Why a Forwarded Email Shows “Sent on Behalf Of” or “Via”
If a supporter or teammate tells you an email from your organization
showed up with a header like “[Your Org] on behalf of
yourdomain.org” or “via mailgun.org”, this is not something your
WeGive sender settings caused, and it’s not something you can configure
away.
This is generated by the recipient’s own mail client
Mail clients like Outlook and Gmail add this framing themselves, on
their own side, when they display a message. They do it when their own
authentication check of that specific copy of the message — SPF, DKIM,
and/or DMARC alignment — doesn’t fully match the visible “From” address
for the exact copy they’re rendering. It is the mail client’s way of
telling its user “the system that technically delivered this to you
isn’t the same as the name in the From field,” and it’s applied
independently by whichever mail client the recipient uses.
Your organization’s own From Name and From Email settings (and
your custom sending domain’s verification status) are unrelated to this
— they control what WeGive puts on the message when it’s sent, not how
a specific recipient’s mail client chooses to render it on display.
Confirming your custom domain is correctly verified, and your From Name
and From Email are set the way you want, rules out a WeGive-side sender
configuration problem — it does not guarantee every recipient’s inbox
will display the message without “on behalf of” framing, because that
display decision is made entirely on the receiving side.
This is especially common with forwarded or relayed copies
The “on behalf of” / “via” framing shows up most often on a message that
was forwarded by someone, or relayed through another mail system,
before the person looking at it saw it. Forwarding changes the message
in ways that can break the alignment the recipient’s mail client is
checking for — even though the original message, as WeGive sent it, was
fully authenticated. If you compare a forwarded copy against the
original message as it first arrived at its first recipient, you’ll
often find only the forwarded copy shows the “on behalf of” framing.
What to do
There’s no sender-identity setting on your account that changes this,
because it isn’t a WeGive setting to begin with. If you want to confirm
your own sending is properly configured, check your account’s domain
verification status for your custom sending domain — if that shows
verified, your sending configuration is correct, and the “on behalf of”
framing on a particular copy is coming from the recipient’s own mail
client’s independent rendering choice. If you have questions about a
specific case, reach out to WeGive Support with the message details.
Sources
- WeGive Support knowledge base
Last modified on October 13, 2026