When nonprofits apply for Give Lively membership, we view their applications through two primary lenses, both requiring personal handling:

• values alignment
• status eligibility.

This personal handling currently takes approximately 5-7 business days to complete.  We've approved over 9,000 nonprofits, and we look forward to granting platform access to thousands more.

Values alignment

In addition to building and supporting free fundraising technology for nonprofits, Give Lively upholds a longstanding commitment to progressive beliefs that inspire nonprofits to tackle complex issues such as gender and racial equality, reproductive health and LGBTQ+ rights, social and environmental justice, education, domestic violence, immigrant services and more. 

Early on, we chose to make our business vision public and published these values. Importantly, we use these values as guides for the use of our technology and take time to review every nonprofit membership application to confirm alignment. This is accomplished by visiting each nonprofit's website, social media and/or other public information to read about its mission, values, team, target community and more. 

Such due diligence ensures that we know who is part of our membership and, critically, that our member nonprofits use our products, solutions and platform to make the world a better place by elevating marginalized voices, striving to meet the needs of the underserved, imagining a safer future for their communities and advocating for equality. Learn more about our values.

Status eligibility

Just as important as values alignment is confirmation of a nonprofit’s existence, foundation type and good standing.

Existence

As an anti-fraud measure, we confirm that a nonprofit is registered with the appropriate authorities and that the person who submitted a nonprofit’s membership application is connected to the nonprofit. 

To verify the person, it helps for the membership applicant’s email address to be affiliated with the nonprofit. When it isn't – when it’s a personal email address that does not appear on the website – we propose other ways that the person can confirm the connection.

Foundation type

At present, Give Lively membership is open to eligible 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations (public charities and private operating foundations). This expanded base of eligibility (as of April 2024) was made possible by building our own nonprofit data-management tool, based on public data maintained by the IRS, as the source of nonprofit information (not data managed by GuideStar, which is partially sourced from the same IRS databases). 

That being said, not all 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organizations are eligible to use Give Lively fundraising tech. The IRS assigns foundation types and codes to each 501(c)(3) nonprofit and we are able to consider many of them. See the list of eligible foundation types and note that the eligibility verification process sometimes requires additional documentation.

Good standing

When a charitable organization fails to submit timely, complete, required filings and/or fees to a governing authority, it risks losing its good standing and being listed as “delinquent.” 

We currently review a nonprofit’s standing with the Internal Revenue Service and the California Attorney General's Registry of Charities and Fundraisers, and we are unable to consider the applications of any “delinquent” nonprofits until they are back in good standing. Learn more about how California’s nonprofit governance and delinquency laws affect access to the Give Lively platform.