GoFundMe is being heavily criticized for recently creating 1.4 million fundraising accounts for nonprofit organizations without the groups’ knowledge or permission. They included accounts for Oregon ArtsWatch, the Portland Art Museum, Portland Center Stage and potentially thousands of other arts, cultural and nonprofit organizations in Oregon.

GoFundMe CEO Tim Cadogan apologized for the controversy in a letter to the charitable community on Thursday, Oct. 23, and vowed that his organization would rescind several aspects of its nonprofit accounts program.

“We are very sorry for this and take responsibility for missing the mark. Trust is foundational to our work with nonprofits, and we are fully committed to rebuilding it through better communication, collaboration, and partnership,” The Nonprofit Times reported his letter as saying.

By then GoFundMe had been slammed for creating realistic-looking but unauthorized fundraising pages without permission that included logos and other identifying information from the nonprofits, but suggesting an optional 14% “tipping fee” in addition to the normal nonprofit 2.2% fee plus 30 cents for each credit card transaction. The tipping fee option and logos on unclaimed pages have now been removed.

Oregon ArtsWatch Executive Director Laura Grimes recently learned about what had happened through the Oregon Media Collaborative, a journalism network organized by the University of Oregon. When she found the unauthorized Oregon ArtsWatch account on GoFundMe’s website, Grimes was surprised by how official it looked and worried about the potential for abuse. 

“The unauthorized pages really look legit and ours was fairly accurate. They’ve obviously mined public data. When I found our page, my real worry was that if I didn’t claim it someone else could commandeer it, misrepresent us, and raise money in our name,” Grimes said. 

Such problems could hurt all organizations with such unauthorized accounts. The Portland Art Museum and Portland Center Stage were among the first to confirm that GoFundMe had created such accounts for them.

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“That not only opens the door for fraud, but also could potentially put our reputation on the line,” Grimes said. “People could have a bad experience. We wouldn’t be able to establish relationships, and we could lose potential donors that way. The whole situation creates anxiety.”

The Nonprofit Association of Oregon included this response in its monthly member newsletter sent out Thursday: “As soon as NAO heard about this, we quickly jumped into action and began working closely with the National Council of Nonprofits (NCN) and other state associations to find a way to communicate with GoFundMe that this was unacceptable and unethical.”

“This was an egregious breach of trust, and we are thankful they appear to be making changes — we will continue to monitor to make sure they stick to this and don’t try again in a different way,” Jennifer Monegan, the Nonprofit Assiciation of Oregon’s director of membership, development and communications, said.

The unauthorized GoFundMe accounts have the following disclaimer at the bottom of the page, according to research conducted by Blue Hills Digital, a communications consulting firm for nonprofit organizations: 

“Affiliated with [the organization’s name]? Claim this page to track donations, access key insights, and get a verified badge.”

The quickest way for organizations to resolve the matter is to claim the accounts in their names on the GoFundMe home page, Blue Hills Digital said in an Oct. 21 alert.

That is what Grimes did.

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“When I claimed our page, it was a very quick, painless process,” she said. “Obviously, I had the correct name and other contact info to pass inspection, but the verification was so quick, clearly by bots, that it made me wonder just how easy it would be to hijack it.”

By Thursday, GoFundMe had announced the following steps to quell the controversy:

Nonprofit Pages are now opt-in only. “Moving forward, only nonprofits that opt-in to their Nonprofit Page and complete the verification process will have a public Nonprofit Page that is searchable on GoFundMe — making these Nonprofit Pages a completely opt-in experience.” Nonprofit Pages for organizations that have not been claimed and verified will be removed. SEO will also be turned off by default. Nonprofits that opt in to their Nonprofit Pages will gain enhanced visibility, control, and access to certain supporter data for fundraising and compliance purposes, according to Cadogan via the letter.

Unclaimed Nonprofit Pages will be de-indexed. GoFundMe will remove and de-index the Nonprofit Pages that are not claimed so they no longer appear in search engine results. Once a nonprofit opts in, it can choose to index its Nonprofit Page, turn SEO on, and edit its Nonprofit Page. This turnaround is in response to criticism that GoFundMe’s pages were competing with nonprofits’ actual donation pages in search engines, sometimes even being listed above the nonprofit’s own listing. This put organizations with less savvy SEO abilities at a disadvantage.

Nonprofit directory listings will continue. GoFundMe will continue to maintain basic nonprofit directory listings so nonprofits can be found by the public and organizers can create fundraisers to support nonprofits.

“We are committed to creating stronger feedback loops with nonprofit representatives to ensure future product releases are shaped in deeper partnership with nonprofits,” Cadogan wrote. “Our goal remains to support the nonprofit sector – making giving easy for donors, empowering nonprofits with tools to thrive, and doing so in a way that reflects our shared values of trust and transparency.”

The controversy was reported early on by ABC7 News Bay Area, the ABC affiliate in the San Francisco area. Its Oct. 15 story said that GoFundMe had taken upon itself to create “nonprofit pages” for 1.4 million 501(c)(3) organizations using public IRS data, along with information from partners like the PayPal Giving Fund.

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According to the report, the organizations will only receive the donation if they are already using PayPal. But even then, there is a delay in receiving the funds.

In the report, Krista Lamp, senior director of nonprofit communications at GoFundMe, said her organization meant to help the nonprofits raise more money.

“What we were finding is that people were already organically coming to GoFundMe to support nonprofit orgs,” Lamp said, adding that in 2024, GoFundMe supported 70,000 nonprofit organizations.

But the rollout of unauthorized accounts caused problems.

“The whole potential for harm makes me crazy,” Grimes said, “but now that I’ve claimed our page, I can’t help but think, heck yeah, I wouldn’t mind if people raised money for us this way.”

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This is a developing story and will be updated when more information is available.

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