Pledgeling makes a best effort to deliver the donation Gift Card to the intended recipient. If the recipient does not redeem the gift within 90 days, we will automatically direct the donation to the backup organization of your choice.
Why do we have to do this? Under US tax law, donations to nonprofits are almost always nonrefundable – and since your purchase of a gift card is actually a donation to Pledgeling Foundation, that means we can't refund it. Other laws require us to regrant the funds to a charity within a certain period of time.
To get into some detail, your donation is considered "unrestricted," which means we can give you a tax receipt immediately, but it also means you can't change your mind in six months and get your money back – that would be a completely different type of donation ("restricted") with different tax reporting. We can't refund an unrestricted donation.
Since we can't refund your donation, and must regrant it to a charity, that's where your selection of the backup organization comes in. If, after 90 days of repeated emails to the gift card recipient you selected, they still haven't used the card to make a donation, we will regrant the funds to the backup organization.
In very rare cases, if the backup organization has lost its nonprofit status, closed, or our payments to them are returned, we will regrant the funds to another charity with a similar mission.