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KickScholar

Terms of service

The rules for using KickScholar: accounts, AI suggestions, scholarship information, funding pages and contributions.

Last updated

Agreeing to these terms

These terms are an agreement between you and KickScholar ("KickScholar", "we", "us") for your use of kickscholar.com and its related services. By creating an account, contributing, or otherwise using KickScholar, you agree to these terms and to our privacy policy, which explains how we handle personal information. If you do not agree, do not use KickScholar.

Who can use KickScholar

  • You must be at least 13 years old to create an account.
  • If you are under 18, you may use KickScholar only with the permission of a parent or legal guardian, who agrees to these terms for you.
  • A student under 18 needs a linked parent or guardian to approve a funding page before it is published, and contributions for a student under 18 are paid out only to that linked guardian. Students under 13 cannot publish a funding page.
  • You may not use KickScholar if we have previously closed your account for breaking these terms.

Your account

  • Give accurate information and keep it up to date.
  • Keep your password private. You are responsible for activity on your account.
  • An account is for one person. A parent or guardian helps a student through a guardian link the student accepts, not by sharing the student's password.
  • Tell us right away through our contact page if you think someone else has used your account.

What KickScholar does, and does not do

  • KickScholar helps you find scholarships, prepare applications and raise support for your education. We do not award scholarships and are not affiliated with the sponsors we list unless we say so.
  • We never submit an application for you. You decide what to submit and you submit it yourself, on the sponsor's own form.
  • Scholarship details come from sponsors' official pages and can change at any time. Always confirm requirements, amounts and deadlines on the official page before you apply.
  • Match statuses and KickScore help you decide where to spend your time. They are not a prediction or a promise that you will win anything.
  • KickScholar does not give legal, tax or financial advice. Our guides are general information.

AI suggestions

  • AI features suggest facts, drafts and feedback. Suggestions can be wrong or incomplete. Review everything before you use it.
  • You are responsible for what you submit. Everything in an application or funding page must be true and must be yours to share.
  • Some sponsors have rules about using AI tools or outside help. Read and follow each sponsor's rules.

AI credits

  • Some AI writing features, such as drafting and revising essays, use AI credits. Finding scholarships, matching, checking your essays and writing on your own never use them.
  • Students receive free credits, including credits each month. Free credits expire 90 days after you receive them, and the amounts can change.
  • You can ask for more free credits. We decide using the applications and deadlines you are working on, never your finances, and you never need to share personal or financial details.
  • Credits have no cash value. They can't be sold, transferred to another person or exchanged for money.
  • If an AI step fails and returns nothing you can use, its credits are returned. We may adjust, pause or remove credits to correct mistakes or stop misuse.
  • Credit packs are optional. Buying one never changes your matches, eligibility, KickScore or scholarship results. Purchased credits don't expire while your account is open and are used after your free credits.
  • If you'd like a refund for a credit pack, contact us. A refund returns the full price and removes the credits left from that pack; credits you already used are not taken back. If a payment is reversed by your bank, the unused credits from that pack are removed.

Your content

  • You keep ownership of what you add to KickScholar: your profile, documents, essays, stories and funding page content.
  • You give KickScholar permission to store, process and display your content as needed to run the service for you, including showing a funding page publicly once you publish it. This permission ends when your content is deleted, except for copies we must keep by law, such as financial records.
  • Only add content you have the right to share, and do not post other people's private information.

Funding pages

  • A funding page describes a student's real education costs and goals. Everything on it must be true, and funds raised must go toward the education costs it describes.
  • Pages are checked for private details and other problems before they are published, and students approve every supporter message before it appears.
  • Funding pages and contributions can be paused at any time, including for the whole service. A paused page says so.

Contributions

  • A contribution is personal support for a student's education costs. It is a gift to an individual, not a payment to a charity, and it is not a tax-deductible donation. KickScholar makes no claim about the tax treatment of any contribution. Ask a tax professional if you have questions.
  • Supporters receive nothing in exchange for a contribution. KickScholar does not check how each dollar is spent.
  • Payments are processed by Stripe and are also subject to Stripe's terms. Contributions are between $5 and $5,000 each.
  • The student receives the full amount you choose to contribute. A payment processing fee is added to your total so it doesn't reduce the student's support; it covers the payment processor's charges and is not KickScholar income.
  • You can also add optional support for KickScholar. It is shown separately, goes to KickScholar rather than the student, can be $0. KickScholar makes no claim about its tax treatment. KickScholar does not take any part of the student's contribution.
  • Contributions are collected by KickScholar and released by our team through Stripe to the student, or to the linked guardian for a student under 18, after the person receiving the payout completes Stripe's account and identity checks, and no sooner than 7 days after the payment settles.
  • We may delay, hold or refund contributions when we suspect fraud or a breach of these terms, when a payment is disputed, or when a page is removed. Otherwise, contributions are final. If you think a payment was made in error, contact us. A refund returns the contribution and any support for KickScholar; the processing fee is not returned, because the payment processor does not return it.

Acceptable use

When you use KickScholar, do not:

  • give false information, invent achievements, or misrepresent your need or your costs;
  • pretend to be someone else, or act for a student without a guardian link they accepted;
  • harass anyone, or post hateful, sexual, violent or otherwise harmful content;
  • post anyone's private information, including your own contact details on a funding page;
  • use KickScholar to run a scam, raise money for anything other than the education costs described, or move money for someone else;
  • copy or scrape the service with automated tools, or try to get around its security, rate limits or access rules;
  • break the law or the rules of a scholarship sponsor.

Reports, moderation and account closure

  • Anyone can report a funding page. We review reports and may hold contributions, remove a page, or suspend or close an account that breaks these terms. Repeated reports can pause a page's contributions automatically while we review it.
  • You can stop using KickScholar at any time and delete your account from Settings. If your funding page has received contributions or you have payouts, contact us using the email address on the account and we will close it with you.

Our service and content

  • KickScholar, its design, its guides and its brand belong to us. You may share links to our pages, but you may not copy the service or its content for another product.
  • KickScholar links to sponsor websites and uses services such as Stripe and Google. We are not responsible for other websites or services.
  • If you send us ideas or feedback, we may use them without owing you anything.
  • We may change, pause or stop parts of the service.

Disclaimers

KickScholar is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we make no promises about the service beyond those stated in these terms, including that it will be uninterrupted or error-free, that scholarship information is complete or current, or that using KickScholar will lead to an award or to any amount of support.

Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, KickScholar is not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential losses, or for lost scholarships, awards or contributions, arising from your use of the service. Our total liability for any claim about the service is limited to the greater of the amount you paid KickScholar in the 12 months before the claim or $100. Contributions passed on to a student are not amounts paid to KickScholar. Some places do not allow these limits, so they may not apply to you.

Changes to these terms

When we change these terms, we update the date at the top. If a change is material, we will tell you by email or in the product before it takes effect. Continuing to use KickScholar after a change takes effect means you accept the new terms.

Contact us

Questions about these terms: send them through our contact page.