(OSV News) ─ The Archdiocese of San Antonio is speaking out after the GoFundMe company -- which provides a digital platform for online fundraising -- created donation pages on its behalf without the archdiocese's approval.
In a bilingual statement issued Oct. 22, the archdiocese said some of its "parishes, schools, and ministries" had been impacted by the online fundraiser's move, which in total saw some 1.4 million pages created for other nonprofits "without their consent or knowledge."
The Archdiocese of San Antonio stressed that it "does not use GoFundMe to collect donations for any purpose."
Instead, the archdiocese urged those wishing to support its parishes, schools, agencies and archdiocesan ministry appeals to give through its official and secure online platforms found on the archdiocesan website, archsa.org.
"This will ensure that every gift reaches its intended purpose," said the archdiocese, which also directed questions regarding donation pages or charitable giving to contact either the intended recipient or the archdiocesan development department by phone.
The Archdiocese of San Antonio joins a growing chorus of nonprofits and Catholic fundraisers concerned by GoFundMe's move to proactively create the pages using publicly available IRS data, along with information from partnering organizations such as the PayPal Giving Fund.
OSV News reached out to GoFundMe for comment, but did not receive an immediate response. According to its website, GoFundMe allows users to create campaigns for free, but charges a payment processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30 per donation.
On Oct. 15, ABC affiliate KGO-TV in San Francisco reported that the California-based GoFundMe said the prefabricated pages allowed "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."
The station quoted Krista Lamp, GoFundMe's senior director of nonprofit communications, who said her firm found that "people were already organically coming to GoFundMe to support nonprofit orgs."
Noting that in 2024 GoFundMe supported 70,000 nonprofit organizations, Lamp said that some nonprofits would claim the created pages, enabling them to access the donor data in full while branding and utilizing the page as they saw fit.
Nic Prenger, founder and director of Prenger Solutions Group, which provides fundraising and technology solutions to more than half of the nation's Catholic dioceses, called GoFundMe's page creation campaign "gob-smackingly dishonest."
In an Oct. 21 LinkedIn post, Prenger said he had been "prompted to give a 16.5 percent 'tip' directly to GoFundMe" after visiting one such site, for which he provided a screenshot.
"That's 16.5 percent ON TOP OF the normal credit card processing fees," said Prenger, who urged nonprofits to search for possible autogenerated GoFundMe pages, adding he understood there was a process to claim and disable the pages.
Josephine Everly, director at the nonprofit Stand Together -- a national philanthropic community that focuses on several core issues such as education, health care and community safety -- warned that GoFundMe's page expansion could pose particular threats to Catholic entities.
Everly detailed her concerns in an Oct. 22 LinkedIn post titled "The GoFundMe Nonprofit Page Controversy: Why Catholic Organizations Should Be Especially Concerned."
She wrote that "faith-based boundaries matter," noting that "Catholic organizations carefully choose platforms that align with their values and mission." Everly said that "being automatically enrolled violates the principle of informed consent that should govern our partnerships."
In addition, she said, many Catholic organizations operate under "diocesan policies or governance structures that require approval for new fundraising initiatives."
In addition, said Everly, "auto-generated pages use generic language that may not reflect Church teaching or a specific organization's charism." As potential examples of auto-generated pages going wrong, she explained, "a Catholic hospital's page might misrepresent their bioethical positions, or a religious order's page might not capture their unique spiritual mission."
She also pointed out errors in GoFundMe's source information, which drew on "outdated Form 990 data" taken from an IRS form nonprofits receiving $50,000 or more must file annually.
Everly said that such data was "18-24 months behind," and that she had seen "several websites listed incorrectly."
As a result ─ and especially with post-pandemic shutdowns, mergers and relocations of Catholic ministries ─ "an elderly parishioner might send a memorial gift to a closed ministry, while prospects wanting to learn more about an organization's mission get misdirected to wrong or outdated websites.
"This breaks the donor journey at a critical moment," wrote Everly.
GoFundMe's page expansion campaign sets a "dangerous precedent," she said, with other platforms engaging in similar overreach.
"Catholic philanthropy is built on relationships, trust, and careful discernment ─ not algorithmic assumptions about our data or needs," Everly said.
She added, "True partnership means asking first and respecting our governance structures."
The Archdiocese of San Antonio echoed that view in its statement, saying, "The continued trust of those who generously donate funds to archdiocesan entities is of utmost importance."
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Gina Christian is a multimedia reporter for OSV News. Follow her on X @GinaJesseReina.
