Scammers Are Spoofing Charities on Venmo: How to Protect Your Donors
Fake accounts impersonating charities are scamming donors on the popular payment app. Experts share how to stay ahead of the fraud.
By Libby Sander
Contributor
April 13, 2026 | Read Time: 6 minutes
When two volunteers for a Pennsylvania animal-welfare organization received solicitations last year asking them to donate $50 to the charity on Venmo, something seemed off. The impersonal tone of the messages seemed different from the organization’s usual friendly manner. So they alerted staff.
“It was a play on our name with the exact same logo,” a spokesperson for the nonprofit told the Chronicle. (The organization asked that its name be withheld from this story to protect its donors’ privacy.)
The fraud went beyond the two volunteers: The scammers had reached out to other supporters as well, and a handful had already sent money to the impostor.
Venmo, the popular cash-sharing app, allows users to easily send money from their bank accounts to other individuals, businesses, or charities. But a proliferation of fake accounts impersonating charities has made the process more fraught for organizations that use the platform to receive donations from individuals.
“We caught it pretty quickly,” the spokesperson said. “We immediately sent out an email to everyone in our subscriber list explaining the situation and encouraging people to ask questions.”
Above all, the spokesperson added, “We made it really clear that this is not how we would ever ask for money.”
Venmo said in a written statement provided to the Chronicle that it does not tolerate fraudulent activity on the platform: “Protecting the Venmo community is a top priority. We work hard to safeguard our customers from evolving scams and act quickly against any activity that violates our policies, including attempted impersonation fraud.”
To help protect your organization and donors from online fundraising scams, experts and practitioners share these tips.
Understand the increasing sophistication of online scams.
The rise of artificial intelligence has made it much easier — and quicker — for fraudsters to imitate legitimate organizations, says Michael Enos, vice president for infrastructure, security, and governance at TechSoup.
Venmo scams are just one piece; bad actors can scrape entire websites and lift language and images that are familiar to donors, he says. “It’s really accelerated. As a result, we’re seeing a lot of impersonation and spoofing.”
A 2025 report by Okta, a digital security company, found that nonprofit organizations are the second-most frequent target of cyberattacks, after the energy industry. “Nonprofits represent low risk and high reward for attackers because nonprofits often lack full resourcing to monitor and remediate attacks,” the report states.
Yet some nonprofits, particularly those that are community-based, have found Venmo to be a useful tool in their grassroots fundraising.
The classic Venmo scam looks like this: A fake account spoofs an organization’s logo and alters its “handle” by just one character — an underscore at the end, or an extra letter. From there, Enos says, “It’s very easy [for fraudsters] to find people who are donors.”
They next solicit donations, asking for small amounts of money. A savvy user might detect that something about the solicitation seems odd. But someone who’s new to Venmo or not as comfortable with technology might easily fall for the ploy.
Verify your Paypal and Venmo accounts.
Claiming your badge on PayPal and Venmo is an important first step, experts say. Paypal owns Venmo, so start there: Set up a verified charity account with PayPal. Next, go through the slightly quicker process to get verified with Venmo as well. Venmo offers a guide to setting up a charity profile, and answers frequently asked questions about the process.
As an online charitable fundraising platform, Venmo is legally required to verify that charities are in good standing with the IRS before allowing them to receive donations. Being verified means that your organization’s profile will appear to users with a blue check mark — that’s the badge — indicating that the company has approved you as a legitimate charity organization.
You should claim your Venmo profile even if you don’t plan to use it for fundraising, says Jim Fruchterman, author of Technology for Good and the founder and CEO of Tech Matters, which helps social-change organizations use technology. Getting verified through PayPal and Venmo, Fruchterman says, is “like taking a vitamin once. It can’t hurt.”
Tell your donors exactly how to find you on Venmo.
Finding official charity accounts on Venmo isn’t immediately obvious. Fake accounts are designed to appear, at a glance, very similar to verified accounts.
Experts say it’s important to help your donors understand exactly how to find you on Venmo and which platforms are safest for donating.
In the Venmo app, the safest way for donors to find a nonprofit group is to enter a search term, then tap the “Charities” tab at the top of their screen. After selecting a search result, they can look for the blue checkmark of a verified profile. But the initial search, before taking those additional steps, may turn up only spoof accounts, not real ones.
“Work on messaging and communications with your constituents to let donors know there’s been an uptick of fraud, and you want to make sure their contributions are going directly to [your] organization,” Enos says.
After it was scammed, the Pennsylvania animal-welfare organization created a social-media graphic to provide supporters with a visual of what to look for and what to avoid. It depicts their official Venmo handle with a large green check mark above it, and two fake accounts below it — their handles differing from the official account by just one character — each marked with a large, red X.
“We knew we didn’t want to get rid of Venmo. We just wanted to make it very clear to folks what our actual account is,” the group’s spokesperson says.
Make your “feed” private.
When donors send money to your organization on Venmo, the amount of their donation and their name appear on a public list of transactions, known as your “feed.”
Experts agree that all organizations should make their Venmo feed private: When public, it’s easy for scammers to see everyone who donates and to contact them with fraudulent solicitations.
You can change your feed from public to private in the settings tab under “privacy.”
If your organization is spoofed, report it right away.
Venmo encourages nonprofits that suspect they have been impersonated to report suspicious activity directly through the Venmo app and to reach out to customer support for further assistance.
“It’s not Venmo’s fault that scammers are doing this,” Enos adds, “but you should always report fraud because that helps them have more data. It helps with decision-making around what they’re doing.”
If you’ve been scammed, alert your supporters right away to show you’re taking the theft seriously, the experts say. Explain what’s happened and tell them what you’re doing to address the problem. Also communicate exactly what you do and don’t do when soliciting donations. It’s important for them to hear from the source what they can expect.
Collecting donations via Venmo carries a certain amount of risk for donors. Unlike fraudulent credit-card payments, it is much harder for donors to get their gifts refunded under Venmo’s purchase-protection policy. Only payments tagged as goods and services — which donations typically are not — are covered by purchase protection.
If Venmo is useful in your fundraising, don’t give it up, but stay vigilant.
“The reality is, sometimes it’s a lot easier [for a donor] to scan a code and hit send,” the animal-welfare organization’s spokesperson said. “We don’t want to miss out on those opportunities.”
