Donations Terms

The Wyvern Fellowship Ltd · a company limited by guarantee, registered in England and Wales, company number 17438355 · registered office 128 City Road, London, United Kingdom, EC1V 2NX
Last updated: 4 September 2026

These terms apply if you make a payment through the /donate page on our website (a "Donation"). They are separate from, and shorter than, our Fellow Terms and our Website Terms of Use, which continue to apply to your general use of the Site. Please read this page before you donate.

1. What a Donation is

1.1 A Donation is a voluntary payment made through /donate, given without any right to receive goods, services, benefits or access in return. This is what makes it different from a paid Bronze, Silver, Gold or Patron subscription (which carries specific benefits) or a Patron subscription in particular: those are purchases of a subscription, governed by our separate Fellow Terms, not donations, even though Patron is also a significant annual payment. If you want the Fellow benefits that come with a subscription, please use the subscription checkout, not this page.

1.2 We may, at our discretion, publicly or privately thank donors or acknowledge a Donation (for example, in a supporters' list), but doing so is a courtesy, not a benefit given in exchange for your Donation, and you may ask us at any time not to identify you.

2. We are not a charity: no Gift Aid

2.1 The Wyvern Fellowship Ltd is a private company limited by guarantee, established for public benefit. We are not a registered charity and we are not recognised by HMRC as a charity for tax purposes.

2.2 This means:

• we cannot claim Gift Aid on your Donation, and you should not complete a Gift Aid declaration in connection with it;
• your Donation is not tax-deductible and does not qualify for any charitable tax relief; and
• we will never describe a Donation as charitable, or suggest it is Gift Aid-eligible, in our marketing or on the Site.

2.3 If you are looking to support a specific registered charity for tax-relief purposes, a Donation to us is not the right vehicle for that.

3. What your Donation funds

3.1 Donations form part of our general funds and are applied, at the discretion of our directors, towards our objects as set out in our Articles of Association, which include our research, journalism and advocacy work, family and community mutual-aid activity, chapter and community events, education and skills programmes, and grants or support to individuals and organisations whose work furthers those objects.

3.2 Unless we expressly agree with you in writing that a Donation is restricted to a specific project or purpose, your Donation is unrestricted and may be applied to any of our objects as the directors consider appropriate. Under the asset lock in Article 4 of our Articles of Association, all of our income and property, including Donations, must be applied solely towards our objects, and none of it may be distributed to our members (who, under our constitution, are our directors) as profit.

3.3 If we do agree that a Donation is restricted to a specific purpose and it later becomes impossible, impractical or no longer appropriate to apply it to that purpose, we will apply it to the closest equivalent purpose consistent with our objects and will tell you if you ask us.

4. Donations are non-refundable

4.1 Because a Donation is a gift and not a purchase of goods or services, the statutory cancellation rights that apply to some online purchases (such as under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013) do not apply to it, and Donations are non-refundable once processed, except as set out in clause 5 (mistaken payments) or where required by law.

4.2 If your card payment is disputed, unauthorised or fraudulent, your rights against your card issuer or under the Payment Services Regulations 2017 are not affected by this clause; please contact your bank or card provider as well as us.

5. Mistaken payments

5.1 If you believe you have made a Donation by mistake (for example, you donated the wrong amount, donated twice, meant to make a different payment, or did not intend to make a payment at all), please contact us as soon as possible, and in any event within 60 days, at [email protected], giving your name, the amount, the approximate date, and the payment method used.

5.2 On receiving a timely and genuine report under clause 5.1, we will investigate promptly and, where we are satisfied a payment was made in error, we will refund it (in whole or in the erroneous part) to the original payment method within a reasonable time, normally 10 business days of confirming the mistake. We may ask for reasonable evidence to confirm the payment and the error before refunding.

5.3 If a payment was applied to our general funds before you reported the mistake, our agreement to refund it under clause 5.2 is not affected by the fact that we may, in the meantime, have relied on it; we will make good any refund due from our general funds.

5.4 This clause 5 does not create a right to a refund simply because you have changed your mind about a Donation you intended to make (see clause 4.1); it is limited to genuine payment errors.

6. How we process your payment

6.1 Donations are processed by our payment provider, Stripe. We do not store your full card details ourselves. Stripe's own terms and privacy practices apply to its handling of your payment details.

6.2 We collect and use personal data connected with your Donation (such as your name, email address and payment confirmation) in accordance with our Privacy Notice. We keep financial records of Donations for as long as we are required to for accounting and tax purposes.

7. Liability

Nothing in these Donations Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for any other liability that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited. Subject to that, our liability to you in connection with a Donation is limited to the amount of that Donation.

8. Age

You must be 18 or over to make a Donation through /donate. We do not knowingly accept Donations from anyone under 18. See our Age Policy for more detail.

9. General

9.1 We may update these Donations Terms from time to time; the version published on the Site at the time you donate applies to that Donation.

9.2 These Donations Terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales (or, if you are a consumer resident elsewhere in the UK, the courts of the part of the UK in which you live) have jurisdiction.

9.3 If you are unhappy with anything covered by these Donations Terms, please use our Complaints Procedure. Contact us: [email protected].