These Terms of Service ("Terms") apply to all users of the Not A Footnote Academy platform ("NFA," "we," "us," or "the Institution"), including Community Learners, Founding Learners, Learner Pathway learners, and Institutional account holders. By creating an account or accessing any paid feature of the platform, you agree to these Terms.
Use of NFA's publicly available free content — canonical essays, subject biographies, era overviews, bibliographies, and archival materials — does not require account creation and is not subject to these Terms beyond applicable law.
Founding Learners are governed first by the Founding Learner Covenant, which is a binding institutional promise that supersedes these Terms in all matters it addresses. These Terms govern the operational mechanics of the platform — account management, billing, conduct, and dispute resolution — not the mission commitments stated in the Covenant.
In any conflict between these Terms and the Founding Learner Covenant, the Covenant prevails for Founding Learners.
You must be at least 13 years of age to create an account. Users under 18 must have parental or guardian consent. Institutional accounts may create student accounts for users of any age under the supervision of the account administrator, who assumes full responsibility for appropriate use within their institution.
NFA does not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 without verifiable parental consent in accordance with applicable law.
You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account credentials and for all activity that occurs under your account. NFA will not be liable for any loss or damage arising from unauthorized access to your account that results from your failure to maintain account security.
You agree to provide accurate information when creating your account and to keep that information current. Accounts created with false information may be suspended.
The Community Pathway requires no payment and provides permanent access to all canonical knowledge — the essays, biographies, era overviews, bibliographies, and archival materials that constitute NFA's public knowledge commons. This access is guaranteed by the Founding Learner Covenant and the Pricing & Access Charter and will not be restricted.
Community Learners also receive Monthly Open Access Windows as described in the Covenants: full curriculum access on Day 1 of each month, and a rotating era window on Days 1–5. These windows are permanent commitments, not promotional features.
Community Pathway does not include structured curriculum pathways, assessments, progress tracking, downloads, or certificates.
Paid learner pathway grants access to the structural and pedagogical layer of the NFA platform: curriculum pathways, assessments, mastery verification, progress tracking, diagnostics, spaced retrieval, and downloadable learning materials. Payment does not grant access to historical knowledge that is not already freely available — it grants access to the tools and structure that help you learn it.
Your specific access rights depend on the learner pathway you select at enrollment. Tier details are published on the Learning Pathways page and are subject to these Terms and, where applicable, the Founding Learner Covenant.
All paid learner pathways are billed through the payment processor active at the time of enrollment (currently Stripe). By enrolling in a paid learner pathway, you authorize NFA to charge your selected payment method on a recurring basis at the interval you selected — monthly or annually.
Annual learner pathways are billed as a single charge at enrollment and on each anniversary thereafter. Monthly learner pathways are billed on the same calendar day each month. If your payment date falls on a day that does not exist in a given month, billing will occur on the last day of that month.
No payment will be collected from any waitlist learner until NFA formally incorporates as a Public Benefit Corporation. This pre-incorporation period is governed solely by the expression of interest submitted via the waitlist form and creates no financial obligation.
If you believe you have been charged in error — including duplicate charges, charges after cancellation, or charges at the wrong rate — you must contact NFA within 30 days of the charge at the contact page or by email at the address listed there.
NFA will investigate all reported billing errors and, where an error is confirmed, will issue a correction or credit within 10 business days. We do not issue refunds for periods of service already delivered except where a confirmed billing error occurred.
NFA does not offer a general refund policy. Before any payment is required, every prospective learner has access to:
These free access opportunities are designed to allow full evaluation of the NFA curriculum before any purchase decision. Learners are encouraged to take advantage of the monthly open access windows before enrolling in a paid tier.
Refunds are issued only in cases of confirmed billing errors as described in Section 8, or as required by applicable Arizona consumer protection law.
You may cancel your paid learner pathway at any time through your account settings or by contacting NFA directly. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. You will retain access to paid features through the end of the period for which you have already been charged.
Cancellation by a Founding Learner terminates Founding Learner status. The 24-month founding rate and associated guarantees do not survive voluntary cancellation and cannot be reinstated. This is the only circumstance under which Founding Learner status ends prior to the 24-month term.
NFA reserves the right to cancel accounts for violation of these Terms, in which case no further charges will be made from the date of cancellation.
You agree to use the NFA platform only for its intended educational purpose. The following are prohibited:
Institutional account administrators are responsible for all activity conducted under student and educator accounts associated with their institution. Administrators agree to ensure that student accounts are used appropriately and in accordance with these Terms, and that student data is handled in compliance with applicable education privacy laws including FERPA.
Institutional accounts may not be transferred to another organization without written consent from NFA.
All NFA-produced curriculum content — essays, analyses, lesson structures, assessments, and platform design — is the intellectual property of Not A Footnote Academy. Your learner pathway grants you a personal, non-transferable license to access and use this content for individual educational purposes.
This license does not permit reproduction, redistribution, republication, or commercial use of NFA content without express written permission. Institutional Plus licensing agreements govern any broader use rights granted to specific institutional partners.
Where NFA incorporates Open Educational Resources (OER) from third-party providers, those resources remain subject to their original licenses (CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC BY-NC, CC0, or equivalent). NFA does not claim ownership of OER content and provides full attribution and license information for all incorporated OER materials. OER resources are support materials only — they are never required for mastery and are never canonical.
NFA collects only the personal information necessary to operate the platform: name, email address, learner pathway, and learning progress data. This data is used solely to deliver the educational service you have enrolled for.
As stated in the Founding Learner Covenant and Pricing & Access Charter, NFA will not sell learner data to third parties and will not use learner data for advertising purposes. This is a Covenant commitment, not a policy subject to quiet amendment.
Learning progress data — assessments, mastery records, completion history — is private to your account and is not shared publicly, ranked against other learners, or used for purposes beyond delivering your personalized learning experience.
Upon account cancellation, NFA will retain your account data for 90 days to allow for reactivation. After 90 days, personal data associated with cancelled accounts will be deleted from active systems. Anonymized, aggregate learning analytics may be retained indefinitely for institutional research purposes.
You may request deletion of your account data at any time by contacting NFA directly. Deletion requests from active Founding Learner accounts will result in permanent cancellation of Founding Learner status as described in Section 10.
NFA provides the platform on an "as available" basis. We do not warrant uninterrupted access, and we are not liable for temporary service interruptions, data loss resulting from technical failures, or consequential damages arising from your use of the platform.
Our total liability to any learner for any claim arising from these Terms or use of the platform shall not exceed the total amount paid by that learner in the 12 months preceding the claim.
Nothing in this limitation of liability limits or waives any rights guaranteed to Founding Learners under the Founding Learner Covenant.
NFA strongly prefers to resolve disputes directly. Before initiating any formal dispute process, learners are required to contact NFA and allow 30 days for good-faith resolution. Most billing and access disputes can be resolved in this window.
Contact NFA directly at the address below. For Founding Learners disputing a rate violation, reference your Founding Learner status and the Covenant. These will be treated as priority disputes.
Founding Learners who believe a Covenant commitment has been materially violated have the right to raise that objection directly with NFA leadership. NFA is obligated to respond with a written accounting of the situation. Founding Learners may cite this right publicly.
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Arizona, without regard to conflict of law provisions. Any legal proceedings arising from these Terms shall be conducted in Maricopa County, Arizona.
NFA may update these Terms of Service. When material changes are made, learners will be notified by email at least 30 days before changes take effect. Continued use of the platform after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the revised Terms.
Changes to these Terms may not alter the founding rate, access guarantees, or any other rights of Founding Learners during their active 24-month founding period. The Covenant is non-revocable and takes precedence. If any proposed Terms update would conflict with the Covenant, the Covenant prevails and the conflicting update does not apply to Founding Learners.
For all questions, billing disputes, account issues, Covenant concerns, or legal notices:
Not A Footnote Academy
Incorporating as a Public Benefit Corporation · Arizona
Platform & Billing: Contact form →
Founding Learner Covenant disputes: Reference your Founding Learner status in all correspondence
Institutional inquiries: Institutional contact →
Press & legal notices: Press contact →