1. What these terms cover
These Terms of Service are an agreement between you and Maximizing Potential, a nonprofit organization. They cover our website, participant accounts, submission tools, project showcase, demo hosting, and connected services. Please read them before accepting them or submitting a project.
Your project stays yours. Our User Agreement governs project ownership, judging, publication, hosting permissions, and removal. If these documents conflict about those subjects, the User Agreement controls. Our Privacy Policy describes personal-information handling. Published event rules cover that event's deadlines, eligibility, judging, and prizes. They do not silently expand our rights in your work.
Where we ask you to accept these terms, your affirmative acceptance forms the agreement. A new submission requires acceptance of the current versions of both agreements. We record the versions, time, and publication choices. Merely visiting a page does not grant us rights in your work or make you accept later changes.
Donations are covered separately by our Donor Bill of Rights and Privacy Policy. A separate written contract controls any paid services, sponsorship, employment, or project adoption it specifically addresses.
2. Eligibility and accounts
Participant accounts are for people aged 13 or older. If you have not reached the age at which you can enter this agreement where you live, a parent or legal guardian must review and agree to it for your use. This does not waive a minor's rights under applicable law or make an otherwise unenforceable provision enforceable. Event and third-party platform age rules may be different.
Provide accurate information, keep your account contact details current, and use only accounts and credentials you are authorized to use. Protect your sign-in codes and connected accounts. Tell us promptly if you suspect unauthorized access. You are responsible for your own authorized activity and reasonable account-security precautions; you are not automatically responsible for every unauthorized act or for a security failure caused by us.
A person submitting for a team or organization must have permission for the material and choices they approve. This does not transfer teammates' ownership, create authority they did not grant, or bind a person who cannot legally be bound by your acceptance.
3. Using the service and our materials
While you follow these terms, you may access and use the service for its intended purposes, including submitting, reviewing, demonstrating, and sharing links to projects. We keep rights in our own site design, branding, and original materials, subject to any licenses stated with them. You may use public materials as reasonably needed to use the service and as applicable law permits. Do not misrepresent our endorsement or use our name or logo in a misleading way.
Participant projects and third-party materials belong to their rights holders. Viewing a public project or downloading browser-delivered files is not a general license to adapt, redistribute, sell, or commercially deploy them. Follow any separate license the owner provides. Permission to use the website does not give either of us additional rights in the other's work.
4. Acceptable use
You must use the service lawfully and respect other people's safety, privacy, and rights. In particular, do not:
- Upload unlawful or infringing material, expose private information without authority, or impersonate another person.
- Harass, threaten, discriminate unlawfully, exploit children, or use the service for fraud or deceptive fundraising.
- Distribute malware, steal credentials, run deceptive sign-in forms, or use hosted demos to attack other systems.
- Bypass access controls, access private judging records without permission, manipulate scores, or evade a suspension.
- Disrupt the service, bypass published limits, or collect personal data through scraping or automated harvesting without an appropriate lawful basis and authorization.
- Claim that a prototype, project, participant, or sponsor has our endorsement when we have not given it.
Authorized assistants, documented APIs, accessibility tools, and ordinary search indexing are allowed within their stated permissions and reasonable service limits. Report a suspected security issue privately to our contact address. Do not access other people's data or disrupt service to demonstrate an issue.
5. Submissions, hosting, and participant responsibilities
Submit material you own or are allowed to use, and obtain the permissions needed for the publication choices you make. Describe your work honestly, credit sources, and follow relevant licenses and event rules. Do not include passwords, access keys, confidential client records, or sensitive personal information in public summaries, demos, or browser files.
The User Agreement limits our permission to operating submissions, judging, approved display and hosting, and ordinary event results. Service providers acting for us may process materials only as needed for those purposes and applicable recordkeeping. These Terms of Service add no license for AI training, sale, commercial adoption, or unrestricted promotion.
Our hosting supports compatible browser apps; it is not a promise to run a backend, database, or production service. Keep your own copies. You are responsible for maintaining external demos and for charges you separately authorize with other providers. We will not create a paid subscription for you merely because you submit a project.
We may review or restrict content to operate the service and respond to concerns, but cannot promise to inspect every submission or detect every problem. Hosting or linking to material does not mean we have verified its accuracy, legality, security, or usefulness.
6. Events, judging, and awards
Read the published rules for the event you enter. Participation does not guarantee admission, a particular score, a prize, funding, employment, partnership, or adoption of your project. Awards depend on the published criteria, eligibility checks, and any clearly disclosed prize conditions. Recipients are responsible for taxes legally assigned to them; we will explain any required award documentation.
Organizers may address misconduct, resolve ties under the event rules, correct administrative errors, and reasonably change or cancel an event when necessary. We will explain material changes as soon as practicable and consider their effect on participants. We will not add an undisclosed transfer of project ownership as a condition of receiving an already offered award.
Judging involves professional judgment. Questions about errors, conflicts of interest, accessibility, or rule application may be raised with the organizers for review. A disagreement with a score does not by itself establish a contractual right to an award. Nothing here removes a remedy available under applicable law.
7. Prototypes and third-party services
Hackathon projects can be incomplete or experimental. Test them cautiously using sample data. Unless expressly agreed in a separate qualified service relationship, our website and project demonstrations do not provide professional medical, legal, financial, emergency, or other regulated advice. Do not rely on a prototype for a safety-critical decision.
External links, repositories, sign-in providers, AI assistants, and other integrations are operated by their own providers under their terms and privacy practices. We do not control their availability or conduct. Connecting a provider does not authorize uses beyond the permissions shown. Our responsibility for our own conduct remains subject to the provisions below.
8. Availability and changes to the service
We aim to provide a useful, reasonably secure service, but features may change and outages or errors may occur. We do not promise uninterrupted availability, permanent storage, compatibility with every device, or a particular outcome. Maintenance, provider failures, emergencies, and circumstances outside our reasonable control may affect service.
We will make reasonable efforts to notify affected users before a planned material reduction or shutdown and provide a practical opportunity to save their own materials. Urgent security or legal needs may require immediate action. These provisions do not excuse obligations or responsibilities that the law does not permit us to exclude.
9. Removal, suspension, and account closure
We may restrict a feature, hide material, or suspend or close an account when reasonably necessary to address a material breach, rights complaint, security threat, harmful activity, or legal requirement. We will choose a proportionate response and, when reasonably possible, explain the reason and allow a response or correction. We may act first when delay could cause harm, compromise an investigation, or violate law.
You may request review by contacting us. You may also stop using the service and request account closure and data deletion. Project withdrawal, removal after results, and retained event records follow the User Agreement and Privacy Policy. Ending an account does not create a new right to exploit its projects.
After termination, only provisions needed for existing disputes, lawful recordkeeping, ownership, applicable liability limits, and obligations already accrued continue. Project permissions end or continue only to the limited extent explained in the User Agreement.
10. Copyright, privacy, and other concerns
Send concerns to maximizing.potential.admin@gmail.com. Identify the affected page or file, the right or concern involved, your relationship to it, and a way to contact you. Include supporting information you are comfortable sharing. Do not send passwords or unnecessary sensitive records.
We may ask for information needed to assess a claim, temporarily hide affected material, seek a response from its submitter, and remove content or restrict repeated misuse. We will handle requests in accordance with applicable law.
11. Service warranties and their limits
To the extent applicable law permits, we provide the service “as is” and “as available,” without implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement. We do not guarantee that participant content is accurate, that every defect will be corrected, or that a hosted project will meet your needs.
This does not remove an express promise we make in these agreements, any duty of reasonable care imposed by law, or a statutory guarantee or remedy that cannot legally be excluded. If your local law provides mandatory protections, they continue to apply.
12. Limits on liability
Subject to the exceptions below, and only where the law permits, neither Maximizing Potential nor its directors, officers, employees, or volunteers acting for it is liable under these terms for indirect or consequential losses, such as lost profits or lost business opportunities, arising from use of the service.
For other claims arising from the service, our combined total liability is limited to the greater of US $500 or the amount you paid us for the affected service in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim. Donations are not fees for the service. This cap applies across claims arising from the same or related events, regardless of whether the claim is described as contract, negligence, or another legal theory.
These exclusions and caps do not apply to fraud, willful misconduct, gross negligence, violations of law, personal injury or death, or any liability, duty, or remedy that applicable law does not allow us to limit. They do not prevent an available injunction, statutory consumer remedy, or other nonwaivable relief. They do not reduce a prize or refund we are legally required to provide. Where a limitation is not allowed, the applicable legal rule controls. Nothing here waives a defense or immunity available under applicable law.
13. Responsibility for intentional misuse
If your knowing infringement of another person's rights or intentional unlawful misuse of the service causes a third-party legal claim against us, you agree, only to the extent you are legally responsible, to reimburse reasonable direct losses and reasonable legal costs resulting from a final court decision or a settlement you approve. This is a limited reimbursement obligation, sometimes called indemnification.
It does not cover an honest mistake, an unsuccessful prototype, ordinary participation, conduct beyond your responsibility, or losses caused by our own fault. We must promptly notify you of the claim, provide reasonable information and an opportunity to participate in the defense, and take reasonable steps to reduce loss. We may not settle at your expense or admit wrongdoing on your behalf without your written agreement. All protections and limits that applicable law gives you remain in place.
14. Questions and disputes
We encourage you to contact us so we can try to resolve a concern within 30 days. This informal process is voluntary and does not prevent urgent relief, delay a filing deadline, or require you to give up a claim.
California law governs these terms, except that mandatory protections of the law that otherwise applies to you remain available. Unless applicable law requires or permits another forum that cannot be excluded, disputes may be brought in the state or federal courts with jurisdiction in Santa Clara County, California. You may use an eligible small-claims court. We do not require private arbitration, waive class actions, or shorten legal filing deadlines in these terms.
15. Changes and general provisions
We will date updated terms and give reasonable notice of material changes through the service or account contact information. We will obtain renewed acceptance when required. A later version does not retroactively govern an earlier dispute or expand an existing project permission without the affected rights holder's agreement. If you do not accept a required update, you may stop using the affected feature and request your materials or account closure.
These terms and the documents expressly incorporated above are the agreement for the covered service, subject to any specific written agreement between us. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest remains effective to the extent legally possible; this does not authorize replacing it with a broader restriction. A delay in enforcing a right does not waive it. Participation alone does not create employment, agency, a legal partnership, or authority to speak for us.
We cannot transfer the agreement in a way that expands project permissions or removes mandatory user protections. No sponsor, judge, or partner receives project rights merely because these terms exist. Other than the limited protections for people acting for us stated in section 12, these terms do not grant enforcement rights to third parties.
16. Contact and accessibility
For questions, accommodations, rights concerns, or review of a decision, contact Josh Williams, President, Maximizing Potential, at maximizing.potential.admin@gmail.com. We can help explain the submission choices or provide an accessible way to review these terms.