In a major victory for nonprofit transparency and donor protection, a coalition of 22 state Attorneys General has issued a scathing demand letter to GoFundMe regarding its unauthorized creation of 1.4 million donation web pages for charities without their knowledge or consent.
Nonprofit News Feed previously reported on the controversy in October 2025, when GoFundMe was exposed for creating “shadow” donation pages that utilized charities’ names, logos, and branding without their permission.
The Findings
The letter, led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, identifies several potentially misleading practices that may violate dozens of consumer protection statutes:
- “Identity Plagiarism”: GoFundMe allegedly created donation pages for charities without asking permission, stripping organizations of their ability to control their own brand messaging.
- DAF Obfuscation: Donations were often routed through a Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) sponsor rather than directly to the charity, a structure not clearly disclosed to donors.
- SEO Market Diversion: GoFundMe allegedly used search engine optimization (SEO) tactics to rank its shadow pages above the charities’ official fundraising sites.
- Default “Tips”: The platform applied a default “tip” of approximately 16.5% that went to GoFundMe itself, rather than the intended charitable cause.
The Legal Demand
The coalition of 22 states has given GoFundMe 14 days to prove it has removed the unauthorized pages and to demonstrate new verification procedures for charity consent. Investigative requests from individual states are expected to follow.
Nonprofits and donors alike are watching closely as the legal fallout from this “shadow page” scandal begins to take center stage in state-level consumer protection enforcement.
View the Full AG Demand Letter Below:
Note that NonprofitNewsFeed was one of the cited sources in this letter.
Note that Whole Whale, a leading nonprofit-focused digital agency has audited and confirmed that GoFundeMe has removed the SEO optimizations in their XML files.
Original Sitemap optimizing Shadow Donation pages of 1.4 nonprofits. Each of these sitemap_charity_community.xml.gz pointed to thousands of their charity pages (October, 2025):
Example of one sitemap_charity_community.xml.gz page with each charity page (October, 2025):
This sitemap has been updated to only show approved charity donation pages in their current sitemap (snapshot 3/9/2026):
