GoFundMe Created 1.4 Million Donation Pages for Nonprofits Without Their Consent (abc7news.com) 66
San Francisco's local newscast ABC7 runs a consumer advocacy segment called "7 on Your Side". They received a disturbing call for help from Dave Dornlas, treasurer of a nonprofit supporting a local library:
GoFundMe has taken upon itself to create "nonprofit pages" for 1.4 million 501C-3 organizations using public IRS data along with information from trusted partners like the PayPal Giving Fund. "The fact that they would just on their own build pages for nonprofits that they've never spoken to is a problem," [Dornlas] said. "I'm a believer in opt-in, not opt-out...." Dornlas says he struggled to find anyone to contact from GoFundMe about this...
Dave's other frustration is tied to the company's optional tipping feature on the platform. "GoFundMe also solicits a tip of 14.5%. In other words, 'We're doing this and we're great people. Give us 14.5% to do this' — which doesn't have to happen," Dornlas said. "That's what bothers me." When 7 On Your Side checked, the optional tip was actually set for 16.5%. The consumer is required to move the bar to adjust accordingly... The tip would be in addition to the 2.2% transaction fee GoFundMe charges nonprofits, plus $0.30 per donation. That fee goes up to 2.9% for individual fundraisers.
Now both GoFundMe pages of Dornlas's nonprofits have been removed from the site. Any organization can do so, by clicking "unpublish" on the platform.
But GoFundMe's move drew strong criticism from the Center for Nonprofit Excellence (a Kentucky-based membership organization with over 500 members). GoFundMe's move, they say, creates "confusion for donors and supporters who are unsure of the legitimacy of the fundraising pages. In some cases, GoFundMe included incorrect information, outdated logos, and other inaccuracies that compromise and misrepresent nonprofits' brand, mission, strategy, and message."
And GoFundMe's processing fees and tips "ultimately result in fewer resources for nonprofits than if donors contributed directly through the organization." But there's more... GoFundMe has initiated SEO optimization as the default for the donation pages to improve their visibility when individuals search forinformation about nonprofits online. This could result in GoFundMe'spages ranking higher than the nonprofit's own website, pulling away potential donors and supporters...
Without adequate safeguards in place, nonprofits report serious issues, ranging from unauthorized individuals claiming donations and the inability to remove pages without first agreeing to GoFundMe's terms and conditions or sharing sensitive banking information.
The Center for Nonprofit Excellence has now joined with the National Council of Nonprofits — America's largest network of nonprofits, with over 25,000 members — to officially urge GoFundMe to immediately rectify the situation.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Arrogant-Bastard for sharing the article.
Now both GoFundMe pages of Dornlas's nonprofits have been removed from the site. Any organization can do so, by clicking "unpublish" on the platform.
But GoFundMe's move drew strong criticism from the Center for Nonprofit Excellence (a Kentucky-based membership organization with over 500 members). GoFundMe's move, they say, creates "confusion for donors and supporters who are unsure of the legitimacy of the fundraising pages. In some cases, GoFundMe included incorrect information, outdated logos, and other inaccuracies that compromise and misrepresent nonprofits' brand, mission, strategy, and message."
And GoFundMe's processing fees and tips "ultimately result in fewer resources for nonprofits than if donors contributed directly through the organization." But there's more... GoFundMe has initiated SEO optimization as the default for the donation pages to improve their visibility when individuals search forinformation about nonprofits online. This could result in GoFundMe'spages ranking higher than the nonprofit's own website, pulling away potential donors and supporters...
Without adequate safeguards in place, nonprofits report serious issues, ranging from unauthorized individuals claiming donations and the inability to remove pages without first agreeing to GoFundMe's terms and conditions or sharing sensitive banking information.
The Center for Nonprofit Excellence has now joined with the National Council of Nonprofits — America's largest network of nonprofits, with over 25,000 members — to officially urge GoFundMe to immediately rectify the situation.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader Arrogant-Bastard for sharing the article.
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Deceptive Trade Practices (Score:2)
Contractors or groups paid to collect money on behalf of a charity are already required to identify themselves as not being the charity when they contact you.
My guess is that it's a way for GoFundMe to up their web traffic and that (speculating here) the GoFundMe traffic has dropped considerably when web search results are AI done and less people visit the actual web page for the web search results (less banner ads, less mentions of GoFundMe causes, ....)
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There is, if it wasn't clear that the pages were *not* sponsored or authorized by the organizations they purported to represent. You don't get to create unauthorized web pages on behalf of other organizations or companies, that mislead people into believing that the page represents that organization or company.
Re: There is nothing illegal about this. (Score:2)
As far as I can tell, this is legal: the GoFundMe pages are explicitly not representing the orgs⦠they are GFM acting on its own to raise money for these other orgs, but in a fairly problematic way.
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Here are some examples of nonprofit fundraising pages, according to GoFundMe.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/roc... [gofundme.com]
https://www.gofundme.com/f/chi... [gofundme.com]
https://www.gofundme.com/f/ens... [gofundme.com]
There is no indication on these pages whether the pages were authorized by the nonprofit or not.
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The three you cite were not among the 1.4 million autocreated pages. Plenty of non-profits are on GoFundMe. These three pages use personal pronouns and speak on behalf of the org. Using that phrasing would indeed be illegal for GoFundMe. The autocreated ones avoided that language.
Multiple websites claim that all of the autocreated pages have now been removed from GoFundMe, so you won't find examples tonight.
https://www.philanthropy.com/n... [philanthropy.com]
It's legal to fundraise on someone's behalf -- people and corporatio
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Yep, you're right about the three pages. But it's unlikely that the auto-generated pages included text stating that the pages were not authorized by the organizations they purported to raise funds for. If the pages included such text, people probably wouldn't have donated.
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US law (nor any state law I know of) would not recognize that as an assignment of claims. That's a trademark of an entity. It does not make any representation or claim about the activity of GoFundMe.
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As far as I can tell, this is legal: the GoFundMe pages are explicitly not representing the orgs⦠they are GFM acting on its own to raise money for these other orgs, but in a fairly problematic way.
Nonsense. Since there was no agreement to let them be "fundraisers", and no arrangements existed to sent any money to the organization raised with the stolen identity, so this is straight up fraud, even if they "intend" to eventually pass the money on the organization.
And we further read:
the inability to remove pages without first agreeing to GoFundMe's terms and conditions or sharing sensitive banking information.
So they are extorting "agreements" as well as sensitive information from the organizations to stop this fraudulent behavior.
A class action suit seems appropriate here.
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You do not need permission to raise money on someone else's behalf. That happens all the time with both individuals and corporations raising money for causes they care about. It is perfectly legal. It is the methods that were shady, but GoFundMe (probably quite carefully) avoided illegality.
But it should be illegal to feed trolls (Score:2)
But by propagating the sock puppet's vacuous FP Subject you got me to look at the...
Re:There is nothing illegal about this. (Score:5, Interesting)
it should be illegal when you start charging for it. gofundme is using the name of and goodwill of the non-profit to solicit funds and then keep an arbitrary portion of those funds for itself.
the non-profit should charge a fee to gofundme for using their name and goodwill and profiting from them without a license.
GoFraudMe (Score:1)
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It is illegal if it's done to launder money or the funds come from a criminal/illegal source ie North Korea or a ransomware gang..
GrubHub (Score:5, Informative)
Reminds me of Grubhub settles with the FTC over adding restaurants without their consent [engadget.com].
We did that 18 years ago and it flopped... (Score:3)
We built a philanthrapic startup and did exactly that, we had every 503C on record in a database and built pages for all of them to take donations on their behalf, let it sit in our bank for a bit and then send it their way. Then the 2008 collapse happened and well we our little startup fell apart...
Re: We did that 18 years ago and it flopped... (Score:2)
That sounds illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
After all GoFundMe is, at least indirectly, claim they asked GoFundMe to do this for them. At the very least this is an intentional misrepresentation of their business actions. And GoFundMe makes profits of this, so it may well be fraud.
Re:That sounds illegal (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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this is neither democracy (gofundme doesn't ask) nor capitalism (gofundme doesn't pay). this is straight up fraud. gofundme is using the name and goodwill of the nonprofit without permission and license.
the supermarket doesn't go to the farm and help itself to the farm's product without receiving permission from the farm and then negotiating a fee for that product.
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blaming the victim?
What the...how the... (Score:2)
Doesn't seem like there's a lot of wiggle room in this for justification to hide in... This sucks. I'd say the company should be put out of business, were it not for all those Americans trying to avoid medical bankruptcy.
* (So sorry... couldn't help myself... it was too easy and I feel ashamed. I aspire to better... I really do.)
Feel free (Score:2)
Feel free to create 1.4M donation pages for me. And go ahead and take 50% of anything people donate too. I don't mind at all.
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Feel free to create 1.4M donation pages for me. And go ahead and take 50% of anything people donate too. I don't mind at all.
I suspect that you're trolling and/or making an attempt at humour, but I'm gonna bite anyway. If you worked to collect money for deserving charities, and you wanted to protect your reputation and the reputations of those charities so you could continue collecting money for them, would you still be OK with GoFuckMe making up shit on your behalf?
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I'm not saying anything other than the plain and straight-forward reading of what I posted.
Making it even plainer: I would love it if someone created 1.4M pages dedicated to giving me free money.
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Just to add...if each one only pulled in $1/day.....a fellow could get pretty used to that kind of lifestyle.
If this isn't fraud! (Score:2)
Hey, ChatGPT... (Score:2)
Create pages for all these non-profits.
Absolutely 100% how it happened.
It's a rather old model, just tweaked a bit (Score:5, Informative)
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, a number of "non-profit fundraising support" businesses sprang up. They would hire lots of people and task them with cold calling individuals, asking for donations to the library / fire brigade / food bank... whomever had partnered with those fundraising businesses.
Well, it turned out their business model was to keep the vast majority of the donated money. Anywhere from 80% to 98% of an individual donation would NOT go to the non-profit, it was kept by the fund-raiser. This eventually became widely known as newspapers and TV news reports looked into it, and the businesses largely went away (although I'm sure a few still linger).
GoFundMe doesn't seem quite as egregious about it, but they've always seemed a bit slimy to me.
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Which is exactly the model for United Way.
Fraud, pure and simple. (Score:3)
Impersonating charities and profiting from the misrepresentation. Clear cut fraud./p.
Re: Fraud, pure and simple. (Score:2)
They are not impersonating the charities. They are unethical in doing this, but the pages are quite clear that they are raising money on their own to benefit the charities. It is the search-engine optimization that makes this bad.
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Bullshit. Without the prior existence of approval via an established relationship it is impersonation and fraud. Notice that they are keeping some of this donated money for themselves without authorization. And that assumes the money even gets to the organization since no financial arrangements had been made, and the charities were not informed that money was being collected using their identity.
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Every single piece of this is legal to raise money for someone else. To keep a portion of the money raised for yourself as long as you disclose to donors that you are doing that. As long as GoFundMe actually did send the remaining money along, it's all legal. Ethical? No. Legal? Yes. They never claimed to be the orgs themselves. In fact, they explicitly said they weren't the orgs. As long as you disclose to donors your process, it is legal. As far as I can tell, the law in USA (varies some by states) expect
wow, those fees are pretty large (Score:1)
a fee of 2.2% plus $0.30 per donation plus a 14.5% or 16.5% tip? that's pretty steep. I think putting the donation on a bank for 30 days and keeping the interest, before moving the donation to the individual or to the organization it was donated to should be enough. those fees are outrageous. and it's not like it's difficult to donate directly to a non-profit so gofundme is offering a difficult service. greedy bastards...
we already have visa/mastercard charging a 2% (I don't remember the exact number) fee.
typical of internet nonsense techbro companies (Score:1)
1. business idea no one cares about or needs
2. build any
3. it work for a while cause shiny and new
4. it falls of the face of the earth cause 900 other techbros made copies
5. oh craft now what sign ever one up for business idea no one cares about or needs
Class action? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Drive-by Capitalism (Score:1)
This is what happens when you iterate legislation and social norms to favour the parasite class. What's going on here is probably not quite extortion. It's also probably not quite slander, nor libel, though I suppose it might possibly be classed as a form of defamation. But it may also be a new kind of crime - "living off the avails of reputation vandalism" perhaps?
Cocksucker companies that pull shit like this need to die spectacular and very public deaths. This is a perfect example of why C-levels need to
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dude go man go. BROVO could not had said it better. I am a CTO but holy fuck do i detest the rest of the Cs. I call it cu.. suite.
The basic test (Score:3)
My personal response (Score:3)
Lie down with dogs (Score:3)
Fraud if I did it (Score:3)
So could I simply get out of this chair, walk into some place, and start collecting someone else's disaster money? "It goes to the red cross, for the earthquake, for the hurricane."
Then keep all I want, long as it's not 100% I'm legally clear.
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Re: Fraud if I did it (Score:2)
It is legal. People fundraise for causes all the time on behalf of orgs and donate the funds raised. The problem is a) when your fundraising interferes with direct giving and b) when your take of the donations is greater than your costs such that you are scalping the donations.
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I'm a manager for a meta-charity org. We raise money all the time for charities without telling the charity in advance, particularly during disasters when time is critical to get the word out about the need. Right now, tonight, there are people and corporations across the USA raising funds for the various food banks. I doubt many of them have explicit arrangements with the food banks.
Done ethically, this sort of thing aids the main charity immensely. GoFundMe crossed all sorts of lines.
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I'm a manager for a meta-charity org.
You are parasites.
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Yes, providing the info to bypass the portal and go directly to the entity is part of doing that ethically. And it is not something GoFundMe was doing. But it is not legally required. GFM was unethical but not illegal.
If anyone thinks this *should be* illegal, that's a whole different discussion. In my opinion, it is something worth writing to state and national legislators about changing.
This is not THAT different from canadahelps.org (Score:2)
Canadahelps.org allows you to donate to any registered Canadian charity, if the charity has not set up a Canadahelps.org charity account, they just mail out a cheque for anything that is donated using the registered charity's registered mailing address.
A crucial difference is that Canadahelps.org is itself a charity, subject that the oversight that entails. I think it is a great value to the charities who use it since it can greatly simplify the charity's accounting and official receipt generation requireme
That's just fraud (Score:2)
This is fraud plain and simple. People think they're donating to the charities, but it's just a blatant money grab by GoFundMe.