As a follow-up on our work to comply with California State Assembly Bill No, 488 (AB-488) – a nonprofit governance and delinquency law that triggered a frustrating shakeup of online fundraising – yesterday, in keeping with legal deadlines, we launched a new tool for donors: donation reallocation.

What is donation reallocation?

According to state and federal laws, donations cannot be disbursed to nonprofits that are not eligible to receive them. In keeping with the law, Give Lively doesn’t support donations to nonprofits that are not in good standing with federal and/or state authorities. 

However, a nonprofit’s standing may change between the time of donation and disbursement; a charitable organization may be eligible to receive a donation when it was made, but can become ineligible by the time of the donation’s disbursement to the nonprofit by the charitable fundraising platform. The law empowers donors to express new wishes about where to reallocate those gifted funds.

How does donation allocation work at Give Lively?

When Give Lively collects a donation that can no longer be disbursed due to a change in a nonprofit’s status, we send an email notification to donors advising them that the donation can’t be completed as originally directed and urging them to reallocate the funds to another nonprofit. 

A refund to the donor is not a legally permitted remedy, but donors have 30 days from the date of the email notification to reallocate funds to an alternative, eligible nonprofit organization. After 30 days, if the donor takes no action, the funds are re-granted to an eligible nonprofit selected by the Give Lively Foundation, Give Lively’s partner charity, at its sole discretion. There are no additional transaction fees for reallocations.

The reallocation tools for unfulfillable donations are located in the Give Lively User Portal, the secure online tool for everyone who has contributed to a nonprofit through Give Lively technology. 

What nonprofits can receive reallocated donations?

Donors can search a database of more than 60,000 eligible nonprofits – all Give Lively members or nonprofits that have previously received donations through Charity Navigator’s Giving Basket, powered by Give Lively. They can also pick from an initial selection of nonprofits curated by Give Lively.

Donors can only select one nonprofit to receive all of currently-identified unfulfillable donations. In the event of future unfulfillable donations, they may choose a different nonprofit at that time to receive those unfulfillable donations, but Give Lively does not currently support multiple beneficiaries for these funds.