Recognizing and managing potentially unauthorized donations

When a GoFundMe fundraiser gets support and has been shared to potential donors across the globe, amazing things happen. With that opportunity, there's also a chance some donors may donate without the permission of the cardholder. The risks associated with unauthorized transactions are experiencing unexpected refunds and chargebacks.

Our Risk team works around the clock to prevent the unauthorized use of cards on GoFundMe. With that being said, cards can be compromised and used at any merchant across the web, including GoFundMe fundraisers.

When this happens, our team takes action to defend the GoFundMe community by returning the donated funds to the cardholder. There are even some signals you can watch out for to help protect yourself from any donors who are using cards without the authorization of the cardholder.

To protect your fundraiser, look out for:

• Donor names that don’t make sense as the name of a person or organization
• A large number of donations from a single individual or under the same name without explanation
• A donor you don’t know personally asking you to provide a refund through another form of payment outside GoFundMe

If you're seeing any of these happen on your fundraiser, reach out to our team by clicking "Contact us", and we can refund or review those donations with you and address any questions you have.