Terms & Creative Guidelines

Effective July 13, 2026. These terms govern use of The Pool, a crowdfunding service operated by Dust Wave. By using the site, submitting a pledge, or providing content, you agree to these terms and to any campaign-specific terms shown before checkout. If campaign-specific terms conflict with these terms, the more specific term controls for that campaign unless prohibited by law.

1. Eligibility and acceptable use

You must be able to enter a binding agreement and must provide accurate contact, payment, tax, and shipping information. Do not misuse the service, interfere with its operation, probe private access, impersonate another person, submit unlawful material, or use the platform to violate another person’s rights.

2. All-or-nothing pledges

• A pledge is a conditional commitment to support a campaign. Stripe saves your payment method, but no campaign charge is made when you first pledge.
• You may change or cancel a pledge through its secure management link while the campaign is still open.
• If the campaign does not reach its goal by the deadline, the campaign pledge is not charged.
• If the campaign reaches its goal, The Pool may charge the saved payment method after the campaign ends. Pledges for the same successful campaign and email address may be combined into one charge; different campaigns are settled separately.
• Reward tiers, direct campaign support, custom campaign amounts, and campaign add-ons count toward that campaign’s goal. Tax, shipping, platform add-ons, and optional platform tips do not.
• A failed or expired payment method can prevent a pledge from being completed. We may contact you to update it, but we do not promise that every failed payment can be recovered.

3. Prices, payment, tax, and optional charges

Prices are shown in U.S. dollars unless stated otherwise. The server verifies current catalog prices, selected variants, shipping, tax, tips, add-ons, and campaign totals before saving or charging a pledge. Browser-displayed totals may remain estimates until enough destination information is available.

Stripe handles full card numbers and security codes; The Pool does not store them. Applicable sales tax and shipping are shown during checkout when they can be calculated. Optional platform tips and optional add-ons are identified separately before you confirm the pledge.

4. Shipping and fulfillment

• Physical rewards and products ship to the address saved with the pledge. You are responsible for checking it and using the pledge-management link to submit permitted changes before fulfillment begins.
• Unless a campaign says otherwise, physical items ship from New Mexico, United States. Available destinations, shipping methods, free-shipping terms, signature options, and charges are the ones shown during checkout.
• Campaign and product pages may show an estimated availability or delivery period. These are good-faith estimates, not guaranteed delivery dates. Creative production, manufacturing, inventory, weather, customs, carrier operations, and other events can cause delays.
• If international delivery is offered, the recipient is responsible for import duties, brokerage fees, and local taxes not collected during checkout unless the campaign explicitly says otherwise.
• Risk of carrier delay or loss is reviewed using the available tracking, address, and fulfillment records. Contact us promptly if tracking appears stalled, delivered to the wrong location, or marked delivered when the package was not received.
• Digital rewards are delivered to the email address associated with the pledge unless the campaign states another method.

5. No returns, fulfillment problems, and refunds

Default policy: no returns or exchanges. Once a successful campaign pledge or product order is charged, rewards, campaign add-ons, and platform products are final sale. We do not accept returns or exchanges for change of mind, preference, fit, or sizing.

This final-sale policy does not remove remedies for a damaged, defective, incorrect, or missing item:

1. Email [email protected] as soon as reasonably possible and ordinarily within seven calendar days after the carrier marks the shipment delivered.
2. Include the pledge or order reference, a description of the problem, and clear photos of the item, packaging, and shipping label when reasonably available.
3. We verify the report against available carrier tracking and fulfillment records. If a shipment has no tracking or no reliable delivered timestamp, we review timing and evidence in good faith.
4. When the report is verified, the available remedy may be repair, replacement, completion of missing items, or a refund for the affected item, depending on the problem and available inventory.

The seven-day period is a problem-reporting guideline, not a return window. Reporting later does not waive rights that cannot legally be waived, although delay may make carrier claims or factual verification harder.

Before a campaign is funded, you may cancel the pledge while it remains open and no campaign charge will be made. If a charged reward cannot be fulfilled, the campaign or Dust Wave will provide an updated plan and may offer a later delivery, a reasonable substitute with your agreement, or a refund for the unfulfilled item. Duplicate charges, processor errors, suspected fraud, and legally required refunds are reviewed separately from ordinary returns.

6. Campaign risks and creator responsibility

Crowdfunding supports work that may still be in development. Creative plans, schedules, designs, casting, production methods, and fulfillment details can change. Campaign creators are responsible for describing their project honestly, using funds for the stated project, communicating material changes, and making reasonable efforts to complete promised rewards. The Pool provides the platform and operational tools but does not guarantee that every project or reward will be completed exactly as first described.

7. Creative submissions

This section applies only when a campaign explicitly asks for names, messages, images, recordings, story ideas, or other supporter-created material. You confirm that you have the right to submit the material. You grant the campaign creator and Dust Wave a worldwide, royalty-free license to host, reproduce, edit, adapt, and use it for the campaign, related production, fulfillment, and promotion. A campaign may reject or modify material that is unsafe, unlawful, defamatory, infringing, hateful, harassing, technically unusable, or inconsistent with the project’s creative direction.

8. Communications and access links

Pledge confirmations, payment notices, fulfillment messages, and material campaign updates are transactional communications. Optional launch and abandoned-checkout reminders require the consent described at signup and include an unsubscribe method. Secure pledge-management, supporter-community, preview, and administration links must not be shared with unauthorized people. Access can be revoked when a link expires, is misused, or no longer points to an active record.

9. Privacy and data

The Pool collects information needed to operate the service, including contact details, pledge and order data, campaign interactions, and shipping information for physical items. Stripe handles full payment-card details. Cloudflare provides site and Worker infrastructure; Resend delivers email; and shipping, tax, and abuse-prevention providers receive limited data when their service is needed.

Authorized campaign operators may access supporter, reporting, and fulfillment information only for campaigns they are permitted to manage. Platform administrators may access information needed to operate, secure, reconcile, support, back up, or restore the platform. We do not sell personal information. Records may be retained for fulfillment, accounting, fraud prevention, legal obligations, dispute handling, and disaster recovery, then deleted or minimized when no longer reasonably needed.

To ask a privacy question or request a review of information associated with your email, contact [email protected]. We may need to verify that you control the relevant email or pledge before responding.

10. Intellectual property and open source

Campaign creators retain rights in their campaign materials subject to the permissions needed to display, promote, administer, and archive their campaigns. The Pool name, branding, and site content remain the property of their respective owners. The platform source code is available under the license published in its GitHub repository; that software license does not grant rights to campaign media, supporter submissions, trademarks, or private data.

11. Availability, disclaimers, and liability

The service is provided on an “as available” basis. We work to keep pledge records, settlement, email, and public pages reliable, but do not promise uninterrupted or error-free operation. To the fullest extent permitted by law, Dust Wave is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages arising from use of the service, campaign performance, production changes, or carrier delays. Nothing in these terms excludes liability or consumer rights that cannot legally be excluded.

12. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms to reflect product, legal, or operational changes. The effective date above will change when the public terms change materially. Changes apply prospectively unless law requires otherwise. Material campaign-specific changes should also be communicated to affected supporters through the campaign’s normal update channels.

13. Contact

Questions about a pledge, payment, shipment, fulfillment problem, privacy, or these terms can be sent to [email protected]. Include the campaign name and pledge or order reference when applicable; do not email full card numbers or security codes.