How do I send funds to the organization I'm fundraising for?
If you do not have a Banking Tab under your Account tab in your account, you are not considered a charity administrator. This means, that you do not have to take an action to send the funds to your organization that you're fundraising for. It will happen automatically.
By selecting an organization as the beneficiary at the beginning of your campaign, you're electing who you would like us to send payments do. During and after the campaign, we will send them the money. Zero effort required on your part!
Important note: You will not be notified when we send the money.
In addition, charities do not need to take action to receive funds from your campaign. If they have not signed up, we use the information from the IRS to send them a check directly within 3-5 months of funds being raised.
How does my organization withdraw our funds?
If funds are needed sooner than 3-5 months, your organization will need to sign up with GoFundMe Charity by claiming your charity. Once done, you can follow the directions found at the very bottom of this article to sign up with our payment partner, WePay. WePay allows for daily withdrawals.
If funds were raised before a member of your organization had a chance to claim the organization's account, they will be distributed through the PayPal Giving Fund, even if later your team claimed your organization and switched payment processing to WePay. Learn how to enroll with the PayPal Giving Fund below if you need a quicker payout for funds processed by them.
What are the differences between PayPal Giving Fund and WePay?
PayPal
- Available for 501(c)(3) public charities only
- For enrolled charities, funds are paid out monthly to their PayPal account.
- For unenrolled charities, funds are paid out by check within 3-5 months of the donation date.
- Enabled by default
If a charity takes no action on GoFundMe Charity or PayPal Giving Fund, they'll automatically receive check payouts from PayPal Giving Fund sent to their address on file with GuideStar. Please refer to this article if you need to change the check mailing address.
WePay
- Available for all US nonprofits and Canadian registered charities
- Funds paid out by electronic funds transfer, which takes 2-5 business days, or check, which takes 10 business days.
- Select daily, weekly or monthly payout frequency
- Charity admin must actively set up WePay if they want to use it instead of PayPal Giving Fund.
WePay is recommended if a charity prefers more frequent withdrawals or doesn't use PayPal.
How do I enroll with the PayPal Giving Fund?
A financial administrator of the charity can choose to enroll in PayPal Giving Fund to receive monthly payouts to their PayPal account instead of the default check payouts with the steps below:
- Create a PayPal account or make sure that the charity's existing PayPal account is upgraded to a business account: https://www.paypal.com/bizsignup.
- Confirm the charity's status here: https://www.paypal.com/charities. After submitting the required information, PayPal will follow up by email within three business days. Move on to step 3 here after receiving PayPal's confirmation email.
- Enroll in PayPal Giving Fund here: https://www.paypal.com/givingfund/enroll.
If you have any questions or trouble with the enrollment process, you can contact PayPal Giving Fund at https://www.paypal.com/us/givingfund/contact. Please be sure to select the "Charity" option, include your charity's name and EIN in the message, and indicate that your question is about PayPal Giving Fund enrollment.
How do I switch to WePay?
- Go to Account Settings
- Click Payouts
- Click Switch to WePay
- Click Continue to WePay Setup
- Click Sign up if you do not have a WePay yet for your organization.
Please note that any donations already processed through PayPal Giving Fund will still be paid out by PayPal Giving Fund even after you enable WePay. All future donations will be processed and paid out by WePay, unless an issue with your WePay account causes our system to default back to PayPal Giving Fund.
Once you've set up WePay initially, you can also access settings and transaction/payout reporting directly through WePay's website. Your WePay login information (email/password) may be different than your GoFundMe Charity information. Feel free to contact us if you'd like help remembering which email address is connected to your WePay account.