Pulse nightclub owner Barbara Poma will no longer make money off the massacre

The owner of the Pulse nightclub where 49 LGBTQIA+ people were murdered in a mass shooting is no longer associated with the nonprofit she founded to raise funds for the victims’ families, many of whom are now accusing her of profiting from the deaths of their loved ones.

Barbara Poma and the onePULSE Foundation announced today they were amicably cutting ties.

Last February, West Hollywood City Council honored Poma with a Key to the City for her work at the foundation, which began raising money less than a month after the massacre happened in 2016. 

By 2019, the foundation had shifted its focus from victims and their families to the construction of a $45 million memorial on the site of the tragedy in Orlando, Fla., valuable property owned by Poma which she has refused to sell to the city.

Until last month, Poma was onePULSE’s executive director, paying herself a salary as high as $150,000 per year. The company said it “re-organized” and she was given a fundraising role she referred to as “the keeper of the story.”

Her departure comes as calls to investigate Poma and the organization grow louder from many of the Pulse victims’ family members, who are horrified that she has turned their tragedy into a personal gold mine.

The foundation has received $22 million in donations for the sprawling, elaborate memorial, but the project has not yet broken ground.

As questions arose about where all that money was being spent, Democratic state lawmakers moved to audit onePULSE Foundation in 2019.

In 2021, a group of community members speaking out against onePULSE’s agenda published new information about the nightclub they discovered in public records requests, alleging that an illegally tall fence prevented victims from escaping the gunman.

The City of Orlando, heavily invested in the project, has never commented on these allegations.