Terms of Service

Declared is an independent platform — not affiliated with, partnered with, or endorsed by the NAIA, the NCAA, the NJCAA, or any other athletic association or conference.

At a glance

• Declared is an independent platform. It is not the NAIA, the NCAA, the NJCAA, or any other athletic association or conference, and is not affiliated with, partnered with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any of them.
• Athletes must start their own school's transfer process, truthfully, before signing up. Signing up is a public declaration of transfer intent.
• Athletes and coaches must complete their association's legal/transfer process before they sign up or message anyone. Breaking the rules can suspend your account, and Declared LLC is not responsible for it.
• Information must be truthful. Accounts are for one person and are not shared.
• Declared is provided "as is," with no guarantee of a release, eligibility, a roster spot, or any recruiting outcome.
• Declared may update these terms at any time, for any reason.

This summary is for convenience only. The full terms below are the agreement.

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1. Not affiliated, and compliance is your responsibility

Declared is a separate, independent platform. It is not affiliated with, partnered with, sponsored by, or endorsed by the NAIA, the NCAA, the NJCAA, or any other athletic association or conference in any way, and it is not an official transfer portal of any association. League, conference, and school names are used only to describe where athletes play, and those names and marks belong to their respective owners.

Every athlete and coach must complete their own association's required legal and transfer process before creating an account and before messaging anyone on Declared. If you do not, your account may be suspended, and you — not Declared LLC — are solely responsible for any rules violation or consequence that results.

2. About Declared and these terms

Declared ("Declared," "we," "us," or "our") is a service operated by Declared LLC, a Washington single-member limited liability company. You can reach us about these terms at garrett@declaredgroup.com.

These Terms of Service form a binding agreement between you and Declared. If you do not agree to them, do not create an account or use the platform. Declared may update these terms at any time, as described in Section 16.

3. Who can use Declared, and how accounts are verified

Declared is for college athletes who are transferring, and for coaches and recruiting staff who recruit them. You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of majority where you live, to create an account, and every account confirms this at signup. Declared is not intended for high school athletes or for anyone under 18, and Declared does not knowingly collect information from them.

For athletes. Athlete accounts are public declarations of transfer intent; there are no hidden or private athlete accounts. Athletes who still have a school email sign up with that school .edu address, verified by a confirmation link sent to that address, and go live right away. Athletes who are no longer enrolled and have no school email can still sign up using a personal email by completing a short verification (former school, last season, and supporting details); those profiles are reviewed and approved by Declared before they go live, so the database stays real. A profile Declared does not approve is deleted, along with everything entered in it. Until Declared approves the profile, the athlete can fill in and edit it but cannot message a coach or express interest in a program. This review only confirms that Declared has looked at the signup. It does not confirm or guarantee that the athlete has properly entered their association's transfer process; that responsibility stays with the athlete. Once a profile is approved and declared, Declared opens messaging to coaches; when a coach may respond is set by the coach's association.

For coaches. Coach accounts are for verified coaching or recruiting staff at a college or university and require a school .edu email. Personal addresses such as Gmail are not accepted for coach accounts, and there is no exception to this.

Declared checks every coach's school email against its own records. If your address is already on file for the school and sport you select, your account is verified immediately. If not, Declared reviews your account before it is active and before you can pay, usually within a business day, and emails you when you can complete payment.

You are not charged while your account is in review. If Declared cannot confirm that you coach that sport at the school you selected, your account is not approved and no payment is taken. An account Declared does not approve is deleted.

4. Start your transfer the right way first

Before you sign up as an athlete, you must truthfully start your own school's transfer process. NCAA athletes notify their compliance office, and the school enters them in the NCAA portal within about two days. NAIA athletes inform their athletic director. NJCAA, CCCAA and NWAC athletes follow their own association's process, and so does anyone whose school belongs to another association: whichever association governs your school, start its process first. Under NAIA rules, an NAIA school must notify an NAIA athlete's current school in writing before responding to the athlete, and within 10 days of first contact, unless the athlete has a signed release. The NAIA treats a public declaration on a platform like Declared as possibly the first contact.

Signing up on Declared does not replace your school's process, does not itself enter you in any association's official portal, and does not guarantee eligibility, a release, or immediate playing time. Releases are issued at your current athletic director's discretion.

5. How the platform works

Declaring. Once an athlete completes their declaration, their profile is in the portal and visible to verified coaches in their sport. It is also visible, in a read-only form and only for the sports Declared has granted, to approved Other accounts: journalists, media outlets, and conference or association staff who work in small-college athletics, described in the Privacy Policy section 4b. An Other account can look at athlete profiles and program pages, including the position, season, school and level of posted recruiting needs, and nothing more: it cannot message anyone, cannot see contact details, cannot see a coach's own description of a need or whether a scholarship is offered, and cannot post. An athlete is either declared or committed; there is no separate withdrawn state, and leaving Declared means deleting your account. A declared profile with no sign-in for 30 days is hidden from coaches until the athlete signs in and confirms they are still transferring. A declaration includes at least one college season, with stats or marked Redshirt or Did not play; a profile with no season, including one whose last season was deleted, is not in the portal until the athlete adds one.

Messaging gate. Signing up is itself a truthful declaration of transfer intent. Declared opens messaging when an athlete declares; when a coach may respond is set by the coach's association (for the NAIA, after notifying the athlete's current school). Only athletes who have signed up are on Declared at all: a coach cannot see, add to a recruiting board, or contact anyone who has not chosen to be there. Declared does not tell an athlete which coaches are watching them.

Commitment. When an athlete marks themselves committed, their profile shows as Committed, with the school, and other schools can no longer contact them. The account and everything in it are deleted 30 days after the most recent time the athlete marked themselves committed, unless they delete it sooner or switch back to declared before then. Athletes can switch between declared and committed as often as they like; each commit restarts the 30 days. Declared emails a reminder a week before the deletion.

6. Coach accounts and account use

School email required. Coach accounts require a verified school email (a .edu address at the coach's institution). Personal addresses such as Gmail are not accepted for coach accounts. Each account represents a single coach or staff member. A subscription is per program (school + sport) and includes a set number of coach seats: three for football and two for every other sport, with each coach using their own account and verified school email. There is no path to add seats beyond the per-sport limit.

The program's year follows the coach who paid for it. A program's one-year term is bought by its primary coach, and it is licensed to that coach and their school email, not to the school. If the primary coach moves to another school, the rest of the term moves with them: their recruiting board, stages, private notes and messages move too, and Declared re-scopes their access to the new school's sport and gender until the date the term would have ended, unless Declared removes the account under Section 14. If that school's program is already on Declared, they join it as a coach if it has a free seat. A program should understand the consequence before it buys: when the primary coach moves, the program's term ends at the old school that day, and every other coach on it loses access. A coach who was added to a program does not take a seat with them when they leave. The program's primary coach can remove a coach from its seats, which frees that seat for another coach. To move, the primary coach asks from the bottom of My Program, or emails garrett@declaredgroup.com, while their old school email still works; Declared confirms the new school address before moving anything.

Declared re-verifies each coach's school email once a year by sending a link to that address. If the address stops working or the link is not confirmed within 14 days, the seat is paused until it is confirmed. Pausing a seat deletes nothing, though Declared can still remove an account under Section 14.

Account security. Your account is for you. Do not share your login. You can be signed in on up to 2 devices at once. Signing in on a third device automatically signs out the oldest one. Declared tracks active sessions and devices, and repeated sharing can suspend the account. Sign-in uses an email and password, with email verification and password reset. You are responsible for activity that happens under your account.

7. Responsibilities and compliance

For athletes. Athletes are responsible for following their association's transfer, contact, and notification rules (NCAA, NAIA, NJCAA, CCCAA, NWAC, or whichever association governs your school), and for truthfully starting their own school's process before signing up. Information athletes provide must be truthful and their own.

For coaches. Coaches are responsible for following their own association's recruiting, contact, and transfer-notification rules.

For everyone. Declared logs contact to help everyone stay clean, but compliance is on the user, not Declared. Breaking association rules, signing up without truthfully being in the transfer process, or misrepresenting information can suspend or remove an account.

Declared is not a compliance office and does not give legal, eligibility, or compliance advice. Nothing on the platform is a substitute for guidance from a compliance office, athletic director, or the associations themselves.

8. Athlete information and content

Athlete-entered information. The information on athlete profiles — stats, class, measurables, GPA, bio, photos, and film — is entered manually by the athletes themselves and is self-reported. Declared does not collect it from schools or third-party sites. Declared does not guarantee that any stat or detail is complete, current, or accurate, and any athlete can request correction or removal at any time (Section 14).

Athlete content. When an athlete adds information to their profile, such as a bio, stats, photo, or film links, the athlete keeps ownership of it and grants Declared a non-exclusive license to display and distribute that content on the platform for the purpose of operating the service. Athletes are responsible for having the rights to anything they upload, including film.

Coach photos. A coach who adds a profile photo keeps ownership of it and grants Declared a non-exclusive license to display it to athletes on the platform for the purpose of operating the service. Coaches are responsible for having the rights to the photo they upload.

Users may not post content that is false, unlawful, infringing, or that impersonates someone else.

No scraping. Declared does not fetch, scrape, or import anything for your profile from your school or any other website. Every stat on your profile is provided by you. Any figure Declared calculates, such as a per-game average or a shooting percentage, is computed only from the numbers you provided.

Academic aid. If you tell Declared you receive or qualify for academic aid, Declared records only broad categories and shows those to coaches. Do not enter award names or dollar amounts anywhere on your profile. Declared does not verify aid and does not advise on how any award counts under your association's scholarship rules; that is a question for your compliance office.

Notes coaches keep about you. Coaches can keep private notes and a recruiting stage about you on their own board. Only the coach who wrote a note can see it. Notes are deleted along with your account, and they are not included in a copy of your information if you request one, because they are that coach's own confidential assessment. See the Privacy Policy, sections 5 and 7.

9. Payments and subscriptions

For coaches. Coach access is a one-year term for the program, paid once in advance (Section 6 explains what happens when the coach who paid moves schools). Payments are handled by our payment processor, and Declared does not store full card details. The price appears at checkout before payment. A term does not renew automatically: access ends when the term ends, and the program can buy another year at any time, which starts when the current term ends. Payments are non-refundable: once a term is paid, the fee is not refunded in whole or in part, including if a coach does not find, contact, or sign a recruit, or does not use the platform. Declared guarantees no recruiting outcome (see Section 11). Any other refund is at Declared's sole discretion. Coaches are responsible for any taxes that apply to their purchase.

For Other accounts. An approved Other account's access is a one-year term, paid once in advance after Declared approves the application. A term does not renew automatically: access ends when the term ends. Payments are non-refundable: once a term is paid, the fee is not refunded in whole or in part, including if the account holder does not find an athlete they are looking for, or does not use the platform. Declared guarantees no recruiting outcome (see Section 11). Any other refund is at Declared's sole discretion. Other accounts are responsible for any taxes that apply to their purchase.

10. Prohibited conduct

You agree not to:

• Contact an athlete before they have declared, or otherwise work around the messaging gate.
• Harass, threaten, or spam other users.
• Impersonate another person, coach, school, or association.
• Share, sell, or transfer your account, or create an account for someone else.
• Scrape, copy, or resell Declared's data, or bulk-export other users' information. Declared does not provide any export of athlete data, and building one against the platform is prohibited.
• Create or attempt to create a coach account for a school you do not work for, or use another institution's email domain.
• Break security, probe the platform, or interfere with how it runs.

11. Disclaimers

Declared is provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis, without warranties of any kind, whether express or implied, to the fullest extent allowed by law. We do not warrant that the platform will be uninterrupted, error-free, or completely accurate. Declared may add, change, suspend, or remove any feature or part of the platform at any time as it develops and improves the service, without notice and without liability.

We do not guarantee any release, eligibility decision, roster spot, scholarship, contact, or recruiting outcome. Recruiting decisions are made by coaches and schools, and eligibility decisions are made by the associations. Declared is a tool, not a party to those decisions.

12. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent allowed by law, Declared and its operator are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages, or for lost opportunities, lost eligibility, or lost recruiting outcomes, arising from your use of the platform. To the extent liability cannot be excluded, it is limited to the amount you paid Declared in the 12 months before the claim, or 100 US dollars if you paid nothing.

13. Indemnification

You agree to defend and hold harmless Declared and its operator from claims, losses, and expenses arising out of your use of the platform, your content, or your violation of these terms or of any association's rules or applicable law.

14. Suspension, removal, and termination

You can delete your account at any time. We may suspend or remove an account that breaks these terms, misrepresents information, shares logins, or is flagged for a rules violation. We may also remove any account, or end any program's term, at any time and for any reason, including when a coach leaves their school or stops coaching. Payments are not refunded when we do (Section 9). We may also remove content that is false, unlawful, or infringing.

15. Privacy

How Declared collects, uses, and protects your information is covered in our Privacy Policy, which is part of these terms. In short: everything on your profile is what you entered yourself or is calculated from it, Declared never sells your personal information, keeps contact info private by default, and honors removal requests the same day.

16. Changes to these terms

Declared may update or change these terms at any time and for any reason. When a change is made, Declared updates the date at the top of this page, and for material changes gives notice where appropriate. Continuing to use Declared after a change means the updated terms are accepted.

17. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. You and Declared agree that any dispute relating to Declared or these terms will be brought exclusively in the state or federal courts located in Washington, and you consent to that jurisdiction and venue. If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest stays in effect.

18. Contact

Questions about these terms, or a request to correct or remove information, can be sent to garrett@declaredgroup.com. Declared LLC, Washington, USA.