By business type

Terms & Conditions Generator for nonprofits

Written for donors, beneficiaries, volunteers and the fundraising rules charities are held to.

Generate your terms and conditions Read the terms and conditions guide

Charity terms cover donations, events and volunteering rather than sales, and the clauses that matter are about refunds of donations, event cancellation and the conditions attached to restricted gifts.

Charities process some of the most sensitive data any organisation handles, and they do it with the least resource. Donor records, beneficiary case files, volunteer details and safeguarding notes sit in the same systems, and the beneficiary data is frequently special category - health, religious belief, ethnicity, immigration status.

Fundraising has its own rulebook on top of data protection. Wealth screening, donor profiling and list sharing between charities have all been the subject of enforcement action, and the UK Fundraising Regulator’s code adds standards that go beyond the statutory minimum.

Consent is the operational problem. Charities often hold donor lists assembled over decades under conditions nobody documented, and the temptation is to keep using them. The correct answer - suppress what you cannot evidence - is expensive but far cheaper than the alternative.

What a terms and conditions for a nonprofit or charity has to cover

Donation terms including whether and when a donation can be refunded
Recurring giving, and how it is cancelled
Event registration, cancellation and transfer terms
Restricted gift handling and what happens if an appeal is over-subscribed

How a nonprofit or charity actually moves personal data

Donor records and giving history

Name, contact, amount, frequency and campaign attribution, often held for decades and used for future appeals.

Beneficiary case files

Frequently special category data, sometimes about children or vulnerable adults, needing an Article 9 condition and tight access control.

Volunteer records and DBS checks

Criminal-records data has its own strict conditions under the Data Protection Act 2018 schedules.

Wealth screening and donor research

Combining internal data with public sources to estimate capacity to give. Lawful only with care, and enforcement history exists.

Fundraising platforms and events

JustGiving, Enthuse and event registrations create records held by third parties with their own controller roles.

Gift Aid declarations

Linking a donation to a taxpayer identity, retained for statutory periods.

Third parties the draft will ask you about

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud or Beacon · JustGiving or Enthuse · Stripe or GoCardless · Mailchimp or Dotdigital · Microsoft 365 · Eventbrite

The rules that apply

Special category data for beneficiaries

Health, religion, ethnicity and similar require an Article 9 condition, commonly the not-for-profit bodies condition or substantial public interest.

Fundraising regulation

Codes of practice covering consent, vulnerability, wealth screening and the frequency of approaches.

Direct marketing rules

PECR and equivalents apply to charities. The soft opt-in historically did not apply to donations in the UK, so consent has been the practical route.

Safeguarding records

Held under a distinct basis with strict access control and its own retention schedule.

Gift Aid and statutory retention

Tax records must be retained, which is a lawful reason to keep some donor data beyond the marketing relationship.

What the generated terms and conditions contains

Who the contract is with and how it is formed
Your legal entity, and the exact moment acceptance happens - account creation, checkout, or continued use.
The service, the licence and its limits
What you are actually providing, what the user may do with it, and what they may not.
Price, payment, renewal and cancellation
Billing cycle, auto-renewal, price-change notice, and how either side ends the arrangement.
Acceptable use and enforcement
The behaviour that gets an account suspended, and the process you follow before you suspend it.
User content and intellectual property
Who owns what, the licence you need to run the service, and the takedown route for infringing material.
Warranties, liability and indemnity
Disclaimers that survive local consumer law, and caps that are actually enforceable rather than theatrically broad.
Governing law, jurisdiction and disputes
The law that applies, the courts that hear it, and any pre-litigation steps you require.

The charity document set

Write separate notices for donors, beneficiaries and volunteers
One document cannot serve three audiences with three different bases.
Identify the Article 9 condition for beneficiary data
And record it before the processing, not afterwards.
Audit consent on legacy donor lists
Suppress what cannot be evidenced.
Set retention schedules per record type
Gift Aid, safeguarding, donor marketing and volunteer records all differ.
Document wealth screening if you do it
With the balancing test and an opt-out route.
Restrict access to safeguarding records
Technically, not by policy alone.

Where this usually goes wrong

Using legacy donor lists with no consent record

The correct response is suppression, not optimism.

Beneficiary data in the same system as marketing data

Different bases, different access, different retention. Merging them is how safeguarding data ends up in an appeal mailing.

Wealth screening without a documented basis

It has attracted regulatory action, and the balancing test has to engage with donor expectations.

Sharing supporter lists with other charities

Previously common, now firmly a consent question and a disclosure that must be specific.

No Article 9 condition identified for beneficiary data

Article 6 alone is not enough for health, religion or ethnicity.

Volunteers treated as neither staff nor public

They need their own privacy notice covering references, DBS checks and expenses.

Frequently asked questions

Do charities have to comply with GDPR?

Yes, in full. There is no charitable exemption, and beneficiary data is frequently special category, which raises rather than lowers the standard.

Can we email past donors about a new appeal?

Only with a valid basis for electronic marketing. Where consent records are missing, the defensible position is suppression until consent is re-obtained.

Is wealth screening allowed?

It can be, with a documented legitimate interests assessment engaging with donor expectations, a clear disclosure and an opt-out. Doing it silently has attracted enforcement.

Do volunteers need their own privacy notice?

Yes. Their processing covers references, DBS checks, expenses and emergency contacts - none of which fits a donor notice.

Are terms and conditions legally binding?

They are when the user had a genuine opportunity to read them and took a positive step to accept. Clickwrap - a ticked box next to a visible link - holds up far more reliably than a "by using this site you agree" line in the footer.

What is the difference between terms of service and terms and conditions?

Nothing substantive. "Terms and conditions" is the more common phrasing in the UK and Commonwealth markets, "terms of service" in the US and in SaaS. The clauses do the same job.

Can I limit my liability to zero?

No. Most consumer regimes void attempts to exclude liability for death, personal injury or fraud, and unfair-terms rules strike out caps a court considers unreasonable. A cap that is drafted to survive review is worth more than one that is struck out entirely.

Do I need terms if I sell nothing?

If users can register, post, comment or upload, yes - the terms are what let you moderate, suspend and remove content without being in breach of contract yourself.