Terms and Conditions for Campaigns

NYC Votes Contribute Terms and Conditions for Campaigns

NYC VOTES CONTRIBUTE (“CONTRIBUTE”) IS AN ONLINE CREDIT AND DEBIT CARD CONTRIBUTIONS PLATFORM LOCATED AT WWW.NYCVOTES.ORG (“THE WEBSITE”) CREATED AND MAINTAINED BY THE NEW YORK CITY CAMPAIGN FINANCE BOARD (“CFB”) AS PART OF ITS NYC VOTES INITIATIVE. THANK YOU FOR VISITING THE WEBSITE. THE FOLLOWING CAMPAIGN TERMS AND CONDITIONS GOVERN THE USE OF THE WEBSITE AS WELL AS THE SERVICES ACCESSED FROM IT. PLEASE READ THESE TERMS AND CONDITIONS CAREFULLY.

General Information

Contribute is designed to enable campaign committees for candidates running for certain New York City offices, who have registered with the CFB by filing a Filer Registration and/or a Certification, to solicit and accept campaign contributions by credit and debit card online. It is anticipated that the Website will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, except for scheduled maintenance periods. However, unexpected outages that prevent users from using the Website may occur, and the CFB does not guarantee its availability. For comments or suggestions regarding these Terms and Conditions or any information contained on the Website, please contact us at contribute@nyccfb.info.

These Terms and Conditions and your Filer Registration or Certification, in which you have agreed to follow the New York City Campaign Finance Act (“Act”) and the CFB Rules (“Rules”), govern your use of the Website. By using the Website you are consenting to these Terms and Conditions. If you access the Website from any non-U.S. territory, please note you do so at your own risk and are responsible for compliance with any local laws. "Robots," "spiders," malware, malicious codes or programs, bots, scraping, trolling, automated programs, and any uses of the Website that adversely affect the Website, users of the Website, or Website or server bandwidth are prohibited from using the Website.

Definitions

In these Terms and Conditions, the word “Account” refers to the campaign account into which contributions raised on the Website will be deposited. "Agreement" refers to the terms and conditions stated herein, or as amended by us from time to time. "Business Days" means Monday through Friday, except for City of New York holidays. The word “Campaign” refers to: a) a candidate for nomination for election or election to any office covered by the NYC Campaign Finance Act (the “Act”) who has filed a Certification and/or a Filer Registration with the CFB, and who uses, or whose agents use the Website to raise contributions; b) any authorized committee of such candidate, as defined in the Act; c) the treasurer of any such authorized committee; and d) any agent of such candidate, authorized committee or treasurer. The term “Financial Institution” refers to the bank that holds or issues your Account. The word “Stripe” means Stripe, the payment processor associated with the Website. “Terms and Conditions" refers to the terms and conditions stated herein, or as amended by us from time to time. The words "you" and "your" refer to the Campaign user of the Website, whether such user is an authorized or unauthorized agent of a Campaign. The words "we," "our" and "us" refer to the CFB.

DISCLAIMERS

We disclaim, for our vendors and ourselves all warranties, either express or implied, including, but not limited to, any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose with respect to the quality, content, accuracy, completeness, currency, freedom from interruption, freedom from computer virus, and freedom from errors or omissions. In no event shall we or any of our vendors be liable for (a) errors caused by you, including but not limited to your supplying incorrect or incomplete information or your failure to protect your data or log in information while using the Website or (b) to the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, any and all damages, including indirect, special, incidental or consequential damages including, but not limited to, damages for lost profits, disclosure of confidential information or loss of privacy arising out of or in any way related to your use of, or inability to use the Website. We encourage all users of the Website to be vigilant and to carefully protect their private and confidential data and log in information.

Scheduled maintenance periods, unexpected service outages, and periods of unavailability may occur. In no event, will we or our vendors be liable to you for your inability to use the Website during such periods or outages.

In addition, in no event will we or any of our vendors be liable for any act or omission of any third party, including but not limited to your Financial Institution, any contribution system, or any provider of telecommunications services, Internet access or computer equipment or software, or for any force majeure event beyond our control including, but not limited to, fire, flood or other natural disaster, war, riot, strike, act of civil or military authority, equipment failure, computer virus, or failure or interruption of electrical, telecommunications or other utility services. We are not liable for delays caused by a mail or email service or any contribution or clearinghouse system.

Using this system does not guarantee or improve the chances of a Campaign receiving public funds through the Campaign Finance Program. We are not responsible for any Website, vendor or third party errors that might make a particular contribution unmatchable pursuant to the Campaign Finance Program.

Privacy of Information

By agreeing to this Agreement, you acknowledge that we will receive certain Campaign information when you use the Website, and that you are voluntarily providing this information to us. We will not rent or sell to any third party any information that identifies the Campaign or contributions you receive through the Website, other than to process such contributions or comply with applicable law, rules, or regulations, including the requirement that we post a campaign’s contributors’ names, employers, and occupations, and the amount of their contributions on the CFB website. If you are concerned about the accuracy of any information displayed on the CFB website, you must contact Candidate Services at contribute@nyccfb.info. Please review the Privacy Policy.

Access to Other Information

The Website maintains records (including information displayed through the Website as part of the contribution record) containing personal information about contributors, or information that can be identified or associated with a particular contributor, for the purposes of providing public disclosure, as part of the CFB’s routine business as an agency of the City of New York, in furtherance of its mission and duties and/or obligations to citizens of the City of New York. Examples of this information include the name of the Campaign receiving the contribution, a contributor’s address, employer, or occupation, and the amount of the contributor’s contribution. To the extent these records contain information that is not considered confidential, such information may be disclosed to the public, posted on the CFB website, or made available on the Website as part of the contribution information. If you are concerned about the accuracy of any information displayed on the CFB website, you must contact Candidate Services at contribute@nyccfb.info.

The Website does not store credit card information. Credit card transaction information may be stored by the payment processor, Stripe.

Security

To process contributions securely, we use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL), a security protocol that provides data encryption, server authentication, and message integrity for connections to the Internet, to ensure that account numbers and personal data you provide by using the Website are not transmitted over the Internet unencrypted, and cannot be viewed by unauthorized individuals.

Using the Website

The Website is an Internet-based service that allows a Campaign to collect contributions via the Internet from contributors using their credit or debit cards. To use the Website, you must have an account with Stripe. For questions about Stripe, you may contact Stripe at https://support.stripe.com/. In activating Contribute you instruct Stripe to process these contributions and to credit your Account, based on the Campaign’s agreement with Stripe and the contributor’s contribution instructions provided on the Website, subject to this Agreement.

If the Campaign chooses not to accept this Agreement, the Campaign will not be able to collect contributions through the Website.

In order to use the Website, you must provide all requested information. When using the Website, the Campaign is responsible for complying with the Campaign Finance Act and the CFB Rules. Compliance is the Campaign’s responsibility. In no way does the use of the Website relieve the Campaign of responsibility for any errors, misrepresentation, or fraud related to your use of the Website. The Campaign is responsible for all Website activity using the Campaign’s log in information.

The Campaign agrees not to modify reports downloaded from the Website, other than to provide additional information specifically required to complete your disclosure obligations with the CFB. If you dispute a report from the Website or how contributions are reported by the Website, the Campaign must write a detailed explanation of how and why the report or the contributions reported are inaccurate and submit it with the report to the CFB. If you dispute anything related to how contributions are processed from your contributors to your Account, you must contact Stripe pursuant to the terms of your agreement with Stripe.

In Case of Errors or Questions about Contributions to Your Campaign

If you dispute anything related to how contributions to your Campaign were processed, or if there has been unauthorized use of your account, you must contact Stripe immediately pursuant to the terms of your agreement with Stripe.

If you become aware of any unauthorized use of your password or of your account, you also agree to notify the CFB immediately by emailing contribute@nyccfb.info.

Limits on Use

Your use of the Website may be limited by your agreements with your Financial Institution and/or Stripe, your relationship with the CFB, and by applicable law. The CFB is not responsible for the Website not completing a transaction due to any such limit on your Account, or the terms of the Campaign’s agreement with Stripe, and it is not responsible if your Financial Institution fails to honor any credit to your Account.

Communications/Verifications

Communications to us via the Website shall in no way be deemed to constitute legal or official notice to the CFB or the City of New York, its agencies, officers, employees, representatives or agents with respect to any existing, pending or future claim or cause of action against the CFB or the City of New York or any of its agencies, officers, employees, representatives or agents where notice is required by federal, state, or local law. Communications to the CFB or the City of New York via the Website shall not be deemed to constitute legal or official notice for any other purpose.

We ask all Website users to use appropriate names and language in the name spaces, address spaces and other spaces (if any) provided on the Website.

Campaigns are prohibited from using false email addresses.

Governing Law

This agreement shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the City and State of New York (notwithstanding New York choice of law or conflict of law principles), and the laws of the United States, where applicable.

Jurisdiction

You agree that any and all claims asserted by or against the CFB or the City of New York arising under or related to this Agreement or your use of the Website (except for claims by the CFB concerning violations of the Campaign Finance Act or CFB Rules, including calculations of public funds to be paid or repaid, which shall solely be heard and determined as set forth in the Campaign Finance Act and CFB Rules) shall solely be heard and determined either in the courts of the United States located in the City of New York or in the courts of the State of New York located in the City and County of New York. You further agree that any cause of action arising out of this Agreement or your use of the Website shall be deemed to have arisen from a transaction of business in the State of New York.

Amendments

We may amend these Terms and Conditions from time to time. In such event, we will post the amended Terms and Conditions on the Website and you will be able to read them prior to agreeing to them.

Liability

Should the Campaign choose to terminate or discontinue its use of the Website, it shall nonetheless remain responsible for recording and accounting for all contributions and refunds processed on the Website pursuant to the Act and Rules.

Feedback

We welcome your comments regarding the Website. Feedback can be directed to us by sending an email to contribute@nyccfb.info.

Miscellaneous

This Agreement constitutes the full agreement between you and the CFB related to the use of the Website. If any provision of this Agreement is held invalid or unenforceable, all other provisions will remain in full force and effect. The CFB, and any vendors or third party contractors partnered with the CFB to provide the Website, may choose not to exercise or to delay enforcement of any of our rights under this Agreement without losing them.