with commissions paid out as a percentage of sales volume generated within the unilevel team.

How much of a percentage is paid out is determined by what level of the unilevel team sales volume is generated on:

• Managing Associate – 4% on level 1
• Senior Associate – 6% on level 1
• Executive Associate – 8% on level 1 and 3% on level 2
• Director – 10% on level 1 and 4% on level 2
• Managing Director – 10% on level 1, 5% on level 2 and 2% on level 3
• Senior Director – 10% on level 1, 6% on level 2, 3% on level 3, 2% on level 4 and 1% on level 5
• Executive – 10% on level 1, 6% on level 2, 4% on level 3, 3% on level 4, 2% on level 5 and 1% on level 6
• Managing Executive – 10% on level 1, 6% on level 2, 4% on level 3, 3% on level 4 and 2% on levels 5 to 7
• Senior Executive – 10% on level 1, 6% on level 2, 4% on level 3, 3% on level 4, 2% on level 5 and 3% on levels 6 and 7
• Global Executive – 10% on level 1, 6% on level 2, 4% on level 3, 3% on level 4, 2% on levels 5, 3% on level 6 and 4% on level 7

Power Level 8 Infinity Commissions

At the Managing Executive or higher ranks, Hidden Hunger Global affiliates quality for Power Level 8 Infinity Commissions.

This is a 3% bonus percentage, applied to all levels of an affiliate’s unilevel team.

Mission Bonus

The Mission Bonus pays an additional 2% on the first three levels of an affiliate’s unilevel team.

To qualify for the Mission Bonus a Hidden Hunger Global affiliate must be at the Senior Director or higher rank, in addition to generating 400 GV a month across the first three levels of their unilevel team.

Impact Bonus

The Impact Bonus is a 5% bonus commission paid out on sales generated by a newly recruited Hidden Hunger Global affiliate within their first 60 days.

The Impact Bonus is paid three levels deep, using the same unilevel team structure as residual commissions.

Rank Achievement Bonus

The Rank Achievement Bonus is a one-time $500 bonus paid out to affiliates who qualify at the Senior Director rank.

Senior Director or higher ranked affiliates receive an equal $500 match whenever one of their personally recruited affiliates qualifies for the bonus.

Joining Hidden Hunger Global

Hidden Hunger Global affiliate membership is $39.95 annually.

Conclusion

Although more clear, Hidden Hunger Global still offers questionable retail, bundled with hugely manipulative marketing.

We’ll start with Hidden Hunger Global’s flagship product, “Child Saving Products”.

Yeah, that’s the actual name of the $20 product, which Hidden Hunger Global contains ‘micronutrient packs a water purification systems or a child LLIN treated mosquito net‘.

The very name implies that if you don’t purchase the product, children are going to die.

And here’s some more exploitative examples from Hidden Hunger Global’s various marketing materials;

Are you passionate about saving children?

If so, Join Hidden Hunger Global now and let’s go change the world together!

Imagine this scenario. You come home from a productive day at work, fill up a glass with ice-cold water and sit down to dinner with your family.

Your discussion is light—you make a few jokes, maybe talk about a problem you faced earlier that day.

When the meal is over, you do the dishes, enjoy a relaxing evening with the people you love and go to bed, satisfied, safe and content.

That situation sounds fairly realistic, right? Probably even familiar? Unfortunately, for millions of children throughout the world, a day like that sounds like an improbable fantasy.

Wouldn’t you want to help them if you could? What if you could do it while improving your own financial future?

A child dies every 5 seconds from preventable causes.

By distributing these Child Saving Products all over the globe, HHG is attempting to reduce the shocking mortality rate.

Hidden Hunger Global is a socially conscious and cost-effective movement to lower childhood death rates

And on and on it goes…

This is manipulative marketing at its worse, and I’m not sure it has any place in the MLM industry. Especially when there’s a business opportunity attached.

That brings me to my next point, retail viability.

An MLM opportunity needs to have demonstrable retail product sales, which is a problem for Hidden Hunger Global.

Non-affiliates can purchase listed products, however beyond knowing what’s in them – that’s about the extent of the sale.

What happens after an affiliate or retail customer hands over their money is a mystery. Sure, you’ve got promises that the funds will be used to purchase micro-nutrient packs, a water filter or mosquito netting – but that’s not really verifiable.

And even if it was, does it constitute a retail sale to a genuine end-user? The people paying for the products certainly aren’t receiving them.

This is why I’m not a fan of charities in MLM, because effectively they can all be reduced to affiliates depositing money each month and earning a commission when those they recruit do the same.

You can’t claim product value as an intent, because those paying don’t receive the product – and so you have a disconnect on the compliance side of things.

That aside, outside of the whole charity issue, Hidden Hunger Global’s compensation plan is otherwise pretty decent.

You’ve got identifiable commissions generated by purchases by non-affiliates, with there not being any overbearing incentive to ignore retail and focus on affiliate recruitment.

That said affiliates do have the choice of going either way, with the knowledge that recruited affiliates contribute to a downline perhaps tipping the scale.

Countering that is the requirement that at least 50% of generated PV each month must be sourced from non-affiliates, which is great.

Provided of course it’s not being rigged by affiliates signing up family members, pets or email addresses, solely to pay their own monthly autoship through and thus qualify for commissions.

A quick way to suss this out would be to enquire with a potential upline as to what their monthly contribution by non-affiliates is, compared to that of their personally recruited affiliates.

If it’s a healthy mix, upon consideration of the other points raised in this review, that’s a good sign.

If you’re looking at the token amount of retail PV required on top of large amounts of affiliate-generated volume, then you’re probably looking at recruitment driving sales volume.

With Morton involved I’m still seeing shades of FHTM in Hidden Hunger Global, re-imagined as a charity-based opp.

If you want to donate I still think you’re better off doing so with a reputable registered charity, but at least Hidden Hunger Global have made a decent effort to require the raising of fund from non-affiliates.

Approach with caution.