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Reliant accepts legally binding approval from our missionaries via electronic means such as email or being logged in to web applications. These kind of approvals are in lieu of a traditional "pen and ink" signature. This makes administration easier for our missionaries worldwide, . Such "signatures" need to meet two conditions:
Common Examples: an email from a verified Reliant.org email account and a missionary saying "I approve this change." or a missionary logged in to a web application, who submits online while logged in and stored as a record in our database. As of the 2015 update of this policy, Reliant can no longer accept e-signatures from a personal email account. |
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a signature, contract, or other record relating to such transaction may not be denied legal effect, validity, or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form
In 2011, Reliant first adopted an electronic signature policy in 2012 that . It required an email with the sender hand typing out a signature block in the body of the email and/or the body of the document that included Full Name, Home phone number (or mobile phone), Ministry fund numberFund Number, E-Mail address, and current date.
The 2015 updated policy supersedes previous policies and is updated to acknowledge:
- Identity is now primarily validated via a Reliant-issued account with a password, which means:
- Manually typing a list of information is no longer required, because we know who the missionary is if they are logged in
- Logging in or sending via Sending or approving while logged in to a valid reliantReliant.org account / email addresses is required and non. Non-reliant Reliant accounts (e.g. a personal gmail account) can't be accepted for identity verification.
- Electronic approval is now also common outside of not only in email, for but also in in web applications. For instance, within web applications, CRM recorded records, when logged in via ReliantID on our websites, or via a Google for Non-Profts Profits account when submitting spreadsheet, form or online comment that includes identity and timestamp.
Benefits
- Make thing administration easier for our worldwide missionary staff and staff supervisors when submitting Reliant information, approval, documents or forms to the Headquarters office.
- Save costs for the ministry.
- Match federal regulations and best practices.
- Be in step with cultural norms for digital business.
- Increase efficiency of our office staff by skipping a paper step, which must be converted to electronic storage in any case.
Definitions
ELECTRONIC RECORD
. The term means a record created, generated, sent, communicated, received, or stored by electronic means.
For Reliant, examples include: an email from a verified account, a CRM record, a stored Google document or record in a spreadsheet, a submitted web form via Google or Sitefinity, a PDF document
ELECTRONIC SIGNATURE
- A technologically neutral term indicating various methods of signing an electronic message that:
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Other general examples of electronic signature technologies include PINs, user identifications and passwords, digital signatures, digitized signatures, and hardware and biometric token"
ELECTRONIC APPROVAL
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/ E-SIGN
" — Equivalent terms for Electronic SignatureELECTRONIC SIGNATURE.
MISSIONARY
— Collective for all employed or associate missionaries, project fundraisers or others who missionaries—all of whom are issued a Reliant.org account.
PARTY
— Any other non-missionary external party who is communicating with Reliant staff for the purposes of approval, such as a local church partner, supervisor, vendor, etc.
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- For email or electronic documents, this is nearly always recorded automatically and it is not required to have a "date" field alongside a signature inside a document.
- For manually signed ("pen and ink") documents, a date field is required, and internal processes should take care to note the date received if different.
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Which Services are Verified By Reliant?
A Reliant-verified account is any that
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Reliant will accept an approval from a non-Reliant account when the party is not an employed or associate Reliant missionary or office staff member. It should be kept
Keep in mind that we generally should the two general principles for electronic approval. You should
- Reasonably be able to
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- confirm the identity of the party.
- Reasonably understand that they are positively approving
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To make things easy for you, Reliant can accept your approval ("signature") electronically. Please reply to this email. Guidelines:
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Form and documents that were accepted by the Reliant office with electronic signatures prior to the adoption of this Policy will still be electronic policy are considered valid. The acceptance must be after June 30, 2000 – this was the enactment date of the ESIGN Act.
Exceptions
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to Policy
Forms on which Reliant will allow an electronic signature.
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