Community Guidelines
How we treat each other.
Effective April 30, 2026. The plain-English version. Legal version lives in the Terms.
Be real.
Use your real name, your real photo, and accurate information about yourself. Kindness Counts works because the records are real. Fake accounts, impersonation, or made-up profiles undermine that for everyone.
Show up.
Register for events you actually plan to attend. If something comes up, cancel through your dashboard so a host can offer your spot to someone else. Habitual no-shows are not a soft issue here; they are how the platform loses trust with the charities you want to help. Full details in the Attendance Policy.
Check in honestly.
GPS verification and the rotating code are how your hours become trustworthy. Sharing your code with someone who is not present, spoofing your location, or claiming hours you did not work is fraud. We will catch it, and we will terminate accounts when we do. There is no second chance for this one.
Treat people well.
Volunteers, host organization staff, fellow witnesses on your check-ins. Everyone here is showing up to do something good. Harassment, discrimination, threats, slurs, or behavior that makes the volunteer environment unsafe for others is grounds for immediate suspension. This applies on the platform and at events.
No spam, no scams.
Do not use Kindness Counts to recruit for unrelated commercial ventures, multi-level marketing schemes, political campaigns, religious proselytizing, or anything else that is not the volunteer activity itself. Volunteers come here to volunteer. Do not turn it into something else.
Respect privacy.
What you see about other volunteers (names, attended events, hours) is for the legitimate operation of the platform. Do not export, share, or use that information outside the context it was given. Do not photograph or record other volunteers without their consent. Treat what happens at events with the same discretion you would expect for yourself.
Do not break things.
Do not try to reverse engineer the verification system, scrape the platform, build automated tools to register or check in for you, or use any technique to artificially inflate your attendance or hours. The verification system protects every volunteer's record. Attacking it harms everyone.
Tell us when something is wrong.
If you see fraud, harassment, a safety issue, or anything that does not feel right, email hello@kindnesscounts.io. We read every report. We respond. If a host organization is the problem, we will work with you to make sure your verified hours are protected even if our relationship with that organization changes.
If you mess up.
One mistake is not a career-ender on Kindness Counts. If you forgot to cancel an event, you got into a heated argument with another volunteer, you forgot to check out and lost an hour, contact us or the host. Most things are fixable. We treat this as a community, not a courtroom.
When we have to act.
Violations result in a range of responses depending on what happened: a written reminder, temporary restriction, permanent account termination. Fraud and discrimination are at the severe end. Honest mistakes get the gentlest response. The full enforcement framework lives in the Terms of Service; this page is what you should expect from us in spirit.