Key Takeaways:
The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported on April 29, 2026 that Alaska Attorney General Stephen Cox's seven-week-old lawsuit against PayPal Giving Fund, GoFundMe, Charity Navigator, JustGiving, Pledgeling Technologies, and Network for Good is being treated by the philanthropy bar as the industry test case for whether tech vendors can build donation pages on charity names without consent.
PayPal Giving Fund, one of the six defendants, settled an effectively identical case in 2020 with then-New York Attorney General Letitia James and 22 other state AGs over creating donation pages that told donors funds would reach specific charities and then routed money to different ones.
GoFundMe and Charity Navigator have now responded on the record. GoFundMe said the changes it made last fall already address the concerns. Charity Navigator said it operates in compliance with the law and is committed to working through the legal process.
The Alaska lawsuit against six donation platforms turned seven weeks old this week, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy framed it as the industry's warning shot. The defendants are the same six Alaska Attorney General Stephen Cox named on March 10: PayPal Giving Fund, GoFundMe, Charity Navigator, JustGiving, Pledgeling Technologies (doing business as Pledge), and Network for Good (doing business as ForGood). The state alleges all six created donation pages for thousands of Alaska nonprofits without consent, in violation of Alaska's 1993 Charitable Solicitations Act, with civil penalties of $1,000 to $25,000 per violation.
The detail that has surfaced as the case develops is that PayPal Giving Fund has been here before. In 2017, PayPal was sued for creating donation pages that told donors money would reach specific 501(c)(3) organizations and then, in some cases, routed those funds to different charities. In 2020, then-New York AG Letitia James settled with PayPal alongside 22 other state attorneys general over the same conduct. Lloyd Hitoshi Mayer, a Notre Dame law professor who studies AG enforcement of charity laws, told the Chronicle the case feels like déjà vu. PayPal Giving Fund is defending the same charge for the second time.
The other defendants are responding on the record now. GoFundMe said the changes it made last fall (fully opt-in pages, removal of unclaimed pages, search-engine-optimization off by default) already address the concerns. Charity Navigator said it operates in compliance with the law and will "work through the legal process to resolve this matter." Pledgeling, JustGiving, and Network for Good have not responded publicly. The platform-specific scale claims name up to 7,225 affected Alaska charities on Network for Good, 5,763 on Charity Navigator, more than 5,000 on GoFundMe, 4,961 on Pledge, 4,610 on PayPal Giving Fund, and 1,000 on JustGiving.
The structural picture is hardening. The defendants are not arguing the pages did not exist. They are arguing the pages were lawful or have been fixed. The plaintiffs are arguing consent is not negotiable. The case sets a precedent for every tech vendor operating in the nonprofit space. The same week the Chronicle ran its piece, WYDE Association launched the Hunger Network, a member-governed model where the consent question is structurally unavailable as a problem.
People Also Ask
Q: Has PayPal been sued for this before? A: Yes. PayPal Giving Fund settled an effectively identical case in 2020 with New York Attorney General Letitia James and 22 other state attorneys general over creating donation pages that told donors money would reach specific charities and then, in some cases, routed funds to different charities. The 2026 Alaska lawsuit raises the same core allegation.
Q: Who is Alaska Attorney General Stephen Cox? A: Stephen Cox is Alaska's current Attorney General, who filed the six lawsuits on March 10, 2026 in Anchorage Superior Court. The cases were filed by the Consumer Protection Unit of the Alaska Department of Law.
Q: What does the Alaska Charitable Solicitations Act require? A: The 1993 statute requires anyone soliciting donations on behalf of a charity in Alaska to first obtain consent from that charity and to register with the state. The Alaska complaints allege all six defendants violated this requirement thousands of times.
Q: What did the Chronicle of Philanthropy report on April 29? A: The Chronicle published a follow-up framing the Alaska lawsuit as a "warning shot" to the entire tech-vendor-in-nonprofit space, including statements from GoFundMe and Charity Navigator and historical context on PayPal's 2020 settlement with 22 attorneys general.