Acceptable use

This policy forms part of the terms of service, which whoever created your organization accepted when they created it. The version in force is shown above.

Asking people your organization knows for something specific, because you already have a relationship with them: a paragraph for a newsletter, a photo for the yearbook, a signed form, a date somebody can meet.

An initial request carries no unsubscribe link, because you cannot unsubscribe from being asked a question by name. Messages carry no postal address, which is defensible only because they are not commercial mail. And they all leave from one shared sending domain — so an organization sending mail that recipients did not expect damages delivery for every other organization here, none of whom can see it happening.

Reminders are different, because they are the second and third time we have written to somebody unprompted. Each one, and every recipient page, carries a link to stop your organization emailing them. It affects your organization only.

A vote sends two further messages without being asked: a confirmation when somebody casts their ballot, and the result once voting closes. Neither is a reminder and neither can be turned off for one person while they are still on the roll — a voter is entitled to know their vote was recorded and what was decided. Both are covered by a stop the same way everything else is: if somebody has asked your organization to stop emailing them, we do not send these either.

Anything that would be better as a newsletter, an announcement or a campaign should be sent as one, somewhere else.

When a recipient asks not to be emailed by your organization, we stop sending to them on your behalf, and you cannot override it — the send simply refuses and tells you who. It applies to your organization alone; nobody else who uses SendGather is affected.

You can start again if they ask you to, from their page, and doing so is recorded in your activity log. Their links keep working either way, so you can still pass one on by hand — the stop is about what we send for you, not about who you are allowed to talk to.

Do not upload lists you bought, scraped, or collected for another purpose. Every recipient should be someone who would recognise your organization’s name and not be surprised to hear from you.

Do not use SendGather to collect payment card details, passwords, or government identity numbers. A recipient’s link is a credential in an email; it is the right level of security for a photograph and the wrong one for an identity document, whatever else is done to protect the value afterwards.

Do not use the service to harass anybody, to break the law, or to impersonate a person or organization you have no authority to speak for.

Nothing here reads what an organization collects, and nothing should. What we can see is volume, how often recipient lists change, and complaints from the mail provider.

Breaking this policy is a breach of the terms of service, and what follows from a breach is set out there.

If you think we have got something wrong, write to legal@ropelabs.io.