By John Christopher, J.D., FFE Board Director & Founder of Fraternal Law Partners
Earlier this month, GoFundMe created pages for approximately 1.4 million nonprofit organizations without their knowledge or consent with pre-populated basic information such as name, logo and EIN from publicly available IRS data.
The pages appeared to be authentically created by the nonprofits. GoFundMe described these accounts as pre-filled “placeholders” awaiting activation by the nonprofit. In an October 23, 2025, email to affected nonprofits, Tim Cadogan, GoFundMe’s CEO, apologized and stated that the pages were created to help small nonprofits launch campaigns faster by prepopulating the pages with basic information.
GoFundMe, however, failed to notify the organizations in advance resulting in concerns over privacy, brand impersonation, and donor confusion. In its efforts to remedy the misstep, GoFundMe has added prominent disclaimers on all unclaimed pages, introduced on-click claim process with identity verification and has promised to create no further pre-populated pages without explicit opt-in consent from the organization.
According to Cadogan, all unclaimed pages will be removed within 30 days. Finally, Cadogan stated that no donations were processed from unclaimed pages and no transaction fees were charged. As of the time this is written, no lawsuits have been filed against GoFundMe for the unauthorized nonprofit pages but there is a potential for claims for unfair/deceptive trade practices, trademark infringement, misrepresentation, misappropriation of likeness, misappropriation of private facts and, if the nonprofit had an existing relationship with GoFundMe, breach of contract.
We continue to monitor the issue and will update as it develops.
