The Trump campaign’s GoFundMe fundraising efforts for the victims of Hurricane Helene has left millions of dollars unaccounted for.
Fueled by their Project 2025–inspired war on the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Trump and his allies fundraised millions in aid last fall for areas of the country ravaged by the Category 4 cyclone. At the time of the disaster, they claimed that individual donations from Americans would make a more sizable impact than FEMA could manage.
“In the wake of this horrible storm, many Americans in this region felt helpless and abandoned, and left behind by their government,” Trump said last October. “And yet in North Carolina’s hour of desperation, the American people answer the call much more so than your federal government.”
Trump, still a presidential candidate, managed to raise $7.7 million—funds that the campaign later said would go to a handful of Christian charities with close ties to Trump himself. Those religious entities included Mtn2Sea Ministries, Water Mission, Samaritan’s Purse, the Clinch Foundation, and Sweetwater Mission.
Unlike FEMA, these groups are not legally required to publicly disclose their expenditures, making it next to impossible for the press, the communities in need, or those who donated to actually track down the dollars. GoFundMe, one of the largest aid distribution platforms in the world, breaks down the statistics of the donations it receives via its annual nonprofit report—but it does not track whether campaigns hit their targets or if they actually delivered on their promises.
That’s left open a major question regarding the intended Helene aid. Exactly where that money has gone or what exactly it paid for since remains a mystery, according to a Grist report.
Grist reached out to all of the organizations to get a better picture of what Trump’s fundraising efforts actually did for communities struggling to recover in the wake of the storm, but only one—Mtn2Sea Ministries—responded in specifics. The Georgia-based charity used its portion of the funds to “buy $25,000 in gift cards for rural communities in Clinch County,” according to Grist.
Millions more in aid donations, however, remain unaccounted for. Samaritan’s Purse disclosed that it had received $5.2 million, but did not elaborate on where the money went.
“South Carolina-based Water Mission would not say how much it received, though it has published updates on its website about its work supporting communities after Helene,” Grist reported. “Sweetwater Mission, located near Atlanta, did not respond at all to the request.”
Curiously, no record existed for the Clinch Foundation, though Grist did locate an entity known as the Clinch Memorial Foundation in Georgia. That group, similarly, did not respond to Grist’s inquiry.
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