SAN BRUNO, Calif. (KGO) — A new product from GoFundMe is intended to solicit donations for nonprofit organizations. But in one local case, several organizations had no clue these pages even exist.
Dave Dornlas is the treasurer for the Friends of the San Bruno Public Library and the president of the San Bruno Amateur Radio Club.
Recently, he got a call from the library that left him puzzled.
“One of our patrons at the library… they wanted to make a donation in someone’s name who had passed away,” Dornlas said.
Dornlas said the person went online and found a GoFundMe page tied to the library’s nonprofit and wanted to know if it was legit or not.
“It was something that we did not set up and were a little concerned about,” Dornlas said. “We weren’t sure what was going on.”
Turns out GoFundMe created the page — but Dornlas had no clue.
And he’s not the only one.
GoFundMe has taken upon itself to create “nonprofit pages” for 1.4 million 501C-3 organizations using public IRS data along with information from trusted partners like the PayPal Giving Fund.
According to the company, “this allows individuals across GoFundMe’s 200 million-strong global community to easily discover and donate to nonprofit organizations, helping them support causes and charitable missions they care about, even if the organization hasn’t actively created a GoFundMe campaign.”