App Terms | Virtue

Last updated on the: 28th of October2024.

Please read these Terms and Conditions carefully before using Our Service.

The following terms apply to businesses using Virtue App. For Partner terms please refer to this page.

Interpretation

The words of which the initial letter is capitalized have meanings defined under the following conditions. The following definitions shall have the same meaning regardless of whether they appear in singular or in plural.

Definitions

For the purposes of these Terms and Conditions:

Affiliate means an entity that controls, is controlled by or is under common control with a party, where "control" means ownership of 50% or more of the shares, equity interest or other securities entitled to vote for election of directors or other managing authority.
Country refers to the territory of United Kingdom
Company (referred to as either "the Company", "We", "Us", "Our" or "Virtue" in this Agreement) refers to Pledger Giving Ltd, a UK registered company number 13162064, company address 182 Lea Bridge Road, London, England, E10 7LN.
Device means any device that can access the Service such as a computer, a cell phone or a digital tablet.
Service refers to the Website.
Terms and Conditions (also referred as "Terms" or "Terms of Service") mean these Terms and Conditions that form the entire agreement between You and the Company regarding the use of the Service.
Third-party Social Media Service means any services or content (including data, information, products or services) provided by a third-party that may be displayed, included or made available by the Service.
Website refers to Virtue, accessible from https://app.virtueimpact.com/
You (referred to as either "You", "User" or "Business") means the individual accessing or using the Service, or the company, or other legal entity on behalf of which such individual is accessing or using the Service, as applicable.

Acknowledgment

These are the Terms and Conditions governing the use of this Service and the agreement that operates between You and the Company. These Terms and Conditions set out the rights and obligations of all users regarding the use of the Service.

Your access to and use of the Service is conditioned on Your acceptance of and compliance with these Terms and Conditions. These Terms and Conditions apply to all visitors, users and others who access or use the Service.

By accessing or using the Service You agree to be bound by these Terms and Conditions. If You disagree with any part of these Terms and Conditions then You may not access the Service.

You represent that you are over the age of 18. The Company does not permit those under 18 to use the Service.

Your access to and use of the Service is also conditioned on Your acceptance of and compliance with the Privacy Policy of the Company. Our Privacy Policy describes Our policies and procedures on the collection, use and disclosure of Your personal information when You use the Application or the Website and tells You about Your privacy rights and how the law protects You. Please read Our Privacy Policy carefully before using Our Service.

Links to Other Websites

Our Service may contain links to third-party web sites or services that are not owned or controlled by the Company.

The Company has no control over, and assumes no responsibility for, the content, privacy policies, or practices of any third party web sites or services. You further acknowledge and agree that the Company shall not be responsible or liable, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any such content, goods or services available on or through any such web sites or services.

We strongly advise You to read the terms and conditions and privacy policies of any third-party web sites or services that You visit.

Termination

We may terminate or suspend Your access immediately, without prior notice or liability, for any reason whatsoever, including without limitation if You breach these Terms and Conditions, if we believe Your activities to be unlawful, unethical and/or intended to harm yourself or another person.

Upon termination, Your right to use the Service will cease immediately.

Limitation of Liability

Notwithstanding any damages that You might incur, the entire liability of the Company and any of its suppliers under any provision of this Terms and Your exclusive remedy for all of the foregoing shall be limited to the amount actually paid by You through the Service or no more than 100GBP if You haven't purchased anything through the Service.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall the Company or its suppliers be liable for any special, incidental, indirect, or consequential damages whatsoever (including, but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, loss of data or other information, for business interruption, for personal injury, loss of privacy arising out of or in any way related to the use of or inability to use the Service, third-party software and/or third-party hardware used with the Service, or otherwise in connection with any provision of this Terms), even if the Company or any supplier has been advised of the possibility of such damages and even if the remedy fails of its essential purpose.

"AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" Disclaimer

The Service is provided to You "AS IS" and "AS AVAILABLE" and with all faults and defects without warranty of any kind. To the maximum extent permitted under applicable law, the Company, on its own behalf and on behalf of its Affiliates and its and their respective licensors and service providers, expressly disclaims all warranties, whether express, implied, statutory or otherwise, with respect to the Service, including all implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement, and warranties that may arise out of course of dealing, course of performance, usage or trade practice. Without limitation to the foregoing, the Company provides no warranty or undertaking, and makes no representation of any kind that the Service will meet Your requirements, achieve any intended results, be compatible or work with any other software, applications, systems or services, operate without interruption, meet any performance or reliability standards or be error free or that any errors or defects can or will be corrected.

Without limiting the foregoing, neither the Company nor any of the company's provider makes any representation or warranty of any kind, express or implied: (i) as to the operation or availability of the Service, or the information, content, and materials or products included thereon; (ii) that the Service will be uninterrupted or error-free; (iii) as to the accuracy, reliability, or currency of any information or content provided through the Service; or (iv) that the Service, its servers, the content, or e-mails sent from or on behalf of the Company are free of viruses, scripts, trojan horses, worms, malware, timebombs or other harmful components.

Disputes Resolution

If You have any concern or dispute about the Service, You agree to first try to resolve the dispute informally by contacting the Company.

Governing Law

Should legal action be required, these Terms shall be governed by the laws of England and the parties submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Courts of England and Wales.

Our Purpose

Virtue enables businesses to support meaningful causes in innovative and engaging ways. It is generous businesses like you and our passion for creating an on-line ecosystem where giving is the norm for businesses that inspire Virtue to do what we do.

Virtue enables businesses to discover Causes, donate to their chosen causes from sales and empower their customers to donate.

We follow and expect our Users to follow the Virtue Ethical Framework. At the core of this ethical framework are the ideals of transparency and fairness. Everyone is different but we want to unite the Virtue community behind some simple core principles that promote sustainability, social justice and harmony.

Should We believe that the Service is being used outside of its Purpose and/or that the principles behind the Ethical Framework outlined above are not being honored by You, we reserve the right to revoke Your account immediately and without notice.

Virtue Assets and Causes

Using Virtue Assets

Assets are image and text content as well as features associated with Virtue. While we are committed to giving Virtue Users a reasonable amount of notice in cases where major feature releases and feature changes may occur, we preserve the right to change Virtue assets at any time.

When using the Service, Your use of the Charity and Causes' assets is limited to content available via Virtue widgets. To use any of the Cause's brand assets outside of what's available on Virtue - please contact the Cause/Charity directly.

Working with Causes and Charities on Virtue platform

Virtue platform allows businesses to connect with and donate to registered For-Good Organizations, and manage payments. While Virtue teams perform due diligence on each and every featured Cause on the platform, we can not and will not be held liable for the Causes' actions outside of Virtue platform. As well as our featured causes, businesses can support causes from our ecosystem of 20,000+ UK for-good organisations and 1000s of Canadian Charities.

From August 2022, the majority of the business and customer donations will be processed by PayPal as a part of Virtue's partnership with the PayPal Giving Fund. (PPGF). This means your donations will automatically go to PayPal Giving Fund on the 20th of the month and will then be sent to the Charity. It may take up to 45 days for your Charity to receive funds. In rare cases PayPal Giving Fund may not be able to send your donations to the Charity. See full policies for PayPal Giving Fund UK. These policies apply when supporting PayPal Giving Fund partner Charities via Virtue.

When supporting Canadian charities on Virtue, your donation, less processing fees of [1.60% + $0.30], is to PayPal Giving Fund Canada (PPGF), a charity registered with the Canada Revenue Agency (No. 812867752RR0001), subject to its terms. PPGF typically grants funds to recommended charities within 45 days (90 days if the charity has not enrolled). In the rare event PPGF can’t fund your chosen charity, it will (whenever possible) ask you to recommend another, and grant the funds to a similar charity if you don’t respond. Your donation may typically be used for a tax credit in Canada, and you will be emailed an official donation receipt issued by PPGF for your records. See policies for PPGF Canada

On payout day, you may be prompted to create/connect a PayPal account to ensure automated donations reach your causes. PayPal fee for processing donations is 1.4% +20p on the monthly donation, which will be taken out of your total giving amount. Virtue is incredibly excited to partner with PayPal Giving Fund to enable stores to find the perfect causes from our ecosystem of 20,000+ UK and 1000s of Canadian for-good organizations.

If you are supporting a PayPal Giving Fund Charity you are officially raising donations for the PayPal Giving Fund to benefit your chosen Charity. This means you also agree to share the following information with the shoppers either by applying Virtue widgets or by adding this information to appropriate pages on the website and to any marketing,

Details of Donation when supporting UK Charities

You and each Participating Charity designated by you to benefit

from a Partner’s Sale agree that you determine:

Which Participating Charity will benefit from your Donation (subject to the

power of the PPGF UK to redirect your Donation); and

How much of the proceeds from the Partner’s sale will be donated as your

Donation.

You will make a statement to prospective buyers that you will donate the Donation to PPGF UK for the benefit of the Eligible Charity selected. (This statement fulfils a responsibility you have under the Code of Fundraising Practice promulgated by the UK Institute of Fundraising.)

You also agree to the following:

When you designate an Eligible Charity to receive a Donation that Eligible Charity may, on request, inspect your books, documents and records relating to that Eligible Charity and Donation. You agree to cooperate with the Eligible Charity in agreeing the time, place and circumstances of this inspection. PPGF UK may fulfil this responsibility on your behalf with respect to records about your Donation that it holds. (This clause fulfils a responsibility you have under the Code of Fundraising Practice promulgated by the UK Institute of Fundraising.)

Paying your Donation

You agree to pay a Donation to PPGF UK as soon as reasonably practicable after sale of the listed item and in any case before payment of your Donation becomes overdue. (This clause fulfils a responsibility you have under the Code of Fundraising Practice promulgated by the UK Institute of Fundraising.)

Statement of donation

Charity/Cause specific terms

By fundraising for the selected Causes/Charities You agree to any special terms imposed by the Cause/Charity. Such terms, if present, are outlines in-App during on-boarding.

You also agree to the following:

Books and records

Paying your Donation

Protecting the charity

You agree not to do anything that will bring, or be likely to bring, the Eligible Charity into disrepute. You also agree to refrain from representing that the Charity endorses or approves of your goods, services or activities. You agree to reimburse the Eligible Charity for any cost, loss, or liability it suffers as a result of your breach of this Agreement.

Your chosen Charity may receive donations outside of the PayPal Giving Fund. Please get in touch with Virtue to find out how your chosen Charities receive donations.

Should there be any breaches to the above terms, the service may be discontinued immediately and the store owner notified.

From October 2024, if you are invited to Virtue by a registered Virtue for Partners Charity / NGO Partner and raise business and/or customer donations for that Charity, a variable service provision fee will be charged to the partner on monthly donations. You are not required to pay the fee directly, it will automatically be deducted from your monthly donation amount as agreed by your chosen Virtue for Partners Charity Partner.

Customer donations feature

As of 22nd of September 2021, businesses can enable shoppers to donate to a cause. The donation will be added to the shopper's order as a product.

Customer donation totals will show in a separate column of the merchant's Payouts screen in Virtue, however, all donations, including the customer donations, will be passed onto the cause from You as a business.

Since donations are set up as a product in eCommerce platforms there may be a fee on the donation product. Please contact your eCommerce platform directly to understand product fees.

Fundraising compliance

Through our partnership with the PayPal Giving Fund UK, businesses can support 20,000+ UK causes and Charities on Virtue from product sales, condition to terms outlined in this Agreement.

Some of our cause partners have a direct partnership with Virtue outside of PayPal Giving Fund. Please email support@virtueimpact.com to find out more about how funds reach your chosen cause/s and how we work with them.

If You are fundraising for a non-UK organization and/or selling outside of the UK, Virtue can not ensure compliance in every case. It is the User's responsibility to ensure that the Service meets compliance obligations in the territory fundraised in and a compliant relationship exists between the User and the Charity fundraised for.

Adding your own Causes and Organizations to Virtue

User is responsible for communication with, fundraising permissions, compliance and funds transfer to Causes/Organisations added to the platform by the User and when added by Virtue following the User's guidance. Virtue does not take responsibility for any potential disputes, damages or loss resulting from Users fundraising for Causes/Organizations that they add to Virtue.

Handling refunded orders from eCommerce purchases

Before donations are distributed

Donations are sent to Charities on the 20th of every month. Donations are sent to the chosen Charity directly or to our partner and registered Charity - PayPal Giving Fund (PPGF). PayPal Giving Fund grants donations to the benefiting charities the following month, pursuant to its policies. See policies for PPGF UK and Canada.

When a donation is collected for a sale and the sale is refunded before the 20th of the month, the donation is removed and will not be distributed to the charity.

Partial order refunds

For partial order refunds, the donation will also be partially refunded in this case. The donation refund is calculated based on the campaign giving type. When the giving type is a percentage the refund of the donation is calculated based on the refund of sale percentage.

After donations are distributed

A sale can be refunded or partially refunded after the donations from the sale were already distributed to the chosen Charity or PPGF. In this case Virtue deducts the refunded donation amount from the following month’s donations for the chosen charity.

If the merchant is no longer fundraising for the chosen charity then the balance will be negative for the merchant until they start fundraising for that charity again.

In rare circumstances, you may be able to receive refunds on donations if they were wrongfully collected and sent to the Charities.

Donations made to PayPal Giving Fund UK are a subject to refund policy here.

Donations made to PayPal Giving Fund Canada are a subject to refund policy here.

Distribution of donations and Fees

On the 20th of each month donations are sent to Charities by the merchants. Depending on the charity relationship with Virtue your donations will be distributed using one of the methods below, also see donation flow diagram here.

PayPal and PayPal Giving Fund

For charities that are enrolled with PayPal Giving Fund, donations are made to PayPal Giving Fund via PayPal. PayPal Giving Fund grants donated funds to the selected charity pursuant to its policies. For each charity you have raised funds for, a PayPal fee for processing donations is applied (1.4% + 20p to UK accounts, 1.60% + $0.30 to Canadian accounts). You are required to connect your PayPal account to Virtue before the 20th of the month in order for funds to be automatically sent to PayPal Giving Fund to be further granted to your selected charities.

PayPal Giving Fund Donor Delivery Policies

UK: https://www.paypal.com/uk/webapps/mpp/givingfund/policies#DonationDeliveryPolicy

Canada: https://www.paypal.com/ca/webapps/mpp/givingfund/policies/donation-delivery-policy

Stripe Connect

Organisations that have partnered with Virtue directly will be paid via Stripe Connect. The payment is made via your credit card that is registered with Virtue using Stripe. A Stripe Connect processing fee is taken from the payment. The Stripe Connect fees are as follows:

1.4% + 20p for standard UK cards
1.9% + 20p for premium UK cards
2.5% + 20p for EEA cards
3.5% + 20p for international cards

Manual

For merchants who have established their own partnership with charities, a manual payment of the donations is required within 2 working days after the 20th of the month. You will be notified of the required payment details via email.

You are required to upload evidence of your payment to Virtue for manual verification following the payment of donations.

Donation payment confirmation

Virtue will automatically send a donation payment confirmation once the monthly payment from the merchant is sent to the Charity/Cause.

When supporting PayPal Giving Fund UK and Canada Charities - you will also receive an official receipt that may be used for tax purposes as proof of donation payment.

Registering an account with Virtue

Account Registration and Management

The Business shall fulfil the following obligations:

Create an account through the Virtue Platform.
Provide the necessary contact information and authentication forms required during the registration process, as determined by Virtue at its sole discretion.
Designate an administrative user authorized to control the Business's account access and controls.
Maintain and update accurate information associated with the Business's account.

The Business acknowledges that accounts are non-transferable and cannot be sold, combined, or shared with any other person or entity.

Account Security and Confidentiality

The Business is solely responsible for ensuring the security and confidentiality of the password used to access its account. The Business acknowledges that Virtue bears no responsibility for any incidents arising from the account settings or the integration of widgets or other features into the Business Store. The Business agrees that any individual using the Platform or conducting transactions through the Business's account will be considered authorized by the Business.

Unauthorized Access or Use

The Business agrees to make commercially reasonable efforts to prevent unauthorized access to or use of the Virtue Platform. In the event of any unauthorized access or use, the Business shall promptly notify Virtue. The Business further represents and warrants that both the Business and its users will comply with the terms and conditions of this Agreement.

Reporting Functionality

Virtue will provide the Business with standard reporting functionality accessible through the dashboard and payouts section of the Business's Virtue Platform dashboard.

Restrictions on promotion of giving campaigns

Restrictions on Use of Platform: Except as expressly permitted under this agreement, the Business is not allowed to, directly or indirectly, perform any of the following actions without the prior written consent of Virtue:

Use, reproduce, duplicate, disclose, distribute, modify, encumber, time-share, license, sublicense, rent, lease, assign, or transfer the Platform or any part thereof, or any rights to the Virtue Platform.
Merge the Virtue Platform or any part thereof with any other program or materials.
Copy, adapt, modify, make error corrections to the Virtue Platform, reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, extract, or attempt to derive the source code of the Virtue Platform or any other intellectual property provided by Virtue.
Translate, localize, port, or modify the Virtue Platform or any other intellectual property provided by Virtue.
Create derivative works based on the Virtue Platform.
Remove, modify, obscure, or cancel any copyright, trademark, proprietary, or confidentiality notice on materials provided by Virtue or fail to reproduce such notices on any copies.
Take any action that materially interrupts or interferes with the Virtue Platform, Virtue's business operations, or other customers.
Copy or imitate any part or all of the design, layout, or look and feel of the Virtue Platform in any form or media, or access the Platform to develop a similar or competitive product.
Permit any other user, person, or entity to engage in any of the aforementioned prohibited conduct.

Prohibited Content

The Business agrees not to access, store, distribute, or transmit any material during the use of the Platform that:

Is unlawful, harmful, threatening, defamatory, obscene, infringing, harassing, or racially or ethnically offensive.
Facilitates illegal activity.
Causes damage or injury to any person or property.

The term "Viruses" refers to anything that may prevent, impair, or adversely affect the operation of computer software, hardware, networks, services, or devices.

Disabling or Suspending Virtue Platform Access

Virtue reserves the right, without liability to the Business, to disable or suspend the Business's access to the Platform in the following circumstances:

Any breach or anticipated breach of this agreement.
The Business's or its users' access to or use of the Platform disrupts or poses a security or other risk to Virtue, any other Business, or any third party.
The Business or its users engage in fraudulent or illegal activities while using the Platform.
Virtue's continued provision of products or services to the Business or its users is prohibited by applicable law.

Severability

If any provision of these Terms is held to be unenforceable or invalid, such provision will be changed and interpreted to accomplish the objectives of such provision to the greatest extent possible under applicable law and the remaining provisions will continue in full force and effect.

Waiver

Except as provided herein, the failure to exercise a right or to require performance of an obligation under these Terms shall not affect a party's ability to exercise such right or require such performance at any time thereafter nor shall the waiver of a breach constitute a waiver of any subsequent breach.

Translation Interpretation

These Terms and Conditions may have been translated if We have made them available to You on our Service. You agree that the original English text shall prevail in the case of a dispute.

Changes to These Terms and Conditions

We reserve the right, at Our sole discretion, to modify or replace these Terms at any time. If a revision is material We will make reasonable efforts to provide at least 30 days' notice prior to any new terms taking effect. What constitutes a material change will be determined at Our sole discretion.

By continuing to access or use Our Service after those revisions become effective, You agree to be bound by the revised terms.

If You do not agree to the new terms, in whole or in part, please stop using the website and the Service.

If you have any questions about these Terms and Conditions, You can contact us:

By email: support@virtueimpact.com

By visiting this page on our website: https://www.virtueimpact.com