AG Kaul: Agreement with PayPal Charitable Giving Fund

An agreement reached with PayPal’s nonprofit charitable arm will ensure donors receive adequate information and disclosures when making charitable contributions through the company’s online fundraising platform, Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul announced Tuesday.

Kaul, along with a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general and other charities' regulators from 22 other states, reached the agreement with PayPal Charitable Giving Fund, Inc.

(PPGF), the charitable arm of the online payment processor PayPal, Inc. PPGF is a nonprofit corporation that allows donors to contribute funds electronically to PPGF and then select a charity that will ultimately receive the benefit of their contribution.

Donors’ contributions are aggregated and distributed to the donors’ chosen charities without PPGF collecting fees for this service.

The states initiated an investigation in 2017 into PPGF’s fundraising activities, including its disclosures, vetting practices, and treatment of charitable contributions.

To address the states’ concerns, PPGF agreed to adopt reforms to its disclosures to ensure that donors know:

• Their contribution will be made to PPGF, rather than directly to their selected charity;

• The timeframe in which their selected charity may receive funds from PPGF; and

• The implication of being an enrolled rather than an unenrolled charity on the PPGF platform, including notifying donors when PPGF will redirect a donor’s charitable contribution to an enrolled charity other than the unenrolled organization selected by the donor.

PPGF has also agreed to provide regulators with future data to ensure the organization is complying with its obligations under the agreement.

The states included in the agreement are Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina Secretary of State, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania Texas and Wisconsin.

A copy of the agreement is available