Terms of Use

1. What KindLumen is — and is not

KindLumen is software. We provide tools that let an organization build a donation form, publish it, and see a record of the gifts it receives. That is the entirety of what we supply.

To be explicit about what we are not:

• We are not a payment processor. Payments are processed by Stripe (and, where enabled, other providers) under their own agreements with you.
• We are not the merchant of record. Donations are charged directly on your own connected payment account. You are the merchant.
• We never hold, custody, or control your funds. Money moves from the donor to your account. It does not pass through ours.
• We are not a charity, a fundraiser, or a fiduciary. We do not solicit donations, hold them in trust, or advise you on how to use them.
• We do not provide legal, tax, accounting, or fundraising-compliance advice. Nothing on our site or in the product is such advice.

2. Who these terms apply to

These terms apply both to organizations that use KindLumen to collect donations and to donors who give through a KindLumen form. Some sections apply only to one or the other and say so. Where you are a consumer under the law of your country, nothing in these terms removes rights you cannot agree to give up.

3. Accounts and eligibility

You must provide accurate information, keep your credentials secure, and be authorized to act for the organization you represent. You are responsible for everything done under your account. Tell us promptly at support@kindlumen.com if you believe it has been compromised.

4. Acceptable use

• Do not use the service for unlawful, fraudulent, or deceptive purposes.
• Do not misrepresent your organization, its status, or how donations will be used.
• Do not collect donations you are not legally permitted to solicit.
• Do not interfere with, attack, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to the service.
• Do not embed forms on sites that violate these terms or applicable law.

We may suspend or remove access for any of the above, without notice where the risk requires it.

5. Fees

KindLumen charges organizations nothing. There is no subscription fee, setup fee, monthly fee, or platform fee.

When a donor completes a gift, they are offered one optional choice: to cover transaction costs. Whether they accept changes only who pays the cost of processing — never whether we charge you.

• If the donor declines, they are charged exactly the amount they chose. Your payment provider deducts its processing fee from that amount, and your payout is reduced accordingly. KindLumen receives nothing and no application fee is collected.
• If the donor accepts, they are charged an additional amount calculated so that, after the provider takes its fee, your organization still receives the full gift the donor selected. Of that additional amount, a contribution equal to 0.5% of the donor’s intended gift is collected by KindLumen as a Stripe Connect application fee. The remainder covers processing.

Processing rates vary. The amounts shown to a donor are calculated using standard published card rates and are an estimate. International cards, currency conversion, and non-card payment methods are priced differently by the provider, and in those cases the amount collected may be more or less than the actual processing cost. We do not represent that coverage will exactly match the fee charged on every transaction.

6. Refunds, chargebacks, and disputes

Because donations are charged on your own connected account, you are responsible for refunds, chargebacks, and disputes, and for any associated fees your provider charges. KindLumen does not issue refunds and cannot reverse a charge on your behalf. Refunds are initiated by you, in your provider’s dashboard, subject to their rules.

Payment providers do not always return their processing fee on a refund. Where a donor covered transaction costs, the KindLumen contribution is only returned if the refund is issued in a way that reverses the application fee. We record the amount attributable to a refund in your dashboard, but recording it is not a representation that it has been returned. If a donor asks you about the contribution on a refunded gift, contact us at support@kindlumen.com.

7. Organization responsibilities

You are solely responsible for:

• The content and accuracy of your forms, appeals, and campaign claims.
• Issuing donation receipts and tax acknowledgments, and for any statement about tax-deductibility. Where a donor covered transaction costs, only the gift itself is a contribution to your organization — the coverage is not.
• Registering for charitable solicitation where required, and complying with the fundraising, tax, and consumer laws that apply to you.
• The lawful handling of donor personal data you collect through the service, including responding to donor privacy requests. See our Privacy Policy for how responsibilities are divided.
• Your relationship with your payment provider, including maintaining an account in good standing.

8. Donors

When you give through a KindLumen form, your donation is to the organization, not to KindLumen. We do not control how an organization uses your gift, and we do not verify an organization’s charitable status, claims, or tax-deductibility. Questions about a gift, a receipt, or a refund should go to the organization you gave to.

Covering transaction costs is entirely optional. You can see the exact total before you pay, and you can decline without affecting your donation.

9. Embeds and third-party platforms

When you embed a KindLumen form on another site, you are responsible for that site and for installing the embed correctly. The embed loads from KindLumen and is subject to these terms and our Privacy Policy.

10. Third-party services

The service depends on third parties, including payment providers, hosting, email delivery, and error monitoring. Their acts and omissions are outside our control. We are not responsible for a third party’s outage, delay, error, pricing, account hold, freeze, termination, payout delay, or decision to stop serving you — including any decision by a payment provider about your account.

11. Availability

We do not promise that the service will be available at any particular time or in any particular place. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, or error-free, and we may change, suspend, or discontinue any part of it. We make no uptime commitment and offer no service-level agreement.

12. Intellectual property

KindLumen and its software are owned by us and our licensors. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use the service while your account is active. You retain ownership of your own content.

13. Disclaimer of warranties

To the fullest extent permitted by law, the service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, whether express, implied, or statutory. We specifically disclaim the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title, and non-infringement, and any warranty arising from course of dealing or usage of trade.

We do not warrant that the service will meet your requirements, that it will increase or sustain donations, or that results obtained from it will be accurate or reliable.

14. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, and except as stated in the final paragraph of this section, neither party will be liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, reliance, exemplary, or punitive damages, or for loss of profits, revenue, savings, goodwill, business interruption, or loss or inaccuracy of data — whether or not the possibility of such damages was known.

For clarity, and without limiting the above, KindLumen is not liable to an organization for:

• Donations not received, not completed, or not processed, for any reason;
• Donor attrition, reduced donor retention, or the loss of donor relationships;
• Reduced fundraising results, missed campaign goals, or lost fundraising opportunity;
• Amounts a donor declined to give, or declined to cover in transaction costs;
• Any act or omission of a payment provider, including outages, holds, freezes, delayed or withheld payouts, account termination, chargebacks, or fee changes;
• Downtime, interruption, latency, or unavailability of the service or of any site it is embedded on;
• Loss or corruption of data, or the cost of recovering it;
• Errors in an organization’s own form configuration, appeal content, or receipting;
• Tax consequences to an organization or a donor, including any determination about deductibility of a gift.

Our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to these terms or the service will not exceed the greater of (a) one hundred US dollars (US$100) or (b) the total amount you paid KindLumen in the twelve months before the event giving rise to the claim. Because KindLumen does not charge organizations, this will ordinarily be US$100.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. That includes liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, for willful misconduct or gross negligence, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, and for any right you have under consumer protection or data protection law that cannot be waived by agreement. If a court finds any limitation in this section unenforceable, it applies to the maximum extent that is enforceable.

15. Indemnification

If you are an organization, you will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless KindLumen and its officers, employees, and agents against any third-party claim, demand, loss, liability, or expense (including reasonable legal fees) arising from: your use of the service; your fundraising activity, appeals, and representations to donors; your receipting and tax statements; your handling of donor data; your breach of these terms or of applicable law; or a dispute between you and a donor. The damages exclusions and the liability cap in section 14 do not limit your obligations under this section.

16. Termination

You may stop using the service at any time. We may suspend or terminate access for a breach of these terms, or where necessary to protect the service, its users, or a third party. On termination your right to use the service ends; sections that by their nature should survive — including fees owed, disclaimers, limitation of liability, and indemnification — survive.

17. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, United States, without regard to its conflict of laws rules, and the state and federal courts located in Delaware have exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer resident in the European Union or the United Kingdom, this does not deprive you of the protection of mandatory provisions of the law of your country of residence, and you may bring proceedings in your local courts.

18. Changes

We may update these terms. Material changes will be posted here with an updated date, and continued use after that date constitutes acceptance.

19. Contact

Questions about these terms? Email support@kindlumen.com.