Fundraising platform GoFundMe Pro recently created donation landing pages for millions of American nonprofits without their permission, causing widespread concern.
The pages are professionally designed and include the nonprofit’s EIN, logo, and bio. Many nonprofits are concerned that the GoFundMe Pro landing pages could:
- Confuse or alienate donors,
- Undermine the marketing effort they have put into their actual donation portals, and
- Put at risk carefully cultivated, data-enriched appeals.
Leading nonprofits are now accustomed to tightly controlling their messages and appeals to donors, enriching them with donation data for optimal results for the appeal as well as the ongoing relationship. Alternative donation pages give donors an entirely separate path and a different experience, one the nonprofit has less control over.
Stand Together Director Josephine Everly said Catholic organizations were concerned because the move undermined their trust-centered messaging, positioning, and donor data, as well as jeopardizing the donor journey at a critical point.
United Way fundraising leader Kate Stel told LinkedIn that her organization’s new GoFundMe page included links, outdated logos, and a mission statement.
“If donors click a tiny footnote, they’ll see it’s not verified or authorized by OAUW, but come on. This is dishonest. It sets nonprofits up to fail with donors looking to make an impact through a donation in good faith.”
What to do with a new GoFundMe Pro page you didn’t create?
There’s an easy way to see if your GoFundMe Pro page was made by a member of your team or automatically created by this process.
- Open the GoFundMe search engine.
- Click Nonprofits and enter your organization’s name.
- If, at the bottom of the page, you see a box with the headline “Affiliated with (Organization Name)?” it means that page is unclaimed.
![A box with the heading Affiliated with [organization name blurred]. Below, text reads: Claim this page to track donations, access key insights, and get a verified badge. A button below says Claim page.](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http://www.w3.org/2000/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%20300%20140'%3E%3C/svg%3E)
Then, we suggest you sync with your team to figure out if you want to keep the GoFundMe Pro page. As with all fundraising tools, Heller recommends you check the fee structure as well as the tool’s ability to integrate with the rest of your stack and share critical data.
If you do want to keep the page, you can claim it using the link in that box CTA. If not, you can either claim the page and make it private, or reach out to the GoFundMe support team.
How GoFundMe responded
The organization responded in a statement on its LinkedIn page to say the decision came after the platform was already getting search traffic from donors. The new pages give nonprofits another way to acquire new supporters, it says.
“Our goal is simple: to make it easier for people to discover, support, and give directly to the causes they care about in order to help drive new donors to nonprofit organizations.”
The statement commits to addressing some of the concerns, including:
- Removing optional “tips” that went to GoFundMe,
- Removing logos from unclaimed pages (so they look less official), and
- Offering nonprofits the opportunity to throttle their GoFundMe pages’ SEO performance, lest it compete with their own
Earlier this year, GoFundMe, long known in the peer-to-peer space, acquired donor portal Classy and rebranded it GoFundMe Pro.
History repeats: ‘Nobody asked for this’
Though reportedly over 1.4 million nonprofits are impacted, this is not the first time a vendor has automatically created landing pages for our sector.
Longtime nonprofit leaders might remember the furor over PayPal’s Giving Fund a decade ago, which resulted in a class action lawsuit against the payment processor. The case was dismissed and sent to arbitration, with a judge saying donors were given notice their donations wouldn’t necessarily be given to their charity of choice.
Nonprofit communications expert Genie Gratto described it as another “nobody asked for this” offer from the tech industry.
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Director of Marketing
Lyndal has worked at the intersection of nonprofits and technology for most of her career, building strategic marketing programs and managing data-driven campaigns at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Nonprofit Technology Network, InfluxData, and others. She leads Heller’s marketing efforts and is excited to position Team Heller as the partner of choice for nonprofit and education advancement leaders. When not at her desk, Lyndal is usually on a hiking trail or listening to a podcast about star stuff.
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