Acceptable Use Policy

1. Purpose and Scope

This Acceptable Use Policy (“AUP”) sets out the rules that govern use of the My Church Secretary application and related services (the “Service”) provided by 1580 Resources LLC (“My Church Secretary,” “MCS,” “we,” or “us”). The AUP is incorporated by reference into the Terms of Service that govern your use of the Service. Capitalized terms not defined in this AUP have the meaning given in the Terms of Service or Privacy Policy.

This AUP exists for three reasons: (1) to keep the Service safe and lawful for everyone who uses it; (2) to protect the privacy and trust of Members whose information is processed through the Service; and (3) to comply with the rules of the wireless carriers, telecommunications providers, and regulatory authorities that allow the Service to deliver messages to Members. Some of these rules — particularly those governing text messaging — are imposed on us by third parties, and we have limited flexibility to make exceptions.

2. Who This AUP Applies To

This AUP applies to every person or organization that accesses or uses the Service, including:

• Each church, congregation, or religious organization that subscribes to the Service (a “Customer” or “Church”);
• Each pastor, administrator, staff member, volunteer, or other authorized user who acts on behalf of a Customer (each, an “Authorized User”);
• Any individual or organization that accesses the Service through an account, integration, or API key issued to a Customer.

Customers are responsible for the acts and omissions of their Authorized Users and for any use of the Service that occurs through their accounts.

3. Permitted Uses

The Service is intended to be used by Customers to support legitimate religious, pastoral, and administrative activities of the Customer’s ministry. Examples of permitted use include:

• Maintaining and updating a directory of Members, prospective Members, visitors, and contacts.
• Recording and tracking pastoral care information, sacramental records, and attendance.
• Sending service announcements, event reminders, prayer chain notifications, weather-related cancellations, and other ministry-related communications to Members who have consented to receive them.
• Managing internal Customer communications among staff, council, and volunteers.
• Maintaining the Customer’s public-facing website and social media presence to the extent the Service offers such features.

Any use materially different from the above should be discussed with us in advance.

4. Prohibited Content

You may not use the Service to store, transmit, or display content that:

• Violates any applicable federal, state, local, or international law or regulation.
• Infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, right of publicity, or other intellectual property right.
• Is defamatory, libelous, fraudulent, deceptive, or otherwise tortious.
• Is obscene, sexually explicit, pornographic, or harmful to minors.
• Promotes, advocates for, or incites violence, terrorism, self-harm, suicide, or unlawful discrimination.
• Constitutes harassment, bullying, threats, or intimidation directed at any individual.
• Contains malware, ransomware, spyware, viruses, or any other malicious code.
• Constitutes phishing, social engineering, or other deceptive attempts to obtain credentials, financial information, or sensitive data.
• Is intended to defraud or solicit money under false pretenses, including impersonation of clergy or staff.

5. Prohibited Activities

You may not, and may not permit any Authorized User or third party to:

• Reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble, or otherwise attempt to derive the source code, structure, or underlying ideas of the Service, except where such restriction is expressly prohibited by law.
• Access, probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of any part of the Service or its infrastructure, or breach or circumvent any authentication, security, or access controls.
• Use the Service to develop a competing product or to benchmark its performance for the benefit of a competitor.
• Share, transfer, sell, lease, sublicense, or assign account credentials, API keys, or access to the Service to any party that has not been authorized by us.
• Use automated means, scrapers, bots, or scripts to access, query, or extract data from the Service beyond the rate or volume permitted by our documentation or by applicable rate limits.
• Use the Service in a manner that imposes an unreasonable or disproportionately large load on our infrastructure, or that is designed to interfere with the proper operation of the Service for other Customers.
• Misrepresent your identity, your affiliation with a Church, or the source or origin of any communication.
• Remove, alter, or obscure any copyright, trademark, or other proprietary notice within the Service.

6. SMS and Telecommunications Rules

The Service enables Customers to send SMS text messages and similar communications through third-party telecommunications providers and the wireless carriers. Those providers and carriers impose strict rules on every message sent through their networks. Violation of any rule in this Section 6 may result in immediate suspension of messaging, suspension of the Customer’s account, and may expose the Customer to fines, regulatory action, or private legal claims under laws including the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and state analogues.

6.1 Consent Is Required

You may send SMS messages through the Service only to Members who have provided clear, express, written consent to receive text messages from your Church, using an opt-in process that complies with our SMS Policy, the TCPA, and applicable state law. Pre-checked boxes, implied consent, and consent collected for an unrelated purpose are not acceptable. You must maintain auditable records of the consent (who, when, what wording was shown) for at least four (4) years after the last message or the withdrawal of consent.

6.2 Opt-Outs Must Be Honored

You may not send any further messages to a Member after that Member has opted out of receiving messages from your Church. The Service will process replies of STOP, STOPALL, END, QUIT, CANCEL, UNSUBSCRIBE, and OPT OUT automatically, and you may not attempt to disable, bypass, or work around that functionality. You may not require a Member to take any step beyond the keyword reply to opt out, and you may not charge a Member to opt out. A Member who has previously opted out may opt back in by replying START, UNSTOP, or YES.

6.3 Required Message Content

Each campaign and, where appropriate, each message must:

• Clearly identify the Church as the sender, especially in the first message a Member receives in a conversation.
• Reference the Member’s prior opt-in where required by carrier rules or applicable law.
• Honor HELP keyword replies by providing contact information for the Church and instructions for opting out.
• Comply with any additional disclosures we provide to you in writing or through the Service.

6.4 Prohibited Message Content (SHAFT-C and Related)

Wireless carriers prohibit the following content categories on Application-to-Person (A2P) messaging programs. You may not use the Service to send messages that promote, market, advertise, or facilitate:

• Sex or adult content. Sexually explicit, pornographic, or adult-oriented material.
• Hate speech. Content that disparages a group based on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, or similar characteristics.
• Alcohol. The sale, distribution, or promotion of alcoholic beverages, including age-gated alcohol marketing.
• Firearms. The sale, transfer, or promotion of firearms, ammunition, or related products.
• Tobacco and vaping. The sale or promotion of tobacco products, e-cigarettes, vapes, and related accessories.
• Cannabis. The sale, promotion, or facilitation of cannabis, cannabis-derived products, or paraphernalia, regardless of state-law status.

In addition, the following categories are prohibited on the Service:

• Gambling and games of chance. Including raffles where prohibited by state law; lawful church-sponsored raffles must be reviewed with us in advance.
• High-risk financial services. Including payday lending, debt forgiveness or relief programs, cryptocurrency promotion, and high-interest short-term lending.
• Phishing or fraudulent solicitation. Including any message that impersonates a person, organization, or financial institution, or that seeks payment, gift cards, or credentials under false pretenses.
• Political campaign messaging. Including endorsements of candidates, get-out-the-vote messaging tied to a specific party or candidate, or fundraising for political committees. Non-partisan civic-engagement messages may be permitted, but must be reviewed with us in advance.
• Third-party advertising. Promotion of any business, product, service, or organization that is not the Church itself, except for incidental references to ministry partners.

6.5 Time-of-Day Restrictions

Unless an applicable exception clearly applies, you may not send SMS messages to a Member before 8:00 a.m. or after 9:00 p.m. local time at the Member’s location, consistent with the TCPA. Emergency messages (such as service cancellations due to severe weather or threats to safety) may be permitted outside those hours where reasonable and consistent with law.

6.6 Frequency and Throughput

Message volume must be consistent with the program description registered with the wireless carriers. Sudden or unexplained spikes in volume, repeated identical messages to the same recipients, or attempts to exceed your registered campaign throughput may trigger automatic carrier blocks and may be treated as a violation of this AUP.

6.7 No URL Shorteners or Untrusted Links

You may not include links using free public URL shorteners (such as bit.ly, tinyurl, t.co, goo.gl, or similar) in SMS messages. Links must use the Church’s own domain, our shared messaging domain, or another shortening service we have pre-approved. Carriers regularly block messages containing public shorteners.

6.8 No Number Pooling, Resale, or Transfer

You may not share, transfer, resell, or commingle phone numbers, opt-in lists, or consent records assigned to your account with any other organization, including affiliated churches, parent denominations, or partner ministries. Each Church’s consent records are specific to that Church.

6.9 Voice Calls

To the extent the Service offers voice-call features (now or in the future), the same consent, opt-out, content, and time-of-day rules apply to voice calls, in addition to any further restrictions imposed by applicable law for prerecorded or autodialed calls.

7. Customer Responsibilities

Each Customer is responsible for:

• Designating an Authorized User as the primary administrator and keeping that designation current.
• Maintaining the accuracy and security of its account credentials and immediately notifying us of any suspected unauthorized access.
• Ensuring that all Authorized Users understand and comply with this AUP.
• Collecting, documenting, and retaining opt-in consent records as described in Section 6.1.
• Promptly notifying us of: (a) any subpoena, regulatory inquiry, complaint, or carrier notice that relates to messages sent through the Service; (b) any confirmed or suspected security incident affecting Member data; and (c) any material change in the Customer’s legal status or contact information.
• Cooperating with us in good faith if a complaint, carrier action, or regulatory inquiry involves the Customer’s use of the Service.

8. Reporting Violations

If you become aware of a violation of this AUP — whether by another user, an Authorized User, or any third party — please report it to us promptly at pastoralex@mychurchsecretary.com. We treat reports confidentially to the extent reasonably possible. We may, but are not required to, investigate every report.

9. Investigation and Enforcement

We reserve the right, but have no obligation, to monitor or investigate use of the Service for compliance with this AUP. If we determine, in our reasonable discretion, that a Customer or Authorized User has violated this AUP or is at risk of causing harm to other users, to Members, to MCS, to our service providers, or to the integrity of the messaging ecosystem, we may take any of the following actions, with or without prior notice:

• Require the Customer to remediate or remove offending content or activity within a stated period.
• Throttle, suspend, or disable specific features or messaging campaigns.
• Suspend or terminate the Customer’s account, in whole or in part.
• Cooperate with law enforcement, regulatory authorities, and our telecommunications providers, including by disclosing information as permitted by law and the Privacy Policy.
• Pursue any other remedy available under the Terms of Service or applicable law.

We will, where reasonably practicable and not contrary to law or carrier direction, give the Customer notice and an opportunity to cure before terminating the account for an alleged AUP violation. Suspensions or terminations resulting from a Customer’s violation of this AUP do not entitle the Customer to a refund of pre-paid fees.

10. Changes to This AUP

We may update this AUP from time to time, including to reflect changes in law, carrier rules, or the features of the Service. If we make material changes, we will provide notice as described in the Terms of Service. Your continued use of the Service after the effective date of an updated AUP constitutes your acceptance of the updated AUP.

11. Contact

Questions about this AUP should be directed to us via our Contact page or in writing to:

1580 Resources LLC
Attn: Acceptable Use
22 Mitchell Drive, Faribault, MN 55021
Email: pastoralex@mychurchsecretary.com