Terms

About these Terms

These Terms are an agreement between you and Vanette’s Place Global LLC, 2810 N Church St PMB 607081, Wilmington, Delaware 19802-4447, United States (“SpreadWord”, “we”, “us”). They apply to spreadword.org and to the emails we send.

By creating an account, giving to a creator or setting up a page, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use SpreadWord.

Our Privacy Policy explains what personal information we collect and how we use it.

Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms when SpreadWord changes or the law requires it. The date at the top shows when they last changed.

If a change affects you in a significant way, we will tell you before it takes effect, by email or on the site.

If you keep using SpreadWord after a change takes effect, the new Terms apply. If you do not accept them, you can stop using SpreadWord and delete your account.

Who can use SpreadWord

• Sponsors must be able to make a card payment, and must be 18 or older, or the age of majority where they live.
• Creators must be 18 or older and eligible for a Stripe Connect Express account in their country. Stripe collects their identity, bank and tax details. SpreadWord never does.

SpreadWord is not for children under 13. Children under 13 must not use it or give us any personal information.

You must not use SpreadWord where the law that applies to you forbids it.

Your account

Sign-in is provided by Clerk. You can sign in with an email and password, with a code sent to your email, or with Google.

The first time you give, we create a sponsor account from the email you enter at checkout. It has no password at first. You can sign in with a code sent to that email.

One login can be both a sponsor and a creator.

Keep your sign-in details to yourself, and keep your email address up to date so receipts and notices reach you. You are responsible for what is done through your account. If you think someone else is using it, tell us straight away.

Please give accurate information, and keep it accurate.

How SpreadWord works

SpreadWord is a page and giving platform for Christian creators. Creators get a public page for their links and mission, a dashboard, and payouts through Stripe. Sponsors can give one-time or monthly gifts to one or more creators.

All of a sponsor’s monthly gifts, to every creator they support, are combined into one bill on the 1st of each month. The details are under “Monthly gifts and billing” below.

Payments are processed by Stripe. Your card details go straight to Stripe. SpreadWord never sees or stores them.

SpreadWord is the merchant of record for every gift. That means SpreadWord takes the payment, then pays each creator their share through Stripe Connect.

SpreadWord does not host communities or creators’ content outside SpreadWord. A community link leads to a group the creator runs on another service.

Gifts

A gift is support for a creator’s work. It is not a purchase of goods, services or content.

Gifts are not tax-deductible. The receipts we email are a record of your payment, not a tax receipt.

Some creators share a link to a group they run with people who give to them. That is the creator’s choice. It is not something a gift buys, and SpreadWord does not guarantee it.

Creators decide how to use the gifts they receive. SpreadWord does not control how they use them, and cannot promise any result from a gift.

Fees

Sponsors pay exactly the amount they choose. There are no added fees at checkout.

SpreadWord keeps 10% of each gift, rounded up to the cent. For example, on a $25 gift SpreadWord keeps $2.50.

Stripe’s card processing fee comes out of the creator’s share, not the sponsor’s.

Creators also bear Stripe’s Connect fees:

• a monthly active-account fee of $2;
• a fee on each payout of 0.25% + 25¢;
• Stripe’s cross-border or currency fees, if the creator’s Stripe account is outside the US.

SpreadWord recovers these fees from the creator’s balance before each monthly payout. If the available balance is less than the fees, there is no payout that month, and the balance carries over to the next month.

Monthly gifts and billing

When you start a monthly gift, the first month is charged at checkout.

After that, all your monthly gifts are combined into one bill on the 1st of each month.

By starting a monthly gift, you authorise SpreadWord to charge your card through Stripe each month for that gift until it ends.

If you change an amount, the new amount applies from your next bill.

You can cancel your monthly gift to any creator at any time. Cancelling stops that creator’s part of your next bill. The month you have already paid is not refunded, and your support shows “Ends” with the date until then.

A monthly gift also ends if your payments keep failing, if the creator deletes their account, or if you delete yours.

Failed payments

If a payment fails, Stripe retries it for about two weeks.

If it keeps failing, your monthly support ends and we email you to let you know. You can give again from the creator’s page at any time.

Refunds and disputes

There are no self-serve refunds. If you think a charge is wrong, ask us through spreadword.org/help. Refunds are at SpreadWord’s discretion, and we issue them through Stripe.

When we refund a gift:

• the sponsor gets the full gift back;
• the creator’s share is reversed;
• SpreadWord returns its 10%;
• Stripe’s card fee, where Stripe does not return it, is borne by the creator.

If a sponsor disputes a card payment with their bank, the creator’s share is reversed and Stripe’s dispute fee is borne by the creator. If you have a problem with a charge, please contact us first. We would rather put it right with you directly.

Nothing in this section limits any refund rights you have under the law where you live.

Payouts to creators

We pay creators monthly, on the 1st, to their bank through Stripe, after the fees above.

To receive payouts you need a Stripe Connect Express account. Stripe’s Connected Account Agreement applies to that account, alongside these Terms.

If your payouts stop working, for example because Stripe needs more details from you, your monthly gifts are paused. They resume when payouts work again.

When a payout reaches your bank account depends on Stripe and your bank.

You are responsible for any taxes on the money you receive.

Community links

Creators may add a link to a group they run on WhatsApp, Discord, Telegram or Facebook.

The link is shown only to people who have given to that creator, one-time or monthly. They keep it after a monthly gift ends.

SpreadWord does not host, moderate or guarantee these groups. The group belongs to the creator, and that service’s own terms apply to it. Who joins, stays or is removed is up to the creator and that service.

Creators: only share a link to a group you run. If you want to stop people joining with an old link, change the invite link on that service.

Monthly updates and emails

Creators can publish an update, which is emailed to their sponsors. The creator is responsible for what it says.

Sponsors can turn off update emails in Account, or unsubscribe through the link in each email. Receipt emails can also be turned off in Account.

Some emails are part of running your account and cannot be turned off, such as sign-in codes and notices that a payment failed or that a monthly gift has ended.

Your page and your content

Creators are responsible for everything on their page: name, photo, mission, links, verse, story, community link and updates.

Sponsors are responsible for the notes they write. A note goes only to the creator it is written to, and is never public.

Only post what you own or have permission to use, and be honest about who you are and what gifts support.

You keep ownership of your content. You give SpreadWord a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to host, store, copy, display and share your page content, and to adapt its format (for example, resizing a photo), so we can run and promote SpreadWord. For example, we may show your page in the directory or in our marketing.

This licence ends when you remove the content or delete your account.

Acceptable use

Do not post, send or link to:

• anything illegal;
• hate: content that attacks or demeans people for who they are;
• harassment, threats or bullying;
• sexual content;
• violence, or content that encourages it;
• scams or fraud;
• impersonation of another person, church or organisation;
• misleading fundraising, such as asking for gifts for a cause that does not exist or misstating how gifts are used;
• anything that infringes someone else’s rights, such as their copyright, trademark or privacy.

This applies to everything on SpreadWord: pages, links, updates, community links and notes.

Do not misuse SpreadWord. That means no stolen or test cards, no spam, and no attempts to break, overload or get around the site’s security.

To report a page, contact us through spreadword.org/help.

When we remove content or close accounts

SpreadWord may remove content, take a page offline or close an account that breaks these Terms.

Where we reasonably can, we will tell you what we did and why.

If you think we got it wrong, contact us through spreadword.org/help.

Deleting your account

You can delete your account at any time in Account.

• If you are a sponsor: all your monthly support ends now, with no further bills, and you are signed out.
• If you are a creator: your page goes offline. Your sponsors’ gifts to you end at their next bill, and we email them to let them know. Money you have already earned still reaches you through Stripe.

If you are both, both happen.

We keep payment and tax records for as long as the law requires. Our Privacy Policy explains what we keep and for how long.

Other services

SpreadWord relies on other companies, such as Stripe for payments and payouts and Clerk for sign-in. Their own terms apply when you use their services, for example Google’s terms when you sign in with Google.

Creator pages link to other websites and groups. We do not control them and are not responsible for them.

Disclaimers

We work hard to keep SpreadWord running well, but we provide it “as is” and “as available”. We do not promise that it will always be available, error-free or secure.

SpreadWord does not endorse any creator, church, denomination or teaching. Stripe checks a creator’s identity before paying them, but we do not check every claim on a page.

SpreadWord does not promise creators any amount of gifts or income.

Some places do not allow some of these disclaimers, so they may not all apply to you.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, SpreadWord and its owners, officers, employees and agents are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, data or goodwill, arising from your use of SpreadWord.

We are not responsible for what creators, sponsors or other services do, including how a creator uses gifts and what happens in a community group.

To the fullest extent the law allows, our total liability to you for any claim about SpreadWord is limited to the greater of $100 or the fees SpreadWord kept from gifts you gave or received in the 12 months before the claim.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that the law does not allow us to limit, such as liability for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence.

Indemnity

If someone makes a claim against SpreadWord because of your content, your community group, your breach of these Terms, or your breaking the law or someone else’s rights, you agree to defend SpreadWord and to cover the resulting losses and reasonable costs, including legal fees, to the extent the law allows.

Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, United States, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules.

If you live somewhere whose consumer protection laws cannot be set aside by agreement, you keep those protections.

If you have a problem with SpreadWord, please contact us first. Most problems can be solved that way.

General

These Terms and our Privacy Policy are the whole agreement between you and SpreadWord about the service.

If any part of these Terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies.

If we do not enforce a part of these Terms straight away, we can still enforce it later.

Contact

Questions about these Terms? Use the contact form at spreadword.org/help, or email support@asaplinks.com.