How do I choose a charity to fundraise for?

How to ensure that you’re picking the correct charity so the funds you raise go to the cause you intended

Mightycause has worked hard to provide a user-friendly way for everyday philanthropists to rally support from their communities by fundraising for the causes that are important to them. One of the key parts of creating a charitable fundraiser on Mightycause is, of course, choosing the charity. If you’re looking to start a charitable fundraiser on Mightycause, you probably already have the charity in mind, but it’s important to connect your fundraiser to the correct charity.

If the nonprofit you’d like to raise money for has sent you a link to their Mightycause page, you can simply click “Fundraise” on their page next to the Donate button to create a fundraiser linked to their nonprofit. This is the easiest way to create a charitable fundraiser on Mightycause.

You can also choose your charity through our fundraiser wizard. Here’s a step-to-step guide to choosing your charity using our wizard.

Two Steps to Verify That You’re Choosing the Correct Charity

You can search for charities by name on Mightycause, but because Mightycause lists the organization’s legal name (which can be different than how you know them), you’ll want to look at two different factors to verify that you’ve chosen the correct charity for your fundraiser:

Location: This is the easiest way to check that you’re picking the charity you intended. All Mightycause pages for charitable organizations and the list of charities in our fundraiser set up process have their locations listed. Make sure that the charity you choose for your fundraiser is in the correct location. Pay attention to the city and state! There are 41 towns named Springfield in the United States — if you’re trying to raise money for the humane society in Springfield, Illinois, be careful not to choose the humane society in Springfield, Massachusetts. You’d be surprised how many nonprofit organizations share similar names!

EIN: An EIN is a 9-digit number that the Internal Revenue Service uses to identify organizations and companies in their system. For nonprofit organizations, their tax-exempt status is tied to their EIN. (If you’ve ever deducted a charitable donation from your income taxes, you probably remember needing this number.)

A nonprofit’s EIN is public information, so charities will often list their EINs on their websites. If you’re not able to find it there, you can always call the nonprofit or email them to ask — they will know what you’re asking for and be happy to share that information with you.

Why It’s so Important to Get It Right

Charitable donations on Mightycause pass through the Mightycause Foundation. The Mightycause Foundation is a donor-advised fund that processes each donation and then batches together and re-grants donations based on how the donor “advises” us. Donors advise the Mightycause Foundation about where they want their donation to go by donating to a page owned by an charity on Mightycause, and we know where to send the funds because each charitable organization has its own unique Employer Identification Number (EIN) that their page is linked to on Mightycause.

The Mightycause Foundation is obligated to send funds donated to a charitable organization on Mightycause as the donor advises. Mightycause and the Mightycause Foundation cannot move or alter donations after they have been made. Charitable donations on Mightycause are considered complete and final, per our Terms of Use. So it’s important that when you create your charitable fundraiser, you make every effort to ensure that you choose the correct charity, because we can’t un-do it if you accidentally choose a different charity with a similar name.

What if I can’t find the charity I’m looking for on Mightycause?

There are a few reasons why you may not be able to find the charity you want to raise funds for on Mightycause.

Mightycause largely hosts 501(c)(3) charitable organizations, so the charity you’re looking for may have a different kind of tax-exempt status. We regularly import a list of registered 501(c)(3) organizations from the IRS — we can host fundraisers for schools, churches, and government entities as well, but if they have not specifically requested to have a Mightycause page, they may not exist in our database. We can add them, though! We just need someone from the organization to create a Mightycause account and fill out a claim form so we can set up a page for them.

Finding local chapters of larger organizations can be another reason you have trouble finding the correct charity. Your local chapter may be nested under the national nonprofit’s EIN, and in that case, we would not have created a page for them unless they specifically requested that we add them to our platform. (This is because each charity must have a unique EIN — if they don’t have their own EIN, we can still add them, but we won’t automatically import their information from the IRS.)

Because we cannot easily redirect funds, it’s better to be safe than sorry, so if you’re having trouble finding the correct charity on Mightycause, contact us at support@mightycause.com for assistance.