Terms of Service

These Terms of Service (the "Terms") are a contract between you and GRC Eng Club, Inc., a Delaware C corporation, doing business as GRC Engineering Club ("the Club", "we", "us"). They govern your use of grcengclub.com, cert.grcengclub.com (the "Training Academy"), directory.grcengclub.com, shop.grcengclub.com, our chapter program, our events, and the Club communities we run on third-party platforms (together, the "Services").

By using the Services, creating an account, joining as a member, or buying anything from us, you agree to these Terms, our Privacy Policy, and our Refund Policy, which are incorporated here. If you do not agree, do not use the Services.

You do not need to click an "I agree" button for this to apply. Signing in to the Training Academy, watching a course, submitting a capstone, or otherwise using the Services is your agreement to these Terms, including the data and content uses described in How we use your data and content.

If you are using the Services on behalf of a company (for example, a team membership), you confirm you have authority to bind that company, and "you" includes the company.

You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of majority where you live if that is higher, to create an account or make a purchase. The Services are for professionals and students building a career in GRC engineering. We may refuse or cancel membership at our discretion, including for anyone who has previously been removed from the Club.

Parts of the Club run on platforms we do not control. Monthly membership is billed by Patreon. Community chat runs on Slack and Patreon. Payments are processed by Stripe. Merch is sold through Shopify. Event registration runs through Eventbrite. Capstone and challenge submissions are hosted on GitHub. Your use of each of those platforms is also governed by that platform's own terms, and if there is a conflict about something that happens on their platform, their terms control for that platform.

Give us accurate information and keep it current. Academy access is tied to the email address you register with. You are responsible for everything that happens under your account and for keeping your credentials private.

One person per seat. A membership, certification purchase, or team seat is for the individual it was issued to. Sharing logins, reselling access, or pooling a seat across several people is a breach of these Terms and grounds for termination without refund.

Prices are shown at checkout in US dollars and may change for new purchases at any time. Applicable sales tax or VAT may be added at checkout depending on where you are.

Annual membership auto-renews. The $70 annual membership is a recurring yearly subscription. It charges automatically each year until you cancel, which you can do at any time from your Stripe receipt or by emailing us. Monthly membership through Patreon renews under Patreon's billing terms. Certification purchases are one-time.

Promotion codes are for the audience they were issued to, may be limited in number or time, and may be withdrawn if misused. Refunds are governed by our Refund Policy.

Certified GRC Engineer (CGE) credentials are issued by the Club when you meet the published requirements for that credential, such as passing the exam and, for CGE-P, passing the capstone review against the published rubric.

Exam integrity. Exams must be completed by you alone, without outside help, and without recording, copying, or sharing exam questions. Capstone and challenge submissions must be your own work. Using AI tools to build a capstone is fine and encouraged; submitting someone else's repository as your own is not.

Badge use. While your credential is valid you may display the official badge and name the credential on your resume, LinkedIn, and other professional profiles. You may not alter the badge, imply the Club endorses you or your employer, or claim a credential you have not earned. We may revoke a credential and its badge if it was obtained in breach of these Terms, and we may publish the verification status of any credential through our public verification page.

A credential reflects that you met our requirements on the date it was issued. It is not a guarantee of employment, a license, or a promise of any particular outcome.

"Your content" means anything you submit to the Services: directory profiles, capstone and challenge repositories, member stories and testimonials, chapter applications, posts in Club communities, headshots, and anything else you share with us.

You own your content. You grant us a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicensable license to host, store, reproduce, display, distribute, analyze, modify, and create derivative works from your content in connection with operating and promoting the Services and for the purposes described in How we use your data and content, for example listing your directory profile, showing your name on a chapter page, quoting a member story you submitted, reviewing your capstone, or including your submissions in a dataset used to train an AI model. For anything we use in marketing, we will credit you as you asked to be credited and will remove it on request.

You are responsible for your content. Do not submit anything you do not have the right to share, anything that identifies a third party without their permission, or anything that discloses your employer's confidential information.

Directory and chapter listings. The GRC Engineer Directory and chapter leadership pages are public. You can update or remove your listing at any time by emailing hello@grcengclub.com, and we will act within 10 business days.

Beyond running the Club, you agree that we may use the information we collect about you and your content for the purposes below. "Usage data" means how you use the Services: course and lab progress, exam responses and results, capstone and challenge submissions and the feedback we give on them, what you type into Academy tools (such as the AI documentation tool) and what those tools produce, questions you send us, event registrations, and your activity in Club communities. Our Privacy Policy describes what we collect and your rights in detail.

• Marketing. To promote the Club, the Training Academy, chapters, events, and sponsored programs. This includes sending you marketing email about Club offerings (every marketing email has an unsubscribe link), publishing aggregated results such as pass rates and completion counts, and featuring content you submitted, credited as you asked to be credited.
• Training AI. To develop, train, fine-tune, evaluate, and improve artificial intelligence and machine learning models and AI-powered features, whether we build them ourselves or through vendors working for us. Your content and usage data may be used for this.
• AI data licensing. To create datasets from your content and usage data and to license, sell, or otherwise make those datasets available to third parties that build, train, or evaluate AI models, including AI companies, data partners, and research organizations.

Passwords and payment card details are never part of any dataset; we do not hold them. Before we license data to a third party, we remove direct identifiers such as your name and email address, except for content you chose to make public (for example a directory profile or a published member story) or asked to be credited for.

Opting out. You can opt out of the AI training and AI data licensing uses at any time by emailing hello@grcengclub.com from the address on your account. We will stop including your data in new datasets within 30 days. We cannot recall datasets already delivered or retrain models that have already been trained. Opting out does not affect your membership, your Academy access, or your credentials.

The Club works because members show up for each other. In every Club space, online or in person, you agree not to:

• harass, threaten, demean, or discriminate against anyone;
• spam, recruit for unrelated ventures, or pitch products without permission;
• share other members' personal information outside the Club;
• share exam content, or redistribute paid Club content outside the Club;
• impersonate the Club, its staff, or chapter leaders;
• break the law or the rules of the platform we are on.

We can remove you. We may warn, suspend, or permanently remove anyone from any Club space, including chapters, communities, events, and the Academy, if in our reasonable judgment they are disruptive, unsafe, or in breach of these Terms. Removal for breach does not entitle you to a refund. Chapter leaders act on our behalf when moderating their chapter and may remove someone from a chapter space; you can appeal to us by email.

Course videos, labs, exams, study guides, playbooks, podcast episodes, graphics, the CGE marks, and the Club name and logo belong to us or our licensors. Your membership or purchase gives you a personal, non-transferable license to use that content for your own learning while you have access. You may not copy, record, resell, publicly post, or use it to build a competing course or product.

Some Club projects, such as the claude-grc-engineering toolkit and the engineering kits published on GitHub, are released under their own open-source licenses. Where a license file is included with a project, that license governs that project.

Chapter leaders receive a limited license to use Club branding for approved chapter activities, which ends when they leave the role.

Everything we publish is educational. It is not legal, audit, accounting, or compliance advice for your specific situation, and completing a Club course does not make the Club responsible for your organization's compliance program. Member outcomes and salary figures we publish are real examples and market data, not promises about what will happen for you.

The Services are provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not promise the Services will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that any content will be available forever. Third-party platforms we rely on may change or go away, and we may replace them.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, GRC Eng Club, Inc. and its officers, chapter leaders, instructors, and contractors will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or lost opportunities, arising from or related to the Services, even if we were told they were possible.

Our total liability to you for any claim arising from the Services is limited to the amount you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose, or 100 US dollars, whichever is greater. Some jurisdictions do not allow these limits, so they may not apply to you in full. Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud or for consumer rights that apply where you live.

You agree to defend and indemnify us against claims, losses, and reasonable legal costs arising from your content, your breach of these Terms, or your misuse of the Services.

You can stop using the Services and cancel your membership at any time. We may suspend or terminate your access if you breach these Terms, if required by law, or if we wind down a Service. Sections that by their nature should survive (your content license for content already published, our IP rights, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnification, and governing law) survive termination.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. If you have a problem, email us first at hello@grcengclub.com. We will try in good faith to resolve it within 30 days. If we cannot, any claim must be brought in the courts located in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and you consent to their jurisdiction.

If you are a consumer in the European Union or the United Kingdom, you keep the benefit of any mandatory consumer protections of the country where you live, and you may bring a claim in your local courts.

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will post the new version here with an updated date. Continuing to use the Services after a change means you accept the updated Terms.

GRC Eng Club, Inc., a Delaware C corporation
hello@grcengclub.com