When Platforms Violate Trust

GoFundMe's Unauthorized Nonprofit Pages Strike at the Heart of Our Sector's Biggest Challenge

The Trust Crisis is Real, and Getting Worse

According to Independent Sector's 2024 data, only 57% of Americans express high trust in nonprofits—and while that's technically a rebound from previous years, let's be honest: when nearly half of Americans don't fully trust us, we have a problem.

Trust isn't just another metric in the nonprofit sector. It's our lifeblood. And right now, we're hemorrhaging.

The data gets grimmer when you look deeper:

• Donor retention rates dropped to just 46.6% for North American nonprofits in 2023
• Q3 2024 marked the fourth consecutive year of declining retention rates
• Small-dollar donors (gifts under $100) saw a 12.3% year-over-year drop, despite representing over half of all donors

We're facing what the Fundraising Effectiveness Project calls "persistent challenges in retaining the current donor base"—a polite way of saying donors are walking away.

Enter GoFundMe's Trust Violation

Against this backdrop of eroding trust, GoFundMe quietly created 1.4 million donation pages for 501(c)(3) nonprofits using public IRS data and PayPal Giving Fund information—without asking permission.

Let that sink in.

At a time when donors are already skeptical, when retention is plummeting, and when trust is fragile, a major platform decided to create donation pages that:

• Look official (complete with logos, EINs, and addresses)
• Default to a 16.5% "tip" to GoFundMe
• Charge a 2.2% transaction fee plus $0.30 per donation
• Often outrank the nonprofit's actual website in Google searches
• Prevent nonprofits from capturing donor data for stewardship

Dave Dornlas, treasurer of Friends of the San Bruno Public Library, captured it perfectly: "The fact that they would just on their own build pages for nonprofits that they've never spoken to is a problem. I'm a believer in opt-in, not opt-out."

Why This Matters More Than You Think

This isn't just about unauthorized pages. It's about what those pages represent in our current trust economy.

As philanthropy expert Gene Takagi notes, declining trust impacts nonprofits' ability to "attract great people to their organization" and makes advocacy efforts less effective. When platforms create confusion about legitimate donation channels, they accelerate this trust erosion.

Consider the compounding factors:

• Wealth inequality is already driving skepticism about philanthropy
• 47% of nonprofit leaders identified donor acquisition as their primary challenge in 2024
• 72% of first-time donors never give a second gift

Every unauthorized page, every confused donor, every dollar diverted through an unclaimed channel deepens the trust deficit.

The Common Ground Approach: Building on Authentic Trust

At Common Ground, we've spent 30+ years working globally on one fundamental principle: trust is earned through transparency, built through authentic engagement, and maintained through consistent integrity.

This GoFundMe situation violates everything we know about building sustainable donor relationships:

1. Consent Matters We don't build strategies on assumptions. We engage stakeholders directly, get explicit buy-in, and respect organizational autonomy. When platforms make decisions FOR nonprofits rather than WITH them, they undermine the very foundation of trust-based philanthropy.

2. Control Creates Confidence Organizations need to own their donor journey—from first touch to lifetime engagement. When third parties insert themselves without permission, they fragment the donor experience and dilute organizational control over their own narrative.

3. Transparency Builds Trust The UK's Charity Commission found transparency to be of "paramount importance" for public trust. Hidden fees, undisclosed page creation, and opt-out (rather than opt-in) models are the antithesis of transparency.

4. Relationships Require Data Modern fundraising is about relationship-building, not transaction-processing. When platforms prevent nonprofits from accessing donor data, they're not facilitating giving. They're commoditizing it.

What This Means for Your Organization

If you're a nonprofit leader or consultant, here's your action plan:

Immediate Steps

1. Search for your organization(s) on GoFundMe TODAY
2. Claim or unpublish any unauthorized pages
3. Document the SEO impact—are these pages outranking your donation page?
4. Calculate potential revenue diverted through unclaimed channels
5. Communicate with your board about this platform risk

Strategic Considerations:

• Invest in owning your digital donation infrastructure
• Strengthen your website's SEO for donation-related searches
• Create clear "official donation channel" messaging
• Build direct relationships with donors, not platform-mediated ones
• Consider the trust implications of every third-party tool you use

The Bigger Picture

As Dr. Akilah Watkins of Independent Sector warns: "This erosion of trust poses a threat that warrants our collective attention. Without trust, the challenges confronting nonprofits and philanthropy become increasingly more difficult."

GoFundMe's actions aren't just a technical overreach or a marketing misstep. They're a breach of the sacred trust between nonprofits and the platforms that claim to serve them. In an ecosystem where giving barely outpaced inflation in 2024 (3.5% growth vs. 2.9% inflation), we cannot afford trust-eroding practices.

Moving Forward: A Call for Sector-Wide Standards

It's time for our sector to establish clear standards for platform partnerships:

• Explicit consent before creating any fundraising presence
• Full transparency on all fees and data practices
• Direct data access for all donor information
• SEO protection ensuring platforms don't compete with organizational sites
• Opt-in frameworks that respect organizational autonomy

At Common Ground, building trust isn't just about avoiding violations. It's about actively creating spaces where transparency, respect, and mutual benefit define every interaction. When platforms prioritize their growth over nonprofit autonomy, they become part of the problem rather than the solution.

The bottom line: In a time when donor trust is our scarcest resource, we cannot afford platforms that spend it without our permission.