CivicPool Terms of Service

Version 1.0, 15 September 2026. Effective date: on publication by CivicPool; the current version is shown in the app and the console.

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern the use of CivicPool, the software platform described below. Members and officers accept the then-current Terms at sign-in, and acceptances are recorded (see docs/legal/README.md). CivicPool's counsel may revise these Terms; a revision is a new version.

1. Parties

• The platform operator. CivicPool is operated by a partnership of African Wood Inc. (United States and Kenya), African Wood Limited (England and Wales) and Dhamana Technologies Limited (Kenya), together "CivicPool", "we", "us" and "our". The partnership develops and operates the CivicPool software and provides it to tenant societies as a hosted service.
• Tenant societies. Independent mutual aid societies that contract with CivicPool to use the platform for their own membership, assessments, and recordkeeping ("Tenant," "Society," "the Club" for the founding tenant). The founding tenant is The $50 Club of Delaware Inc., a Delaware nonstock corporation recognized as tax-exempt under Internal Revenue Code § 501(c)(3), public charity classification 170(b)(1)(A)(vi) (IRS Letter 947, dated 13 February 2025). Each Tenant is a separate legal entity, contracts with CivicPool separately, and is solely responsible for its own governance, by-laws, and compliance.
• Members. Individuals enrolled in a Tenant society under that Society's by-laws and eligibility rules.
• Officers. A Tenant's directors, administrators, village stewards, treasurers, and other role-holders who use the platform's console or companion app on the Society's behalf.

These Terms apply to all four groups, with obligations addressed to each as noted. A Tenant society's own by-laws, membership agreement, and policies govern the substance of membership (eligibility, assessments, benefits); these Terms govern use of the CivicPool platform itself.

2. The service

CivicPool is software-as-a-service for mutual aid societies: member enrollment and identity verification support, kinship and eligibility rules, assessment ("call") creation and collection, disbursement recordkeeping, evidence intake and validation workflow, document generation (Call Sheets, statements, vouchers, acknowledgments, and the other documents described in docs/CivicPool-Platform-Plan-v2.md § 4.5), a member-facing companion app, an officer console, and a platform administrator console. CivicPool is the "operating system for mutual aid societies": it provides the software and the supporting integrations (payments processing access, e-mail, SMS, WhatsApp summaries, remote online notarization, push notifications, and AI-assisted drafting described in § 8 below); it does not itself decide who is a member, what is owed, or who receives a disbursement — those are decisions the Tenant society and its officers make under the Society's own by-laws and this Society's authorized personnel.

3. Accounts and sign-in security

• Accounts are created by phone number or e-mail. Sign-in uses a one-time code sent to that phone number or e-mail, followed by a passkey or device biometrics for later sign-ins, consistent with the platform's security baseline (docs/CivicPool-Platform-Plan-v2.md § 5.4; docs/CivicPool-Companion-App.md).
• Each person is responsible for keeping their phone number, e-mail address, and device secure, for not sharing one-time codes, and for promptly reporting a lost device or suspected unauthorized access so CivicPool or the Society can revoke sessions.
• Officer roles with money-movement authority (Treasurer, independent second officer, and equivalents) are subject to the platform's two-person rule (§ 6 below) and to biometric step-up on approvals, as described in docs/CivicPool-Platform-Plan-v2.md § 5.2 and docs/CivicPool-Companion-App.md.
• CivicPool may suspend an account it reasonably believes is compromised, pending verification with the account holder or the Society.

4. Acceptable use

Users agree not to: provide false information in enrollment, kinship, evidence, or payee verification; attempt to claim a benefit or assessment payout to which they are not entitled under the Society's by-laws; circumvent the two-person disbursement rule or any other control described in docs/legal/Data-Security.md; access another user's data or another Tenant's data without authorization; upload evidence documents that are forged or that belong to someone else without authorization; interfere with the platform's operation (including its integrations with Stripe, e-mail, SMS, WhatsApp, notarization, or push providers); or use the platform for any purpose outside operating a mutual aid society's membership, assessments, and recordkeeping.

5. The Tenant society's responsibilities

Each Tenant society:

• Is the data controller for its members' and relatives' personal data processed through the platform, as described in docs/legal/Privacy-Policy.md § 1. CivicPool acts as the Society's processor for that data.
• Is solely responsible for its own by-laws, governance decisions, eligibility criteria, assessment amounts, and benefit decisions. CivicPool configures the platform to the Society's policies as instructed by the Society's authorized officers but does not set or approve those policies.
• Is responsible for obtaining any consents, adopting any by-law amendments (including the processor clause required by by-law 16(iii) and the amendments described in docs/CivicPool-Platform-Plan-v2.md § 3.5 and the decision register), and giving any notices required by law before member or relative data is entered into the platform.
• Must maintain accurate officer role assignments (including the two-person disbursement rule and the officer-relationship flag described in docs/CivicPool-Platform-Plan-v2.md § 5.2) and promptly remove access for officers who leave their roles.
• Is responsible for its own tax, charitable-registration, and regulatory filings (for the founding tenant: IRS Form 990 series, Delaware annual report, and the items in docs/CivicPool-Platform-Plan-v2.md § 3.5). The platform's compliance calendar and document generation are administrative aids, not legal or tax advice, and do not substitute for the Society's own counsel and accountants.

6. Fees

• Transaction fees, split at the moment of payment. Per founder decisions 5, 15, and 35, the platform's share of each member contribution (a platform operations fee and a vendor platform fee, together not exceeding 5% of the contribution unless a Tenant's own by-laws set a different administrative percentage) is collected as a Stripe "application fee" on the payment itself, alongside the Society's own retained share. The fee percentages, any waiver period (the founding tenant's vendor fee is waived for its first six months of live use), and the split are recorded as versioned policy fields for each Tenant and are visible to members on the payment screen before they pay.
• Monthly expense recoveries. Per founder decision 34, operating expenses attributable to a specific Tenant (its SMS, e-mail, and notarization usage, and its storage) are invoiced to that Tenant the month after they occur; platform-wide expenses are divided evenly across active Tenants. Expenses are invoiced to recover cost, not as platform revenue.
• Add-on fees. Per founder decision 33, a Tenant may elect paid add-ons, such as replacing the platform's default branding with its own logo and colors, billed on the Tenant's monthly invoice.
• Fee schedules, waivers, and add-on elections are set out in each Tenant's own order form or settings and may be updated only as described there or in a signed amendment; these Terms do not themselves set a specific fee amount.

7. Payments; not a bank or money transmitter

CivicPool is not a bank, a money transmitter or a licensed payment institution, and it never holds, custodies or has access to members' or Tenants' funds. Contributions and payments are made in the United States, in U.S. dollars, from U.S. accounts to U.S. accounts: a member's payment is processed by Stripe, a licensed payment services provider, and settles directly to the Tenant society's own U.S. bank account, with the Tenant society as the merchant of record. CivicPool's only interest in a payment is its fee for the platform service described in § 6, which Stripe deducts as an application fee at the time of payment and remits to CivicPool's own account. Because CivicPool never receives money for transmission, it does not engage in money transmission within the meaning of Delaware's Money Transmission Modernization Act (5 Del. C. § 2303). Disbursements to a bereaved member's burial fiduciary or a funeral provider are made by the Tenant society from its own bank account under its own two-person approval; CivicPool records and reconciles those disbursements but does not execute them.

8. No promise of any benefit amount

A Tenant society's assessment ("call") is a request that members make a voluntary, member-to-member contribution under the Society's by-laws; it is not insurance, and CivicPool does not underwrite, insure, or guarantee any amount. The amount a bereaved member, beneficiary, or estate receives is whatever members actually contribute in response to a call, less the disclosed administrative fee — never a promised or fixed sum. This design keeps a Tenant's program outside Delaware's fraternal-benefit-society and mutual-benefit-association licensing regimes (18 Del. C. ch. 62 and ch. 55), which apply to organizations that promise or certify a benefit amount on death. CivicPool's role is to record calls, contributions, and disbursements accurately and to generate the Society's own documents (Call Sheets, statements, vouchers) reflecting what actually occurred — CivicPool is a record-keeper for the Society's mutual aid arrangement, not a party to it and not an insurer.

9. Disclaimers

The platform is provided "as is" and "as available." CivicPool does not guarantee that the platform will be uninterrupted, error-free, or secure against every possible threat, though it maintains the security measures described in docs/legal/Data-Security.md. CivicPool does not guarantee the accuracy of any evidence document, kinship claim, or eligibility determination submitted by a member or reviewed by a Society's officers — validation and approval decisions remain the Society's, made by its own designated people, with AI-assisted drafting used only as described in § 10.

10. AI-assisted drafting

The platform uses Claude, an AI model hosted on Google Cloud's Vertex AI, to draft evidence checklists and similar administrative support from redacted evidence (masked document images and relationship descriptors only — never bank data or clear-text names), as described in docs/CivicPool-Platform-Plan-v2.md § 5.3. Every checklist is a draft; a human officer or sponsor reviews and approves every validation, and AI output is never itself a final decision or an automatic approval.

11. Limitation of liability To the maximum extent permitted by law, CivicPool is not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or punitive damages, or for a Society's own decisions about eligibility, assessment amounts, or disbursements, which remain the Society's under its by-laws.

12. Indemnity

Each Tenant society agrees to indemnify CivicPool against claims arising from the Society's own by-laws, benefit decisions, member disputes, or violation of applicable law by the Society or its officers, except to the extent the claim arises from CivicPool's own breach of these Terms or of the commitments in docs/legal/Data-Security.md.

13. Suspension and termination

CivicPool may suspend a Tenant's, officer's, or member's access for a material violation of these Terms, a security threat to the platform or to other Tenants, or nonpayment of fees due under § 6, after reasonable notice where practicable. A Tenant society may terminate its use of the platform under the terms of its own order form or agreement with CivicPool.

14. Data return and deletion at termination

On termination of a Tenant's agreement with CivicPool, CivicPool will make the Tenant's data available for export in a usable format for a reasonable period, after which CivicPool will delete or de-identify the Tenant's data, except where retention is required by law or by the retention commitments described in docs/legal/Privacy-Policy.md (for example, the seven-year retention of member and audit records described in docs/CivicPool-Platform-Plan-v2.md § 5.1, which a Tenant's own by-laws and recordkeeping obligations may independently require it to keep). Deletion of a specific individual's data on request is handled as described in docs/legal/Privacy-Policy.md.

15. Governing law and venue

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. Any dispute arising from these Terms is subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state or federal courts located in Delaware.

16. Changes to these Terms

CivicPool may update these Terms from time to time. Each version carries the version and date line at the top of this document. Material changes will be presented to members and officers for acceptance at their next sign-in, and the platform records the version each person accepted, as described in docs/legal/README.md. Continued use after an update constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms once acceptance has been recorded.

17. Contact

Questions about these Terms: support@proton.com. The operator is the partnership of African Wood Inc., African Wood Limited and Dhamana Technologies Limited.

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*Adopted under founder decision 38 (15 September 2026); grounded in `docs/CivicPool-Platform-Plan-v2. Counsel may revise it; a revision is a new version.*