California Assembly Bill 488: Impact to YourCause Communities

At YourCause, we care about your success and value your partnership. Use this resource page to navigate California Assembly Bill 488 and its associated regulations, and to learn about updates we’ve made in our YourCause solutions.

The state of California, located in the United States of America (USA), recently enacted legislation, California Assembly Bill 488 (CA AB 488), which regulates online charitable fundraising in the state. Specifically, the law prohibits charitable fundraising platforms, like Blackbaud, from assisting organizations not in “good standing” in California with making charitable solicitations to and receiving funds from California residents.

All charitable organizations in the United States who operate or solicit donations in California (even if those charities are organized elsewhere) must maintain “good standing” in California.

For general information related to California Assembly Bill 488, including a detailed overview and suggested actions for impacted charitable organizations, see California Assembly Bill 488: Impact to Charitable Organizations.

We will restrict donations from being made or disbursed if a California resident attempts to donate to an organization that appears on one or more California revocation lists.

If a donation is ineligible at the time of disbursement due to California restrictions, we will place the funds on hold. The donor will be able to redirect the funds to a new organization.

CSRconnect and NPOconnect are impacted by California Assembly Bill 488 and its associated regulations. See below for additional details related to the product changes made in support of CA AB 488.

GrantsConnect is not impacted by California Assembly Bill 488 as that product does not enable solicitations to nor donations from California residents.

The law regulates online charitable fundraising platforms (like YourCause) and charities in several ways. In addition to imposing registration and reporting requirements on these platforms, the law mandates certain requirements of how these platforms operate. These requirements involve, among others, restricting donations to certain ineligible charities, donor disclosures, transfer of funds, and information shared with recipient charities and donors.

From a donor experience, we’ve added the following enhancements:

• We can identify donors as California residents more accurately and prevent them from donating to impacted charitable organizations.

• California residents can easily adjust any affected ongoing payroll donations.

• Within charity search pages, a “state restriction” flag appears for restricted organizations to indicate they are not in “good standing” with the state of California.

• At time of disbursement, we will again validate the user residence and confirm the organization is not on the state restriction lists.

• New email notifications are sent when we disburse funds and when organizations receive them. See the In-transit/Deposited Donation Notification email in the Email Library for details.

• We’ve added various required disclosures throughout the site to help ensure a transparent user experience.

Only charitable fundraising platforms are regulated directly by this bill. YourCause is making the necessary updates to CSRconnect and NPOconnect to meet the requirements since they are recognized as charitable fundraising platforms. Your employee donors will be impacted if they are California residents. If you run your own proprietary charitable fundraising platform, please consult with your legal team.

Nonprofits will need to take action if they are affected by these changes. To view suggested actions for impacted charitable organizations, see California Assembly Bill 488: Impact to Charitable Organizations.

Organizations can address their updated status in one of two ways:

• The California Attorney General's office and the California Franchise Tax Board publish monthly updates to their respective lists of revoked organizations. NPOconnect processes each updated list within a day of publishing. After an organization resolves the issue with the correct agency, that agency will remove the organization from their list. NPOconnect removes the revocation after processing the updated list.

• An organization that wants to regain "good standing" eligibility more quickly can create a support ticket with the Customer Advocacy team and provide proof of "good standing" with the relevant state agencies (Attorney General of California and/or California Franchise Tax Board).

  Proof of "good standing" is a recently dated letter from the agency, on agency letterhead, which reflects the organization's status. The Compliance team then reviews the support ticket. If approved, the Compliance team overrides the organization's state revocation status in NPOconnect. Customer Advocacy then follows up with the organization on the outcome.

To better understand the impact to nonprofits, see California Assembly Bill 488: Impact to Charitable Organizations. Throughout the remainder of the year, watch for opportunities to learn more through admin workshops, Community posts, release notes, and discussions with your Customer Success Manager.