Published
August 12, 2026
A new class action accuses GoFundMe of adding a preselected "tip" for itself to donations at checkout — money the suit says goes to the company, not the cause, and that most donors never notice. The proposed classes cover Illinois and Georgia donors only, and there is nothing to claim.
Allegations Only · No Settlement Yet
This article describes a class action complaint. The statements below are unproven allegations. GoFundMe has not responded to the complaint, has not been found liable, there is no certified class, and there is nothing to claim at this time. This page is informational and is not legal advice.
What Is This About?
A proposed class action accuses GoFundMe of quietly increasing the cost of charitable donations by preselecting a "tip" that goes to GoFundMe itself. The complaint, Donovan v. GoFundMe, Inc., was filed on August 6, 2026 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division (Case No. 1:26-cv-09423), by two donors — one in Illinois, one in Georgia — on behalf of two proposed statewide classes.The core allegation is about consent, not the existence of the tip. According to the complaint, once a donor picks a donation amount, GoFundMe automatically adds a percentage-based tip for itself, displays it in small type below the donation figure, and never states on the checkout screen that the tip is optional or how to set it to zero. The complaint calls this a "negative option" — a design in which a consumer's failure to act is treated as agreement to an extra charge — and points to Federal Trade Commission guidance that a pre-checked box does not constitute affirmative consent. The allegations are unproven, and GoFundMe has not yet filed a response.
Status
Complaint Filed · August 6, 2026
Donovan v. GoFundMe, Inc. · N.D. Ill. (1:26-cv-09423) · jury trial demanded
Core Allegation
A tip for GoFundMe added to donations before the donor agrees to it
Claims under the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act and the Georgia Fair Business Practices Act
Proposed Classes
Illinois and Georgia donors who paid a preselected GoFundMe tip
Not nationwide — the complaint pleads two state classes only
Can I Claim?
No — nothing to claim yet
No settlement, no fund, no claim form; no class has been certified
What the Complaint Says Happens at Checkout
The complaint walks through a GoFundMe donation page step by step. A donor browsing a fundraiser sees the cause, the amount raised so far, and a "Donate" button. Clicking it opens an order screen with preset donation buttons and a large field showing the amount chosen.According to the complaint, the moment a donor selects an amount, GoFundMe adds a percentage tip on the donor's behalf without any click or confirmation. The tip appears in a smaller control below the donation field and again in the order summary near the bottom of the screen, where the total due reflects the donation plus the tip. The complaint alleges the checkout screen carries no statement that the tip is optional, and that removing it requires a donor to first notice the charge and then work out that the control has to be dragged down to zero.
The complaint also challenges how the charge is labeled. It cites the dictionary meaning of a tip — a sum given for a service performed — and argues donors are not knowingly giving GoFundMe a gift, because nothing in the checkout flow tells them the money is going to the company rather than the cause. The complaint alleges this is a "junk fee" and a form of drip pricing, and invokes the Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act, California's Honest Pricing Law, and the Illinois Junk Fee Ban Act as evidence of how regulators view the practice. Every one of these characterizations is a plaintiff's allegation that GoFundMe has not answered.
The Tip Is Optional — and the Complaint Agrees
One point deserves to be stated plainly, because it changes what this case is actually about: the complaint does not allege that the tip is mandatory. It says the opposite. The complaint states that GoFundMe's tips "are optional," and its objection is that GoFundMe opts donors in by default rather than asking, does not disclose on the checkout screen that the charge can be declined, and presents it in a way the plaintiffs say most people miss.So a donor who wants their full donation to go to the cause can do that today. During checkout, before submitting the donation, adjust the tip control to zero — or use the custom tip option to enter your own amount — and confirm that the order summary shows the total you expect. It is worth checking the summary line rather than the tip control alone, since the summary is where the amount your card will actually be charged appears.
The plaintiffs' complaint describes the interface as it appeared during their donations in September 2025 and March 2026. Online checkout flows change, and GoFundMe has been under regulator pressure over this exact design since early 2026, so what a donor sees today may differ from what the complaint depicts.
How Big Is the Default Tip? The Answer Is Unsettled
There is no single number here, and readers should be wary of any source that gives one confidently.The complaint itself is inconsistent. It describes a preselected tip of 17.5% in the passage explaining the checkout flow, then refers to a donor needing to move the control from 16.5% down to zero a few paragraphs later. The two plaintiffs' own transactions match neither figure cleanly: the Illinois plaintiff alleges a $50 donation carried an $8.25 tip, which works out to 16.5%, while the Georgia plaintiff alleges a $10 donation carried a $1.00 tip, or 10%.
Outside the complaint, the state attorneys general who wrote to GoFundMe in March 2026 described a default tip of roughly 16.5%, and public reporting on the platform has cited figures closer to 13.5% at other times. Taken together, the most defensible reading is that GoFundMe's default tip is not one fixed rate — it varies, and it may depend on the donation amount, the type of fundraiser, or changes the company has made over time. Whether that variation matters legally is for the court; for a donor, the practical takeaway is that the only reliable number is the one on your own order summary.
The Dispute Over What the Tip Pays For
The complaint's second theory concerns a line of text GoFundMe displays next to the tip control, which the complaint quotes as: "GoFundMe has a 0% platform fee for organizers and relies primarily on the generosity of donors like you to operate our service."Plaintiffs allege that statement is misleading. They claim GoFundMe charges organizations that fundraise on the platform a transaction fee on every donation, and that donors are never told this at the point of sale — so a donor reading the tip prompt is left with the impression that tips are what keep the platform running, when the complaint alleges they are an additional profit stream. The complaint asserts, on information and belief, that the tip is untethered from the cost of processing the donation.
This is contested territory and worth reading carefully. GoFundMe publicly describes a 0% platform fee for organizers alongside a separate payment processing fee applied to donations, so the two sides may be describing different charges rather than disagreeing about a single fact. The complaint also cites a figure of $55 million in 2024 revenue, up 90% year over year; that figure traces to third-party estimates rather than audited financials, since GoFundMe is privately held and does not publish its results. We are reporting the allegation, not adopting it.
State Attorneys General Raised the Same Concern in March
The lawsuit did not arrive out of nowhere. On March 3, 2026, a bipartisan group of state attorneys general and state charity regulators — 21 signatories, according to the complaint — sent GoFundMe a letter raising concerns about its charitable fundraising practices.The letter's central complaint was broader than tips: regulators said GoFundMe had created donation pages for a large number of charities without those organizations' knowledge or consent. Among the specific harms they identified was the application of a default tip, described as roughly 16.5%, that went to GoFundMe rather than to the charity a donor believed they were supporting. New Jersey's attorney general followed up publicly, demanding proof that GoFundMe had removed the unauthorized pages and stopped hiding fees.
That regulatory track is separate from this lawsuit and involves separate litigation brought by nonprofits over the unauthorized-page issue. The two stories overlap only on the tip question. Regulator concern is not a finding of wrongdoing, and GoFundMe has disputed aspects of the characterizations made about its practices.
Who Is Covered by the Proposed Classes?
This is the part most readers will care about, and it is narrower than the headlines suggest. The complaint pleads two statewide classes rather than a nationwide one:• Illinois class: all persons in Illinois who, within the applicable statute of limitations, paid GoFundMe a preselected fee in the form of a "tip."
• Georgia class: all persons in Georgia who, within the applicable statute of limitations, paid GoFundMe a preselected fee in the form of a "tip."
Excluded are GoFundMe itself, its affiliates, officers, directors and their immediate families, the assigned judge and their family, and any entity GoFundMe controls. A donor in California, Texas, New York or anywhere else is not in either proposed class as the case is currently pled — though the complaint reserves the right to amend the definitions or add subclasses, and cases like this are sometimes broadened later. No class has been certified, so nothing here is fixed.
The complaint invokes federal jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act, asserting the classes exceed 100 members and that the claims in the aggregate top $5 million.
What the Lawsuit Seeks
The complaint brings one count under the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act and one under the Georgia Fair Business Practices Act, and asks the court to:• Certify the Illinois and Georgia classes and appoint the plaintiffs as class representatives.
• Declare the practices unlawful and order GoFundMe to stop them.
• Require GoFundMe to give up and return the money it collected through preselected tips.
• Award actual and statutory damages, plus treble damages and pre-judgment interest.
• Award attorneys' fees, costs and expenses.
All of these are requests for relief attached to unproven allegations. No money has been awarded, and a court may never award any.
Part of a Broader Push Against Default Charges
The legal theory here — that a preselected charge is not consent — is the same one driving a wave of cases and rules across online retail. The FTC's Restore Online Shoppers' Confidence Act claims and its guidance on dark patterns both turn on whether a company obtained express informed consent before charging, and the FTC's junk-fee rule pushed the same idea into pricing display. OCA has a plain-English explainer on bait-and-switch and drip pricing if the terminology is new.Comparable cases are stacking up. Ticket marketplace Vivid Seats faces a Maryland drip-pricing class action over fees revealed only at the last checkout step, and rival StubHub is already paying automatic refunds under an FTC order for the same practice. DoorDash is defending a DashPass drip-pricing suit, Busch Gardens' parent faces a hidden-fees class action, and Amazon settled FTC claims over Prime sign-up and cancellation design in a case that produced an open claims process. What sets the GoFundMe case apart is the setting: the plaintiffs argue charitable giving is a trust-based transaction made quickly and often under emotional pressure, which they say makes a default charge more damaging than it would be in ordinary retail.
Is There a Settlement or Claim Form?
No. This is a lawsuit, not a settlement.• There is no settlement fund.
• There is no claim form.
• There is no payout and no deadline to act.
For money to reach donors through this case, the complaint would first have to survive the motions GoFundMe is expected to file, then win class certification, and then either settle or prevail at trial. That sequence takes years and often ends without a payment. Donors in Illinois or Georgia who want to follow it can keep their GoFundMe donation receipts and watch this page; if a settlement is ever reached, it would come with its own eligibility rules and deadlines.
Anyone who spots a GoFundMe charge on a statement that does not match what they meant to give can compare it against their donation receipt first — our guides on disputing an unauthorized card charge and filing an FTC complaint cover the steps that are available right now, independent of this case.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a GoFundMe tip settlement or claim form?
No. This is a class action complaint filed on August 6, 2026, not a settlement. There is no settlement fund, no claim form, and no payout. GoFundMe has not been found liable, no class has been certified, and there is nothing to claim at this time.
Is the GoFundMe tip optional?
Yes. The complaint itself acknowledges the tip is optional and can be set to zero. The lawsuit's argument is not that donors are forced to tip, but that GoFundMe preselects a tip amount before the donor agrees to it, presents it in small type, and does not tell donors on the checkout screen that it is optional or how to remove it. Those characterizations are unproven allegations.
How much is the GoFundMe default tip?
There is no single fixed figure, and the complaint is not internally consistent about it. It describes a preselected 17.5% tip in one passage and refers to a 16.5% setting in another, while the two plaintiffs' own transactions worked out to roughly 16.5% and 10%. State attorneys general who wrote to GoFundMe in March 2026 cited a default of about 16.5%. Public reporting has also cited figures around 13.5%. The default appears to vary rather than being one set rate.
Who could be covered by the proposed classes?
The complaint pleads two state classes, not a nationwide one: people in Illinois who paid GoFundMe a preselected fee in the form of a tip within the applicable limitations period, and people in Georgia who did the same. A donor outside Illinois or Georgia is not in either proposed class as the case is currently pled. No class has been certified, so the definitions could change.
What does the GoFundMe lawsuit ask the court to do?
The complaint asks the court to certify the two state classes, declare the practices unlawful, order GoFundMe to stop them, and require GoFundMe to give up money it collected through preselected tips. It also seeks actual and statutory damages, treble damages, interest, and attorneys' fees and costs. These are requests tied to unproven allegations; no money has been awarded.
What should GoFundMe donors do now?
There is nothing to claim, because there is no settlement. Donors who want to control the tip can adjust it during checkout before completing a donation. Anyone who believes they were charged an amount they did not authorize can review their card or bank statement against their GoFundMe donation receipt and follow the case for updates. This page is informational and is not legal advice.
Sources
• Class Action Complaint, Donovan v. GoFundMe, Inc., No. 1:26-cv-09423 (N.D. Ill., filed Aug. 6, 2026) — the primary document this page is based on.• Law360, "GoFundMe Tricked Donors Into Paying Default Tips, Suit Says" (Aug. 7, 2026) — trade-press report confirming the filing.
• New Jersey Office of the Attorney General — follow-up on the multistate letter to GoFundMe regarding unauthorized charity pages and fee disclosure.
• FTC Enforcement Policy Statement Regarding Negative Option Marketing (Oct. 2021) — the "pre-checked box is not affirmative consent" guidance the complaint relies on.
• FTC report on dark patterns (Sept. 2022).
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Status
Complaint Filed — Allegations Only
Case Title
Donovan v. GoFundMe, Inc.
Case Number
1:26-cv-09423
Court
U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Eastern Division)
Date Filed
August 6, 2026
Defendant
GoFundMe, Inc.
Claims
Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act (815 ILCS 505/1); Georgia Fair Business Practices Act (O.C.G.A. § 10-1-390)
Jurisdiction
Class Action Fairness Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1332(d)
