How to Fix Online Giving Platforms Without Cutting Off Donors

Giving to a nonprofit should be easy. In a sector that depends on public trust and generosity, obstacles to donating are not minor inconveniences — they’re barriers to critical resources. Those barriers are especially costly now. The nonprofit world is grappling with a shrinking donor base, declining retention rates, government funding cuts, and a fundraising environment that leaves little margin for error.

Over the past several months, an important debate has erupted about digital giving tools: the platforms that help donors find, vet, and give to organizations. Much of the debate centers on whether online giving platforms undermine nonprofits by creating fundraising mechanisms that bypass consent, violate control over messaging, and blur transparency about what a nonprofit does. Many of the concerns are legitimate, and addressing them is long overdue. 

But the sector must avoid overreach. Calls for sweeping restrictions and state-by-state regulations risk significantly damaging nonprofits’ fundraising ability. The sector cannot afford to let valid critique become a blunt and counterproductive instrument. 

What’s at Stake

At their core, the digital giving tools at the center of this debate function as search-and-discovery engines. They make it easier for a donor to find a nonprofit, understand its work, and make a gift. Research consistently shows that bringing in new donors is harder and more expensive than keeping them — and that each obstacle in the giving process represents real lost revenue for nonprofits.

Tools of this type have been use­d for decades to support different forms of giving, including donor-advised funds, workplace giving, and peer-to-peer fundraising. Workplace giving alone represents an estimated $5 billion in annual donations and depends on the same search-and-discovery infrastructure at the center of current debates. 

Restricting that infrastructure would cut off a channel through which billions of dollars flow to nonprofits each year, including an estimated $2 to $3 billion in corporate matching funds. Some of those dollars may be recovered over time, but small and midsize community organizations will find it particularly difficult to recoup the loss.

GivingTuesday estimates that the United States alone has $52 billion in unrealized generosity — money that people are willing to give but that never reaches charities because the path from intention to action is too challenging. Closing that gap requires more thoughtful innovation in giving infrastructure, not less.

Faulty Solutions

The controversy of recent months — involving platforms such as GoFundMe, Charity Navigator, PayPal, and others — exposed genuine problems. Some platforms have not been sufficiently transparent about how organizational data is sourced and displayed. Some haven’t made it clear to donors that the descriptions of nonprofits were generated from public records, rather than by the nonprofit itself. And others have not provided clear, accessible ways for organizations to correct inaccurate information. Naming these failures is critical to devising solutions.

But there’s a huge difference between suggesting platforms need fundamental improvements and describing them as inherently predatory. Aggregating public information about a nonprofit and facilitating donations to it is not the same as claiming to speak for or represent that organization, although platforms must be transparent about the distinction.

Some proposed solutions could make it significantly harder for everyday donors to give and for small nonprofits to be discovered. Mandatory opt-in rules, for instance, might cut off underresourced nonprofits that rely on these platforms to bring in new donors. State legislation could undermine the infrastructure that makes these platforms effective. This includes efforts to restrict how nonprofit data can be displayed and legal frameworks that treat fundamentally different giving platforms as interchangeable.

This isn’t hypothetical. Nearly two dozen state attorneys general have demanded removal of unauthorized nonprofit pages from GoFundMe’s platform. In Alaska, the state’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against six crowdfunding platforms alleging they created donation pages for charities without their knowledge or consent. These actions show why informed solutions are urgently needed to protect nonprofits and ensure the integrity of donation platforms that allow people to easily give.

A Set of Principles

The three of us — leaders, respectively, of the Nonprofit Alliance, GivingTuesday, and the Association of Fundraising Professionals — recently came together to discuss digital giving platforms’ need for self-regulatory principles. Other nonprofit champions, such as the National Council of Nonprofits, Independent Sector, and BBB Wise Giving Alliance, have also joined conversations to raise concerns and seek solutions, as has the Giving Platform Collaborative, which convenes platforms.

This work is ongoing, and we encourage others to join. Nonprofit leaders, fundraising professionals, and donors must have a seat at this table as we develop shared solutions and standards for accountability. We suggest starting with a few nonnegotiables: Donors should always know what organization they’re giving to and who is creating the content they see on the platforms. They should also be informed upfront about any fees associated with their donation, including credit card processing fees, platform transaction fees, and any optional tips or contributions to the platform itself, whether those are added to the donation or deducted from it. 

We believe the sector can coalesce around a framework built on several core commitments:

Transparency in data sourcing. Platforms should clearly disclose how organizational information is obtained, displayed, and updated and make that information available to both donors and nonprofits.

Simple mechanisms for correcting information. Every nonprofit should have a straightforward, low-barrier method to flag incorrect information or make updates to their listing, on any platform where it is displayed.

Clear labeling and neutral defaults. Platforms should not present nonprofit listings in ways that imply the organization has reviewed, approved, or endorsed its own page.

Opt-out as a reasonable default. While opt-out mechanisms could be improved, they remain a reasonable standard for tools designed to help donors find and give to nonprofits. Conversely, universal opt-in requirements, which some states are proposing for all platforms, would be especially harmful to the smallest organizations with the least capacity to navigate the requirements. 

We are asking sector leaders, state regulators, and advocacy organizations to consider this framework before pursuing legislative solutions that could do lasting damage to the infrastructure that everyday giving depends on. 

We owe it to the sector to do everything we can to make it easier — not harder — for people to find the causes they care about and to give easily when they want to. We must do that in ways that are transparent and accountable and that build trust among all those involved. The nonprofit world has a $52 billion reason to get this right. Let’s work together to make sure it happens.