Terms
Terms of use
Anonymous, combined statistics
Details, and exactly who is counted, are on the privacy page. GiftWell publicly commits to maintain and use these statistics only in deidentified form and not to attempt to reidentify them; if it ever gives deidentified information to another party, it will require that party by contract to make the same commitment.
GiftWell's own use of an AI provider
GiftWell itself may use an AI provider (models routed through OpenRouter, as GiftWell's configuration sets) for a platform-level "Ask the platform" analyst that only GiftWell's platform administrators can open. It is sent only suppressed, rounded, anonymous aggregate tables, never names, emails, free text, church names or any individual's assessment. Administrators' questions are screened so they cannot carry a church's name, an email address or a phone number (and administrators must ask only about the combined numbers), and GiftWell asks that provider data collection be denied where the provider supports it. This is separate from the optional AI first look a church can switch on with its own account and key, which is the church's own choice and responsibility under these terms. Details are on the privacy page and the sub-processors page.
What GiftWell is
GiftWell is software provided by Zao, the parent company of DiscipleOS ("we"). GiftWell is part of the DiscipleOS family of products. DiscipleOS is a subsidiary of Zao. It gives churches a spiritual gifts assessment and a follow-up list. A result is a starting point for a conversation. It is not a diagnosis, a ranking, a judgement about anyone's faith, or a promise about what God has given anyone.
By using GiftWell, whether you take an assessment or run a church's account, you agree to these terms. If you are using GiftWell for a church, you confirm you have authority to accept them for the church.
If you took the assessment
- Answer honestly and only for yourself. Write only what you are comfortable with a pastor reading. Everything you write is optional.
- If you are under 13, ask a parent or guardian first. Some churches will not accept answers from under-13s unless they have a parent's agreement on file, and by default the form will not accept them. See the section for parents and guardians.
- What you choose to share with a church is under that church's care. The church, not GiftWell, decides what it does with it. See the privacy page, which says exactly who can see what.
- Your results link is private: anyone who has it can open and erase your results. Keep it to yourself.
- You can erase your answers yourself at any time from the bottom of your results page.
If you're a church admin
These are the church's responsibilities. They matter most because the church decides what to ask, who sees it and what it is used for.
- You are responsible for having the right to collect and use the answers of the people you invite, for the settings you choose (including Planning Center, AI and agent access), for how your staff use the follow-up tools (placing people on ministries, and the weekly email to staff that names people who shared with your pastoral team), and for your own privacy notice to them. Where the law requires a legal ground, or explicit consent, to use information about a person's religion, getting it is your job.
- You are responsible for the safety of young people in your ministry, including a parent or guardian's agreement where the law requires one. Do not use GiftWell to collect from children under 13 unless you have that agreement, have checked it is genuine, and have switched on the setting that says so. A child ticking a box in GiftWell is not that check.
- You are responsible for who on your team has access, and for the roles you give them. Pastors, admins and owners can read people's results even if the person did not tick the box to share them; your privacy notice to your people must say so.
- Plans count each person once per plan year. When a church reaches its limit, new people are still accepted for a short cushion, and after that a new person is asked to tell a church leader. A plan limit never deletes anyone's results, and someone already counted that year can always retake.
- Keep your sign-in details, Planning Center and AI keys, and agent tokens private. Revoke any you no longer use. You are responsible for what is done with them, and for the terms of the services you connect (for example your Planning Center and AI-provider agreements) and for what those services do with data you send them.
- When you import or migrate data, you promise you have the right to, and that the people in it agreed to their information being used this way where the law requires.
- Tell us promptly at hello@giftwell.app if you learn of a security problem affecting your account.
- Do not use GiftWell to profile, rank or exclude people, or for anything unlawful. See acceptable use.
If you're a parent or guardian
GiftWell is not designed for children under 13. By default the form stops an under-13 and saves nothing. A church can switch on an option that lets under-13s answer; the church ticks that it has a parent or guardian's agreement, and the child is asked to confirm a parent or guardian said yes. That tick is not a check that you agreed, and GiftWell cannot verify who is at the keyboard. If you did not agree, write to hello@giftwell.app and we will help get the answers erased. The privacy page has the details.
Who is responsible for personal information
- For the answers of people who take an assessment, the church is the controller and GiftWell is the church's processor. The data processing addendum is part of these terms and governs that relationship.
- For its own purposes (church users' accounts, plan and payment records, security logs, messages to us, the emails it sends at a person's request, and the anonymous, combined statistics), GiftWell is an independent controller, as the privacy page explains.
Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- break the law, or use GiftWell to harm, harass, deceive or exploit anyone;
- use GiftWell, a result, an AI reading or any export to decide who gets a job, a paid or volunteer role, membership, a place in a group or any benefit, or to exclude, rank or profile people. Results are for conversation and encouragement only;
- collect from children without the agreement the law requires, or collect from people who have not been told how their answers will be used;
- put into free-text fields, or ask people to put there, things GiftWell is not meant to hold, such as government ids, financial account numbers, health records or information about other people who have not agreed;
- try to get into accounts, data or systems that are not yours, probe or test GiftWell's security without our written permission, or get round its limits;
- scrape GiftWell, or use it in a way that harms its performance for others. Use the agent (MCP) tools and data exchange we provide instead;
- copy GiftWell's assessment, questions or design to build a competing product, or resell GiftWell without our agreement;
- use data you reach through GiftWell from Planning Center or an AI service in a way those services do not allow. Planning Center's terms, for example, do not allow personal data collected for resale, and do not allow its data to be used to train generative AI.
We may suspend use that breaks these terms, and will tell the church's owner why unless the law stops us.
Your content, and ours
Yours. You (a church, or a person who writes in an assessment) keep your rights in what you put into GiftWell: answers, notes, church names and logos, team descriptions and so on. You give GiftWell a limited, non-exclusive, worldwide licence to host, copy, process and display that content only as needed to run and secure the service for you, to do what you have asked it to do, and to produce the anonymous, combined statistics described above. The licence ends when you erase the content, apart from backups that expire in the ordinary course.
You promise that your content is yours to use and does not break the law or anyone else's rights. If you believe something on GiftWell infringes your copyright, write to hello@giftwell.app with the page address and what is yours, and we will look at it.
Ours. GiftWell's software, assessment design, questions, written descriptions of the gifts, brand and look belong to us or our licensors and are protected by law. You may use them through GiftWell, for your church or your own use, as these terms allow. Nothing here gives you any other right in them. If you send us ideas or feedback, we may use them without owing you anything.
GiftWell's default fonts (Schibsted Grotesk, Mona Sans and Newsreader) are open-source typefaces used under the SIL Open Font License.
Plans and payment
There is a free plan, and paid plans for larger churches, as shown on the pricing section of our home page. Paid plans are paid through a Stripe payment page; the price, the period and, if there is one, the renewal terms are shown to you there before you pay. If a plan renews automatically, that page says so and says how to stop it. Stripe tells GiftWell that a payment happened, which church it was for, the plan and the period it covers, and GiftWell records that; if a payment fails or a subscription is cancelled, the plan's limit stays for a short period and then new people are counted against the Free limit until it is sorted out, and nothing is deleted. Paying does not change who is responsible for what in these terms. If you think you were charged by mistake, write to hello@giftwell.app.
Prices and plan limits can change for future plan years; a change never applies to a period you have already paid for. Taxes, if any, are added where the law requires.
What GiftWell is not
GiftWell is not pastoral care, medical advice, psychological or mental-health advice or assessment, legal advice or employment advice, and a result is not a diagnosis, a clinical or professional test, or a prediction. It is a tool for conversation. The AI first look, where a church turns it on, is a draft for a pastor to read with their own judgement, can be wrong, and must not be treated as a statement about a person. Do not use GiftWell, or any result, to decide whether someone is suitable for a role, membership, employment or any other benefit, or to exclude anyone. A church is responsible for how its own staff use what they read here.
GiftWell is not for emergencies. If someone may be in danger, contact local emergency services. A church that learns of abuse or risk to a child from its own conversations has its own legal duties to report it. GiftWell does not report anything on a church's behalf.
Service and liability
GiftWell is provided "as is" and "as available". We work to keep it running and secure, but we do not promise it will be uninterrupted or error-free, and we give no promise that a result is accurate or fit for any particular purpose. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for lost profits or data, and our total liability for anything connected with GiftWell is limited to the fees the church paid for the plan year in which the problem arose (or, for the free plan, to zero). Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including for fraud, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence, and in some places the law gives you rights that cannot be taken away.
Indemnity
A church agrees to defend and reimburse GiftWell for claims from third parties, and reasonable costs of dealing with them, that arise from the church collecting or using people's information without the notice, consent or legal ground the law requires, from the church's content, or from the church breaking these terms. GiftWell will tell the church promptly of such a claim and let it help with the response. This does not apply to people who only take an assessment.
Ending, and getting your data back
- A church can stop using GiftWell at any time. It can export its list and make a full backup or migration file, and erase its people one by one or all together.
- To close a church's account entirely, the owner writes to hello@giftwell.app. Until we have deleted it, the church's data is handled as these terms and the data processing addendum say. After the owner asks, we will delete the church's data (copies remain in our hosting provider's backups until they expire) or return it first, if asked, in the formats the export and backup tools produce.
- We may suspend or end a church's access for serious or repeated breaches of these terms, for unpaid fees on a paid plan, or if the law requires. We will tell the owner why where we can, and give the church the chance to export its data unless the law or safety stops us.
- What must survive ending does: the sections on content, disclaimers, liability, indemnity, governing law and any payments owed.
Requests about personal information
How to see, correct, erase or export information, to withdraw consent or to complain, is on the privacy page. The short version: use the erase button on your results page, ask your church, or write to hello@giftwell.app and we will answer within 30 days. A church that receives such a request about information in GiftWell can use GiftWell's own tools to answer it, and we will help if asked.
Accessibility
We want GiftWell to be usable by everyone: with a keyboard, with a screen reader, on a small screen, and with reduced motion. We have built toward those goals (for example, a skip link and a setting that respects "reduce motion"), but we have not had an independent accessibility audit and we do not claim to meet any particular standard in full. If something stops you from using GiftWell, tell us at hello@giftwell.app and we will look at it and tell you what we can do.
Governing law
These terms are governed by the laws of Oregon, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Nothing here takes away rights you have under the consumer-protection law where you live. If you have a concern, write to us first at hello@giftwell.app and give us 30 days to try to put it right before starting a claim.
Changes to these terms
We may change these terms. We will post the new version with a new date and a line in the version history below. If a change is material, we will say so at the top of this page and email church owners before it takes effect. If you do not agree, you can stop using GiftWell and ask us to delete your data. Using GiftWell after a change takes effect is accepting it.
Who we are and how to reach us
GiftWell is provided by Zao, the parent company of DiscipleOS. GiftWell is part of the DiscipleOS family of products. DiscipleOS is a subsidiary of Zao.
Privacy and data requests: hello@giftwell.appEverything else: hello@giftwell.app
Version history
We keep this list so you can see what changed and when. If a change is one you would reasonably care about (for example, a new kind of data we collect or a new sub-processor), we will say so at the top of the page and email church owners before it takes effect.
- . Described how pastors follow up after a result: the walked-through and conversation log (who and when, never what was said), placing a person on a ministry and checking 30 and 90 days later whether they are serving (by the pastor's own answer, or by a read-only Planning Center check matched only by a linked profile or one exact email, and never for anyone who did not share or may be under 18), the staff-only view of ministry needs against people who could serve, and a weekly email to church staff naming people who shared and are still waiting. The email never goes to the people it lists, and goes out on a day and hour each church chooses in its own timezone (by default Monday 8:00 am Pacific). A person's My GiftWell download and printable page now also include the follow-up record kept about them (placements, the dates of conversations and walk-throughs, and the Planning Center team or group that was checked), and only theirs. Flagged for counsel review.
- . Clarified what the optional staff-only AI first look is sent: it also includes the Ephesians 4 first look and any self-reported profile result (such as Enneagram or Myers-Briggs) a pastor recorded for the person, and where the gifts each serving team asks for fall in the person's bands. The same consent and age rules apply, and the never-sent list is unchanged.
- . Added My GiftWell, a passwordless page where a person signs in with a one-time emailed code to see their own results over time, ask for one retake reminder email, and download or delete their own results. Described the code and session handling, what is and is not shown, the reminder, and the new retention periods. Flagged for counsel review.
- . Disclosed that GiftWell itself may use an AI provider (models routed through OpenRouter) for the platform-level "Ask the platform" analyst, sent only suppressed, rounded, anonymous aggregate tables and never names, emails, free text or individual assessments; listed it as a sub-processor; and stated plainly that platform administrators can open any church's workspace for support and operations, with each access recorded in the audit log.
- . Rewrote the terms and privacy pages; added the data processing addendum and the sub-processor list; spelled out what each role (taker, church, parent or guardian) can see and do; added regional rights, cookies, retention, and what GiftWell does not do. GiftWell's own fonts are now served from GiftWell itself.
GiftWell is part of the DiscipleOS family of products. DiscipleOS is a subsidiary of Zao.