Terms of Service

Service Overview

NGOTech.org stands for NGO Technology Organization. The Volunteers directory is provided as a convenient opportunity for beginners, experienced technology volunteers, and technology leaders to give back to community organizations, build community-focused relationships, strengthen resumes, and help NGOs discover volunteer support.

The directory lets volunteers create public profiles, share skills and availability, connect social proof, request NGOTech verification, and receive ratings and recommendations from organizations that have worked with them.

Accounts

• Volunteer and organization accounts must validate their email addresses before account access becomes active.
• Users create a password during registration and can sign in after email validation. Users are responsible for protecting their passwords.
• Users must provide accurate account and profile information and must not impersonate another person or organization.
• NGOTech may pause, restrict, or remove accounts or profiles that violate these terms, appear misleading, create safety concerns, or conflict with the volunteer-first mission of the directory.

Volunteer Profiles

Volunteer profiles are self-published unless marked verified. Public profiles must include a validated account email and LinkedIn profile. GitHub, social media, and portfolio links may be added optionally. The account email is used for account access and is not intended to appear publicly.

Public adult volunteer profile information may include the volunteer's name, photo, general location, headline, skills, short bio, availability hours, preferred days, social profile links, selected NGO Tech Nerd symbol, verification status, ratings, feedback, recommendations, availability status, and review-pause status.

For volunteers who are 16 or 17, public profile information is more limited. Student volunteers may use a public display name instead of a full legal name. Their city is not displayed publicly and location is shown as REMOTE by default. If the student is open to in-person volunteer work, the student and parent or guardian may choose to show state or region and country, but city visibility requires an express NGOTech override.

Student Volunteers

NGOTech may allow volunteers who are 16 or 17 years old when they are high-school-level students exploring STEM related fields, earning volunteer hours for graduation, or pursuing Senior Capstone Project research, work, builds, or related learning. Volunteers under 16 are not allowed at this time.

A 16 or 17 year old volunteer must provide a parent or guardian email address. The volunteer and parent or guardian must both review and verify the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, and the parent or guardian must give permission for the minor to volunteer before the account can become active.

NGOTech applies a student-first privacy rule. Ratings, recommendations, and written feedback for volunteers under 18 are not public and may be reviewed only by NGOTech for safety, quality, support, and program administration.

Student volunteer participation may be limited, reviewed, paused, or declined at NGOTech's discretion based on safety, consent, education fit, profile quality, or community needs.

Student volunteer and capstone-aligned project examples may include community problem-solving apps or games, robotics prototypes, AI models for local data or trends, documentary or media projects about community issues, local history websites or podcasts, STEM research such as water quality testing, educational workshops for younger students, mental health awareness campaigns, nonprofit leadership projects, or business and entrepreneurship planning where the work remains volunteer-first and community focused.

Organization Use

Organization accounts are provided so NGOs and community organizations can save searches, mark volunteers as favorites, bookmark search results, and return to volunteer profiles. These tools are for organizing volunteer discovery, not for soliciting paid work.

Organizations and volunteers are responsible for their own communications, project scope, schedules, safety checks, background review decisions, and volunteer outcomes.

US NGO and nonprofit Gold status verification is expected to rely on submitted EIN information, organization contact details, and nonprofit status with the IRS. International Gold status verification is still in development because legitimacy requirements differ by country. Organizations outside the United States that do not have a US partner organization with an EIN should contact NGOTech so Gold status review can be handled case by case.

Organization status may include grey for accounts not yet verified, orange for accounts with verified email that do not use a qualified organization-domain address, green for accounts with verified qualified domain-based email, and gold when EIN, IRS status, submitted organization details, and contact information align to NGOTech's satisfaction.

Ratings And Feedback

• Organizations may submit ratings, recommendations, and feedback only for volunteers they have actually worked with on a community-focused project.
• For adult volunteers, ratings are public and contribute to the volunteer's public average rating.
• For volunteers under 18, ratings, recommendations, and feedback are not public. NGOTech may use that information internally for student safety, support, quality review, and program decisions.
• A volunteer profile with an average rating below 4.5 out of 5 is automatically paused for NGOTech review.
• During review, NGOTech may contact the volunteer and organizations who submitted feedback. Reinstatement is at NGOTech's discretion based on available feedback and the directory's community-safety goals.
• NGOTech may remove, edit, or decline to display ratings or feedback that appear false, abusive, irrelevant, paid, retaliatory, discriminatory, or inconsistent with the volunteer-first purpose of the directory.

Verification And Background Checks*

Volunteer profiles may be listed while account email verification is pending, but contact is locked until verification is complete. Pending profiles display a grey badge. Public profiles with completed account email verification can display a Green Verification Badge to show the profile is connected to a live user account. A Gold Verification Badge may indicate that NGOTech has reviewed additional verification steps, including background-check workflow completion. A badge is not a guarantee of work quality, availability, safety, or outcome.

Organization verification follows a separate process from volunteer verification. US organizations may be reviewed against EIN information and IRS nonprofit status for Gold status. International Gold status review remains case by case while NGOTech evaluates country-specific requirements and potential verification partners.

Volunteers are responsible for the cost of any required background check. NGOTech does not pick up that cost. NGOTech currently expects to use Checkr for background-check workflows, and the volunteer is responsible for Checkr charges. Costs may vary based on the applicant's location and mandatory country fees. Verification decisions remain within NGOTech's discretion.

Earning a Gold Verification Badge is a paid service and is not required to get started. It is an added benefit that some organizations may require before a volunteer works with sensitive data or materials. Each organization may choose to perform its own vetting outside NGOTech's Volunteer portal, and NGOTech respects that. NGOTech is here to help when an organization requires a background check for people working on its projects.

If a 16 or 17 year old volunteer is registering with help from a parent or guardian and wants to acquire a verification badge, the background check will be completed by the parent or guardian on the registration form, not by the minor volunteer.

*The background-check process is still being addressed. This is early information about how NGOTech intends the process to work. The feature is still under development and will be released more fully in a later stage. Currently, NGOTech provides background checks on an as-needed basis.

Acceptable Use

Users may not use the directory to:

• Solicit paid clients, paid projects, or employment.
• Post false, misleading, or unauthorized profile information.
• Submit feedback for volunteers they have not worked with.
• Harass, threaten, discriminate against, or exploit any user.
• Bypass email validation, account controls, or review holds.
• Scrape, spam, resell, or misuse public profile information.

Responsibility And Liability

NGOTech provides the directory as a community connection service. NGOTech does not employ, supervise, contract with, guarantee, or assume responsibility for volunteers or organizations who connect through the directory. Users are responsible for deciding whether to communicate, collaborate, share information, or work together.

The service is provided as available and may change, pause, or end at any time. To the fullest extent permitted by law, NGOTech disclaims warranties and is not responsible for indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages arising from use of the directory.

Changes And Contact

These terms should expand as NGOTech receives new product, verification, privacy, safety, or operational requirements. When material changes are made, NGOTech should update the last-updated date and make the current terms available through the website.

Contact: NGOTech contact form.