Terms of service
These terms cover Tsedal: the member app, the parish dashboard, and the parish giving pages at tsedal.app and tsedal.org. Tsedal is made and run by Abyssinia Labs LLC (“Abyssinia Labs”, “we”). By using Tsedal you agree to these terms and to our privacy policy.
What Tsedal is
Tsedal is software for Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo parishes in the United States. It lets a parish receive gifts from its members, send them announcements and publish its calendar. Each parish is an independent organization that decides what it posts, what it asks members to give to, and how it uses the gifts it receives. Abyssinia Labs is not a church, a charity or a bank, and does not take part in a parish’s decisions.
Accounts
- You need an account to use the app or the dashboard. Keep your sign-in to yourself, and give us true information.
- You must be at least 13 to have an account. Anyone under 18 should give only with a parent’s or guardian’s permission.
- A parish’s admins decide who joins its team and in which role. Each role sees only what it needs; for example, the treasurer and council see the parish’s gifts, and communications staff do not.
Giving
- A gift through Tsedal is a gift to the parish you choose. It is charged on that parish’s own account with Stripe, our payment processor, and paid out to the parish’s bank. The parish is the recipient and the merchant of record; Abyssinia Labs never holds or controls the money.
- Payments are subject to Stripe’s terms, and card and bank processing fees are charged by Stripe on each gift. When you give, you can choose to cover those fees so the parish receives the whole amount you chose; the total charged is shown before you confirm.
- You get a receipt for each gift and a statement for each year in the parish’s legal name and EIN. Whether a gift is tax-deductible depends on the parish’s status and your own circumstances; Tsedal does not give tax advice.
- If you give anonymously, the parish’s staff see “Anonymous” instead of your name. We still keep your gift with your account so we can send your receipts and statements.
Monthly gifts
A monthly gift is charged on the day of the month you choose until you change it, pause it or stop it, which you can do at any time in the app before the next charge. If a charge is declined we may try again a few times and let you know; if it keeps failing, the monthly gift pauses until you update your payment method.
Refunds
Gifts are generally final, because they belong to the parish as soon as they are made. If a gift was a mistake, such as the wrong amount or a duplicate, write to your parish or to support@tsedal.org as soon as you can, and we will pass it on. The parish decides whether to refund it; a refund goes back to the payment method the gift came from. If you dispute a charge with your bank or card issuer, the dispute is handled by Stripe and the parish.
Parishes
- Only a genuine Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo parish may register, through someone authorized to act for it. The Tsedal team reviews each parish’s registration, EIN and a letter from its diocese before it can accept gifts, and may decline or pause a parish that does not meet these terms.
- To receive gifts, a parish opens its own account with Stripe and agrees to the Stripe Connected Account Agreement, which includes the Stripe Services Agreement. The parish’s business details are collected and checked by Stripe.
- A parish is responsible for what it posts, for using gifts as it told its members it would, for its receipts being accurate, and for its own legal and tax obligations.
- A parish must treat its members’ information with care and use it only for the parish’s work.
Using Tsedal well
Don’t use Tsedal to break the law, to deceive anyone, to collect money in a parish’s name without its authority, to send anything harmful or abusive, to get into accounts or data that aren’t yours, or to disrupt the service. We may remove content or suspend an account that does.
Your content
Announcements, events, images and other content a parish posts remain the parish’s. The parish lets us store, show and send it to its members so Tsedal can work. Tsedal itself, its design and its software, belong to Abyssinia Labs.
Changes and availability
We work to keep Tsedal running and secure, but it is provided “as is”, and we can’t promise it will always be available or free of errors. We may change or stop features, and we will give parishes reasonable notice before a change that affects how they receive gifts.
Limits of our liability
To the extent the law allows, Abyssinia Labs is not liable for indirect, incidental or consequential losses, or for what a parish does with its gifts, and our total liability for any claim about Tsedal is limited to the greater of $100 or the fees, if any, the claimant paid us in the twelve months before it. Nothing in these terms limits a liability the law does not let us limit.
Ending
You can stop using Tsedal and ask us to close your account at any time. A parish can leave Tsedal at any time; its gifts already made stay with it. We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms.
Changes to these terms
We may update these terms. The date at the top says when they last changed, and we will tell you in the app or by email before a change that matters to you takes effect.
Contact
Abyssinia Labs LLC, support@tsedal.org