Toxic Revenue Part 2: The GoFundMe Shadow Page Scandal

Welcome to this edition of the Click and Pledge's fundraising command center podcast, where we talk the why, the what, and the how in Click and Pledge's ecosystem. This is the the why series. So today, we are doing a deep dive into something that really sent a shockwave through the nonprofit world in late twenty twenty five. We're talking about the shadow page scandal. And this wasn't just some tech glitch, this was a massive strategic decision that really, it raises some profound questions.

It absolutely does. And for you listening, our goal today isn't just to go over the facts. We really want to analyze why this happened. What was the thinking behind it?

And what does it mean for your strategy right

now? Exactly. Especially as we head into the biggest giving season of the year, this is all about digital sovereignty, about owning your donor data, and frankly, protecting your own brand.

Okay. So let's just jump right in. Let's unpack what actually happened back in October 2025. We're talking about GoFundMe and was it 1,400,000 nonprofits.

Yeah, that's the number. And the core of the issue really, it comes down to a single word: consent. Or I should say the complete lack of it.

Okay, so how did they do it? What was the mechanism?

Well, they scraped publicly available IRS nine ninety data.

The tax filings that every nonprofit has to submit.

Exactly. And from those filings, they pull the employer identification numbers, the EINs.

Which proves you're a legitimate charity.

It proves you exist legally but, and this is the huge philosophical violation, they took that proof of existence and treated it as permission to solicit donations.

Wow! So just because you filed your taxes they assumed they could fundraise in your name?

That's it. It was a purely opt out system. They created these 1,400,000 pages without a single email, a single phone call, no permission whatsoever.

So organizations were suddenly forced to discover that someone was fundraising for them?

Yes. And then they had to go through this this really complex process just to reclaim what was already theirs to begin with, their own brand.

And this is where it gets really interesting and damaging. It wasn't just that the pages existed, many of them were flat out wrong.

Oh, completely. We saw nonprofits discovering pages with outdated logos, you know, branding from ten years ago.

I even saw some with the wrong website listed for the organization.

Right. And imagine you're donor, you search for a charity you love, you land on a page that looks a little off, the link is broken, what do you do?

You hesitate, you lose trust, you think maybe the charity isn't legitimate anymore.

And just like that, decades of brand building is undermined by a third party who never even asked.

Let's shift to the money because this is where the strategy goes from questionable to well truly deceptive. Let's talk about the tip.

This is so critical for you to understand. We need to draw a very clear line between an honest fee and what they were doing.

An honest fee being, you know, the standard costs for processing a credit card securely. It's a service, you sign contract. You agree to the cost.

Exactly. It's a transparent business reality. Mhmm. But the GoFundMe pages, these shadow pages, they introduce something very different. Yep.

At checkout, there was a default tip.

And it was often set pretty high, right?

Yeah, sometimes 15%, even up to 16.5% was pre selected for the donor.

So the interface made it look like this extra money was helping the charity, maybe covering their costs or something?

That's the deception. It's what some people call a dark pattern in design. It plays on the donor's goodwill. They want to help the charity get the full amount.

But the reality was

The reality was that 100% of that tip went directly to GoFundMe.

100%.

The charity saw none of it. Yeah. Not a single cent.

So a donor adds an extra $20 thinking they're helping a local animal shelter, but that $20 just goes into the pocket of a massive tech platform.

And when that donor finds out, they feel scammed. And who do they direct that anchor at?

The nonprofit.

Often, yes. The trust is broken and it's the nonprofit's reputation that suffers. It's not just a bad business model, like you said, it is brand sabotage.

Which leads right into the next major strategic problem here: SEO hijacking.

Mhmm. This is huge. Because a platform like GoFundMe is a tech giant, they have what's called massive domain authority.

Meaning Google trusts them. Their pages rank very, very high in search results almost instantly.

Instantly. So these unauthorized pages weren't just sitting there. They were designed to index and siphon off traffic that should have been going to the nonprofit's own website.

So instead of creating new donors, they were actively competing with the charity.

Precisely. A donor searches donate to charity X, and instead of finding the official page, the first result is the GoFundMe shadow page.

Which then diverts the funds, and more importantly, it diverts the donor relationship.

And that raises a really important question. When a third party uses your name, your data, your brand, all without consent to generate profit for themselves, is that just marketing?

Or is it something more serious?

Well, Watts Law Firm LLP filed a class action lawsuit arguing it was something much more serious. They alleged exploitation of nonprofit identities.

And they framed it as a form of Identity theft. Identity theft. That's a powerful term.

It is. And it shows how severe this violation was perceived to be. And it's not just private lawsuits. The regulators are stepping in.

So you're talking about California, right? AB four eighty eight

California Assembly Bill four eighty eight. Yeah. It's a game changer. It basically mandates that a platform cannot solicit for a charity without a written contract. It makes what happened illegal.

So solicitation without consent is now, at least in California, against the law.

It affirms that principle. Yes. The whole move fast and break things ethos just doesn't work when you're dealing with philanthropic trust.

And the timing of all this was just brutal. This all blew up right before Giving Tuesday.

The worst possible time.

And here we are now in December 2025. It's peak end of year giving season. What's the risk for organizations right now?

The risk is that these forms are still out there. They're still searchable. Remember that high domain authority. It means they don't just disappear.

So a donor could still land on one these pages?

Absolutely. That means non profits have to consolidate their brand authority now. You need to make sure that when someone looks for you during this critical time, they land on your official form, not a shadow page that pockets a tip and compromises your data.

Okay, so considering the severity of this whole scandal the identity theft, the tip deception, the SEO hijacking what is the fundamental solution? How do organizations protect themselves?

The solution, when you zoom out, is to achieve what we call digital sovereignty.

Digital sovereignty.

Means moving away from the aggregator model. That's platforms like GoFundMe, where the nonprofit is basically just a passive name on someone else's Web site.

In that model, the platform owns the web page. They own the SEO.

And crucially, they own the donor data. You're essentially renting your relationship with your own supporters.

And when you rent, you lose control.

You lose all control over the experience, over how fees are presented, and you can't get your data out easily. You can't thank that donor properly. You can't steward that relationship.

Which is why we recommend the direct vendor model. Absolutely.

We recommend choosing a direct vendor, like our platform. With a direct vendor, you are the owner. The form sits on your URL.

On your website.

On your website. Yep. The data flows directly into your CRM, the money settles in your bank account, it's true ownership.

The conclusion here seems unavoidable really. It's the big lesson from this whole scandal.

It is.

If you do not own the form, you do not own the donor.

You don't. And that's why we believe organizations must prioritize owning your form. It is the ultimate defense against this kind of strategic violation. It's the only way to guarantee integrity.

So what really stands out to you at the end of all this?

For me, it's that innovation in this space has to be opt in. It can never be something that is done to the nonprofit community. It has to be done with them.

And that protecting your donor relationship, that trust you've built, is your greatest asset. And you have to protect it with digital ownership.

Exactly. You can't delegate that trust to a middleman whose primary goal might just be their own bottom line.

For more information about this and all Click and Pledge products, make sure to visit clickandpledge.com and request for a one on one training or demo. Don't forget to subscribe to stay up to date with the Click and Pledge fundraising command center.