GoFundMe recently made headlines for creating donation pages for 1.4 million nonprofits — without their knowledge or consent. The move, which came during one of the busiest fundraising times of the year, forced many organizations to spend valuable time fixing problems they didn’t create. Although the company has since made its profiles opt-in, the episode sparked important conversations about trust, ethics, and transparency in fundraising platforms.
At the Sacramento Region Community Foundation, we’ve thought a lot about these topics. For the past seven years, I’ve helped manage GivingEdge, a giving platform that was built with and for local nonprofits. Seeing the GoFundMe situation unfold reminded me how different our approach is, and why that difference matters.
For more than a decade, GivingEdge has offered a searchable database featuring hundreds of organizations across El Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, and Yolo counties. It’s the platform that runs Big Day of Giving each May, and where donors and community members can discover and support local causes that align with their values year-round.
But GivingEdge is more than a donation platform. It helps community members learn about the nonprofits shaping our region, find volunteer opportunities and events, and connect with causes that inspire them. It also helps smaller organizations — especially those without their own payment systems — receive donations quickly, securely, and in the method they prefer. For donors, it simplifies giving to multiple organizations in a single transaction, making generosity both easy and meaningful.
This work reflects the Sacramento Region Community Foundation’s broader efforts to strengthen the capital area’s nonprofit sector. Beyond dollars, we provide education, grants, collaboration, and connection. These are resources that build relationships and community capacity that last well beyond a single gift!
Behind every GivingEdge profile are real local people who craft their organization’s story, share their mission, and describe their impact in their own words. That autonomy is central to the platform’s design and to our belief that those closest to community challenges are best positioned to lead change.
We share openly what nonprofits are eligible to participate and details about the 5.2% fee applied to each GivingEdge donation, which covers technology and payment processing. (What’s less known is that, for many transactions, the Foundation does not retain any portion of that fee, and sometimes pays more than 5.2% to our payment processing partners, absorbing the difference to keep philanthropy accessible to all.)
And when nonprofits ask us to take down their profiles after Big Day of Giving — perhaps because they’d rather direct donors to their own website — we do it without hesitation. It’s their choice, their story. We’re proud of that.
If you’d like to discover nonprofits making a difference in your community, visit GivingEdge.org today, a local giving platform grounded in the belief that generosity starts right here at home. I also invite you to sign up for our once-a-month newsletter, Give Local, which highlights events and opportunities from GivingEdge nonprofits.
