2025 Nonprofit Watch List

As Giving Tuesday and the broader Season of Giving approach, it’s just as important to call out harmful nonprofits as it is to uplift the good ones. Slick marketing, glossy campaigns, and carefully crafted narratives can hide a troubling reality: many organizations fail to deliver on their promises—or worse, exploit the very people they claim to serve.

Since we are dedicated to making sure victims of mass casualties are not exploited by nonprofits, we have decided to publish a Nonprofit Watch List each year—to cut through the noise, expose bad actors, and help donors place their money where it will make a real, lasting impact.

VictimsFirst already maintains an up-to-date list on our website of the nonprofits and organizations we endorse, and we will continue to do so when we can attest to their ethics after our first-hand experience with them.

This Watch List provides additional guidance for potential donors by highlighting organizations we do not support.

We advise against donating to the following nonprofit organizations due to documented patterns of harm and/or misconduct toward victims of mass violence. These behaviors may include:

• Re-victimizing families of the deceased and survivors

• Financial mismanagement

• Diverting funds away from victims to other nonprofits

• Deliberately misleading public statements

• Dissemination of misinformation

• Excessive executive compensation

• Repeated and strategic shifts in mission statements

• Ongoing fiscal instability

• Conflicts of interest and ethical concerns

• Questionable practices, insufficient knowledge, or lack of expertise

• Lying to the public.

• In some cases, outright fraud.

The list that follows is intended to help donors make informed decisions, ensuring that contributions go to organizations that truly serve mass violence victims and survivors, rather than exploit or harm our growing, unfortunate family of victims and survivors.

2025 Watchlist: Nonprofits to Avoid

1. Uvalde Foundation for Kids

2. Colorado Healing Fund

3. United Way

4. National Center for Victims of Crime

5. Equality Florida

6. Contigo Fund 

7. Highland Park Community Foundation

8. Waukesha County Community Foundation

9. Resiliency and Justice Center in Las Vegas, NV (formerly named the Las Vegas Resiliency Center)

Past nonprofit organizations and funds that were on our watchlist that no longer exist:

• onePULSE Foundation

• Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund

• Oklahoma Disaster Relief Fund