The Fund Terms of Service
Terms of Use for 2025 Design Challenge
By clicking the box below, you acknowledge and agree that all use by you or The Fund for Chicago Public School’s (“The Fund” or “Company”) 2025 Design Challenge (“Design Challenge”) will, at all times, conform to these Policies and these Terms of Use.
Access to The Fund’s Design Challenge is limited to Chicago Public Schools employees, employees from other public or charter schools in Chicago, IL, and those third-party partners that have been asked to participate and have agreed to abide by the Third-Party Participant Agreement. Design Challenge submissions may be posted by The Fund on the Design Challenge website and viewable to the public who may not be school district employees. These participants can view submissions, but scoring will be conducted by an approved judging panel recruited by The Fund.
1. Adhere to the Design Challenge Purpose. The Design Challenge website and associated course materials created in partnership with Leadership+Design, which retains co-ownership of materials, are to be used solely for purposes of participating in the 2025 Design Challenge. You may not post personal messages, advertising, spam, sensitive personal information, employment-related issues or other similar content.
2. Submissions. The Design Challenge permits submissions (design opportunities and all supporting artifacts) to be posted “identifiably” (including school name and submitter’s name). Participating schools will be called “submitters.” This means the idea may be posted with or without attribution, but in both cases the submitter’s identity will be known and monitored by 2025 Design Challenge administrators (“Administrators”) from The Fund and their contracted partners. Those submitting comments on ideas will be identified by name either publicly or internally on the Design Challenge website. Selected postings will be visible to other submitters and the public once approved by Administrators and posted on the Design Challenge website.
3. Protect Confidential and Proprietary information. Do not post any sensitive, proprietary, confidential, or financial information about your school, school district or student populations other than what is publicly available and shared by the School. This includes student, parent or teacher names, identifiable student academic or personal data, and pictures of students who do not have school or district-obtained media releases. While the submissions may be used to explore innovative and strategic ideas, the personally identifiable details supporting those ideas (such as assessment data, behavior and attendance reports, etc.) should not be submitted via Design Challenge deliverables. If in doubt, check with The Fund before submitting.
4. Ownership of Postings. In the 2025 Design Challenge, submissions to the Design Challenge (such as: design opportunities, ideas, solutions, prototypes, and any supporting artifacts or documents, and Design Challenge required deliverables) will be considered co-owned by the Submitter and The Fund only. Do not reproduce or redistribute any postings outside of the Design Challenge without written permission from the Submitter or The Fund.
5. Respect Intellectual Property Rights. Do not post any material that is prohibited from being posted by contract. Also, do not post copyrighted material prepared by others unless: (a) you have written permission of the copyright owner to post the copyrighted material, or (b) you are sure that the use of any copyrighted material is permitted by the legal doctrine of “fair use.” Note that information sourced from the Web may be subject to contractual “terms of use” imposed by the source Web site.
6. Photos and Videos. You may post photos of yourself (no one else), provided that you have permission from the person who took the photo. If you have written permission from the parent or guardian of any minors, or have a school district approved media release, you can submit photo or video resources to support your submission. If you would like these resources to be visible only to administrators, and not publically available on the Design Challenge website, you agree to contact the Administrator immediately after submission.
7. Be Respectful. All communications should be of the highest quality and, in every respect, demonstrate professionalism consistent with all Chicago Public School and The Fund Policies. Respect your audience. Don’t use ethnic slurs, personal insults, obscenity, etc. and show proper consideration for others’ privacy and for topics that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory. Don’t pick fights, be the first to correct your own mistakes, and don’t alter or delete previous posts.
Keep in mind that digital communications, along with their attachments and files in The Fund’s computer systems, may be made public in the event of litigation. Carelessly worded documents can be misconstrued and used against the Submitter in the event of a lawsuit or other legal proceeding. For this and general business reasons, the same practices and procedures used in handling any other form of business communications apply to digital communications.
8. Deletion of Postings. Authorized Administrators retain the right, in their sole discretion, to edit, remove or refuse to post submissions that are determined to be off-topic, illegal or otherwise inappropriate. Posting rights may be withdrawn from anyone who posts inappropriate or offensive content.
9. Policy Violations. In the event that you become aware of a violation of these Terms of Use, report the violation to: edubinsky@thefundchicago.org. Appropriate follow-up steps will be taken with respect to these confidential reports.
10. The Obvious One: Obey the law. As a reminder, our Policies prohibit the posting or communication of material that is obscene, defamatory, libelous, illegal or otherwise inappropriate for a business setting. Do not post material that contains viruses or any other computer code that is intended to damage, interfere with, intercept or expropriate any system, data or information or otherwise violate our corporate policies.
11. User Beware! The Fund does not assume responsibility for the accuracy of Innovation Platform content or postings, nor does it offer any warranties as to any information posted on the Innovation Platforms by users.
For questions about The Fund’s Digital Posting Terms of Use, please contact the Innovation Administrator at: edubinsky@thefundchicago.org.