Frequently Asked Questions

Petitions are open to everyone. Click "Start a Petition" in the header and follow the step-by-step wizard. Fundraising campaigns are operated by the Ardent Africa Foundation until public fundraising opens under Bank of Ghana licensing.

Petitions are open to everyone. Fundraising and hybrid causes are currently run by the Ardent Africa Foundation, and you can support any of them with a donation.

Foundation causes are official fundraising and hybrid campaigns operated by the Ardent Africa Foundation on ardent.africa. They are verified by Ardent Africa, show Foundation trust badges, and accept donations with no platform fee deduction. Browse them on the Fundraising page or the Foundation causes showcase on the homepage.

See Foundation causes, our Donor Guarantee (Foundation section), and Platform Use Guidelines.

Most campaigns can be set up in 10-15 minutes. Our streamlined process and AI content assistant help you create compelling campaigns quickly. You can always edit and improve your campaign after it goes live.

Yes! Campaign creators can edit their campaigns at any time. You can update descriptions, goals, deadlines, and media. However, some changes (like campaign type) may require admin approval to ensure consistency.

In your campaign dashboard, navigate to the Team section. You can invite team members by email, assign roles (owner, admin, or member), and manage permissions. Team members can help manage the campaign, post updates, and coordinate efforts.

You can still withdraw funds even if you don't reach your goal. The goal is a target to motivate supporters, but all funds raised can be used for your cause. You can also extend your deadline or adjust your goal if needed.

Supporters donate to Ardent Africa Foundation causes using Paystack, which accepts cards, mobile money, and bank transfers. Donations are processed securely and the full gift supports the cause with no platform fee. You can track donations in real-time from the dashboard.

We currently support Paystack, which accepts major credit/debit cards, mobile money (MTN, Vodafone, AirtelTigo), and bank transfers. All payments are processed securely with encryption and fraud protection.

Supporters can choose to make monthly recurring donations. They'll be charged automatically each month until they cancel. You can see recurring supporters, monthly totals, and manage subscriptions in your dashboard. Supporters can cancel anytime from their profile.

Fundraising is currently limited to Ardent Africa Foundation causes, so there are no third-party campaigns collecting or withdrawing donations on the Platform. Donations to Foundation causes are verified within 24 to 48 hours and use a zero platform fee path, so the full gift supports the cause. The Foundation handles disbursement for its own causes.

Donations to the causes on Ardent today go entirely to the cause, with no platform fee deducted. Standard public fundraising pricing will be published on our Fees page when public fundraising opens.

Read more on our Fees & Charges page and Donor Guarantee.

Donations to the causes on Ardent today are zero-fee, so 100% supports the cause. When public fundraising opens for ordinary users, standard-campaign pricing will be published on our Fees page.

Read more on our Fees & Charges page and Donor Guarantee.

Refund requests are handled on a case-by-case basis. Donors can request refunds through their profile, and campaign creators or admins can process refunds. Refunds are subject to our refund policy and may take 5-10 business days to process.

We use bank-level security with SSL encryption for all transactions. Payment processing is handled by Paystack, a PCI DSS compliant payment processor. We never store your full card details or payment credentials on our servers.

Yes. We take data privacy seriously and comply with data protection regulations. Your personal information is encrypted and stored securely. We never share your data with third parties without consent, except as required for payment processing.

Yes! When making a donation, you can choose to donate anonymously. Your name won't appear on public leaderboards, but campaign creators can still see donation amounts (without your name) for accounting purposes.

Ardent Africa Foundation causes are verified by Ardent Africa and show Foundation trust badges on the Platform. User-led campaigns can apply for Verified Cause status by submitting verification documents through the dashboard. Our team reviews applications to ensure campaigns are legitimate. Verified campaigns display a verification badge to build trust with supporters.

Learn more in our Donor Guarantee and Platform Use Guidelines.

Our Donor Guarantee protects donors if a campaign is found to be fraudulent or misuses funds. We work to recover donations and provide refunds where appropriate. It covers Foundation causes and user-led campaigns, with a dedicated section explaining Foundation zero-fee protections and verification.

Read the full Donor Guarantee, including the Ardent Africa Foundation causes section.

Ardent Africa has three account types: Personal (individual donors and creators), NGO or charity (verified organisations with a public profile), and Corporate (business CSR and team campaigns). Open /signup to compare paths, or go directly to /signup/personal, /signup/ngo, or /signup/corporate. You will confirm your email; for some flows you may also verify a Ghana phone number via SMS OTP. At registration, consent is collected under Ghana's Data Protection Act 2012 (Act 843) where applicable.

Yes! You can enable a public profile in your account settings. This creates a shareable profile page showing your total impact (signatures, donations), supported campaigns, and achievements. You can customize your username and profile visibility.

Achievements are badges you earn for various actions on the platform, like "First Signature", "First Donation", "Campaign Creator", or "Champion Supporter". You can view all your achievements on the Achievements page, track your progress, and see which achievements you haven't unlocked yet. When you earn a new achievement, you'll see a celebration notification!

Start at /signup/ngo (or open /signup and choose the NGO path). You will complete organisation details, upload required documents, and accept compliance steps including Act 843 consent where applicable. After submission, your profile is reviewed for verification; timelines vary. When verified, you can appear in the NGO directory and have a public page at /ngo/[your-slug]. You can also continue from the dashboard or "Register NGO" in the menu if you already have an account.

Use /signup/corporate (or the Corporate option on /signup). You will provide company details, authorised contacts, and required documents; Act 843 consent is collected for organisations. After review, the Organisation section of your dashboard (/dashboard/organization) holds your CSR and partnerships, team, and organisation settings. Verification timing depends on document review: watch your email for updates.

User interests help us personalize your experience by recommending campaigns that match your passions. When you sign up, you'll be prompted to select categories you care about (like Education, Healthcare, Clean Water, etc.). Based on your interests and location, we'll show you personalized campaign recommendations on the homepage and throughout the platform. You can update your interests anytime in your settings.

Go to your Profile page from the account menu. You can update your name, bio, location, interests, and profile picture. Changes are saved immediately and reflected across the platform.

Yes, you can delete your account from your profile settings. This will remove your personal information, but campaign data and donation records may be retained for legal and accounting purposes as required by law.

Direct messages are open between people who are connected. Connect with someone first, and once they accept you can message each other from their profile or from your inbox. You can still send a message to someone you are not connected to, and it arrives in their Requests folder.

Yes. If you are not connected to them your message lands in their Requests folder, where it does not notify or interrupt them, and they decide whether to reply. For anything about a specific campaign, its page and updates are usually faster.

Where messages from people you are not connected to go. It does not notify you, and the sender is not told whether you have seen it. Replying accepts the request and moves the conversation into your inbox. There is deliberately no decline button: ignoring a request tells the sender nothing, which is the point.

Yes. A conversation is visible only to the people in it. We do not use the contents of your messages for advertising, and Ardent carries no advertising. A moderator can open a specific message only when it has been reported, and that access is logged.

Places to gather around a cause, a place, or a trade. A community can be public (anyone can find and read it), private (anyone can find it by name, but only members read the posts), or secret (only members know it exists).

Open the community and choose to join. Some let you in immediately, some need a moderator to approve you, and some are invitation only. The community page tells you which before you ask.

Its owners and moderators, on top of the platform-wide Platform Use Guidelines. A community rule can be stricter than ours; it can never be looser, and a community organised around breaking them is removed along with its content.

Only its members. A group post is not public: it never appears in our public API, in search engines, or in an embed on another website, whoever is asking.

Partially. Once you've viewed pages they're cached and available offline, but actions like donating, sending messages, or loading new content need an internet connection.

Yes. Ardent Africa has a native app for iPhone and Android, search for "Ardent Africa" in the App Store or Google Play. Everything on the dashboard is there: create campaigns, events, listings and jobs, sign petitions, donate, manage your organisation, and check event attendees in by scanning their ticket. You can also install the Progressive Web App from your browser (on iOS, tap Share then "Add to Home Screen"; on Android, use the browser menu).

Yes. When submitting impact reports or campaign updates you can capture directly from your camera, and event organisers can scan attendees' ticket QR codes to check them in at the door.

The app works partially offline. You can view cached pages and previously loaded content, but features like making donations, sending messages, or viewing new content require an active internet connection.

Quick actions are shortcut cards in your dashboard that let you quickly access common tasks like creating a new campaign, viewing your campaigns, checking analytics, or managing withdrawals. They help you navigate faster and be more productive.

Your dashboard displays visual goal progress tracking for all active campaigns. You can see progress bars, percentage completion, and remaining amounts. The dashboard also provides personalized insights and recommendations to help you reach your goals.

The dashboard provides personalized insights based on your campaign performance, including recommendations for improvement, success tips, best practices, and performance comparisons. These insights help you optimize your campaigns for better results.

The marketplace connects causes and people with skilled providers (design, video, printing, legal, training, marketing, IT, and more) and with cause-related goods. Ardent helps both sides find and vet each other, but we do not process or hold marketplace payments. Buyers and providers arrange and settle payment directly between themselves, off-platform. Ardent charges no marketplace fee. After a service, both sides confirm what happened and leave a review, building a public trust record.

Sign in and open /marketplace, then go to your provider dashboard. Create a listing with a title, description, categories, packages or price ranges, portfolio images, location, and languages. Verified personal, NGO, and corporate accounts can list. Listings are moderated before they go live. Payment for any work is arranged directly with the client off-platform; Ardent does not process it or take a cut.

Browse /marketplace, open a listing, and send a booking enquiry (pick a package and add a message). The provider can accept, decline, or propose changes, and you coordinate in the in-app thread. Contact details are shared once the provider accepts. Agree and settle payment directly with the provider. When the job is done, both sides report the outcome and leave a review.

No. Ardent charges no marketplace fee. The marketplace is a discovery and trust layer, not a payment processor. Buyers and providers agree a price and settle payment directly between themselves, off-platform.

Yes. NGOs, campaigns, and the Foundation can list cause-related goods and impact products (crafts, branded merchandise, impact bundles) that support a cause or campaign. Like services, settlement is arranged off-platform. Ardent provides listing, discovery, and trust tools, not payment processing.

You can discover and host campaign events, community gatherings, and general public events, online or in person. Events can be free, RSVP-only, or paid-ticketed, with agenda, speakers, sponsors, and a gallery. Paid events support multiple ticket tiers, promo codes, QR-coded tickets, and check-in.

Sign in and open Events in your dashboard (/dashboard/events), then choose New event. Add title, description, type, date and time (with timezone), location or online link, cover image, agenda, and speakers. Choose free/RSVP or paid ticketing, then publish. Verified accounts can organize events.

In Events in your dashboard (/dashboard/events), connect your own Paystack or Hubtel account under payment keys. Add ticket tiers (for example early bird, regular, VIP) with prices and quantities. Pay the one-time flat, non-refundable GHS 699 platform fee, which unlocks publishing a paid event. When attendees buy tickets, the money is processed through your payment account and settles directly to you, not to Ardent. Free and RSVP events have no fee.

Free and RSVP events are free. Paid ticketed events have a one-time flat, non-refundable GHS 699 platform fee per event, paid by the organizer. That is Ardent's only charge for events. Ticket sales run through the organizer's own Paystack or Hubtel account, so ticket revenue settles directly to the organizer. Attendees pay only the ticket price the organizer sets.

Open the event page from /events. For a free or RSVP event, fill in the RSVP form. For a paid event, choose your ticket tier and quantity (enter a promo code if you have one) and pay. Checkout runs on the organizer's payment account. After a successful purchase you get a confirmation email with a QR-coded ticket and PDF, and you can view it from your tickets.

Paid tickets come with a unique QR code, emailed to you (and attached as a PDF) and viewable from your tickets. At the event, the organizer scans the QR code or enters the code to check you in. One ticket admits the quantity you bought.

Job posting is for organisation accounts: NGO/charity and corporate accounts. Your verified organisation profile becomes your public company page, and your whole team can manage hiring. Individual (personal) accounts are job seekers, not employers.

Individual (personal) accounts. Build a candidate profile with your skills, experience, education, and projects, then apply in one tap. Mark yourself "open to work" so employers can find you in the talent directory.

Posting a job, applying, and messaging are free, and Ardent never handles money between an employer and a candidate. The only optional paid upgrade is featuring a job to boost its visibility (GHS 100 for a 30-day window, non-refundable). A legitimate employer will never ask you for a payment, deposit, or "application fee": treat any such request as a scam and report it.

Your professional profile is public so employers can find you, but your email, phone, and address stay private and are never shown to employers. Employers reach you only through secure in-app messaging, which you control.

Posting and applying are free. If Ardent is useful to you, you can leave an optional tip that helps keep the service running. It is a voluntary gift to the Ardent Africa Foundation, never a payment to an employer or a requirement to apply.

Alongside search and filters, Ardent suggests roles that fit a candidate's skills and surfaces recommended candidates to employers. Matching is free and is only a suggestion; you always decide who to apply to or contact.

A place to rate and review businesses, NGOs, schools, and healthcare facilities you have real experience with. Every reviewed entity gets a TrustScore built from its published reviews, shown alongside a plain-language confidence indicator rather than a bare number.

No. Self-review is blocked outright: you cannot review an entity you own, manage, are employed by, or are otherwise affiliated with. We also detect and remove fake, duplicate, or coordinated reviews that try to manipulate a TrustScore.

Open your business's page and choose "Claim this listing," then submit identity documents and proof of authority for verification. Once approved, you can respond publicly to reviews and dispute ones that are false or not from a genuine customer.

A claimed entity can dispute a review it believes is false, defamatory, or not from a genuine customer, patient, or beneficiary. The review stays visible with a "disputed" label while we investigate (we do not remove it just because the entity objects) and we take action based on the outcome.

Yes. Writing a review, claiming a listing, and responding to reviews are all free. Ardent never handles money between reviewers and entities.

Organisation accounts get a public profile and directory listing, multi-seat teams, the ability to post jobs, run petitions and (for verified orgs) campaigns, and corporate accounts can publish CSR commitments. Register at /signup/ngo or /signup/corporate.

A CSR pledge is a corporate account's public, voluntary commitment to support a cause. Pledges appear on the CSR board for transparency and are fulfilled through the normal donation rails. They are public commitments, not legally binding contracts, and Ardent never custodies pledged funds.

Creating an NGO or corporate profile, listing in the directory, posting jobs, and publishing CSR pledges are free. Two optional upgrades carry an Ardent fee: featuring a job to boost its visibility (GHS 100 for a 30-day window) and publishing a paid ticketed event (a flat GHS 699 per event); both are non-refundable. Standard donation processing fees apply only to fundraising donations, as shown on the Fees page.

The part of Ardent where people and organisations speak for themselves rather than only appearing next to a campaign or a listing. Everyone gets one profile at ardent.africa/@yourhandle: a person, an NGO, a company, or a claimed business listing, all in the same shape. If you never post, nothing else changes.

You choose before you send: everyone, your followers, your connections, or a single community. The choice is shown on the post itself. Anything other than public is absent from our public API, from search engines and from every embed, whoever is asking.

No. Follower and connection counts are shown; the connections themselves are not. Our public API has no way to list who follows you, who you are connected to, or which communities you belong to, and we do not sell or share your connections for advertising.

Yes. Anyone holding a seat in your organisation posts as it from their own account, using the permissions that already govern your dashboard. Shared logins are exactly what this removes.

Block them and you become mutually invisible, including through mentions. Report them and a moderator reviews it against the Platform Use Guidelines, records the decision and the rule it relied on, and tells you the outcome. You can appeal to a different reviewer from the one who decided. If you are in immediate danger, contact local authorities first.

No, and nobody can. Ardent Social carries no money path between people: no tips, no creator fund, no subscriptions, no payouts. If somebody offers you any of those through the app, it is not part of the service and is a strong sign of a scam.

A poll is one question; a survey can run to many, across pages, and can branch so people only see what applies to them. Any account type can create one from Polls & Surveys in the dashboard. Before you answer anything you are told whether it is anonymous or identified, and when the results become visible.

Yes, and it is stronger than the word usually implies. Nothing is stored that connects your response to you: not your account, not your name, not your email address, not your IP address, and not the time you answered, which is kept only as a date. Nobody can read an individual anonymous response, including the person who created the survey and including Ardent staff and administrators. That is not a permission we have chosen not to use; nothing is stored that would let anyone do it.

On an identified survey, yes, through your usual rights over your data. On an anonymous one, no, and neither can we: nothing identifies which response was yours. That is the same fact as the protection above, seen from the other side, and it is why you are told which kind you are answering before you start.

Not on an anonymous one. They see totals only, and where a group is small enough that somebody could be picked out by a combination of answers, that breakdown is withheld from them as well.

Whichever the survey says, and it says so before you answer: straight away, once you have answered, once it closes, or never to anyone but the person who made it. The usual setting is once you have answered, so early totals do not sway later answers.

Not if the survey allows it. One person still cannot answer twice: we use a token stored in your browser and a one-way code made from your network address purely to prevent that, and neither is kept or attached to your response.

Comments on anonymous surveys are checked automatically before the survey owner sees them, so abusive or identifying text is held back. If that check is unavailable your answer stays hidden rather than being shown. Nothing has been lost.

A live audio room. Someone opens it, a few people speak, everyone else listens, and the recording usually stays afterwards as a replay anyone can play. The name is the West African public assembly, which is the shape of the thing: a gathering where the community speaks and is heard. You can open one on its own, or attach it to a campaign, petition, event, job or community so it appears on that page.

About 14 MB an hour, which is less than one song. The room prints that figure before you join and shows what you have actually used while you are in it. There is no video, and the audio is encoded for speech rather than music, which is where the number comes from.

No. A public durbar opens from its link, in any browser, with no account and no app. You need an account to speak, to open a durbar of your own, or to be reminded before a scheduled one starts.

Usually yes, and the room says so before you join. The host decides when they open it, and recording is on unless they turn it off. If you only listen, your voice is not in the recording, although your presence in the room is recorded as participation. If the host invites you up to speak, you are asked to confirm again, because that is the moment your voice starts going into the file.

It becomes a replay page that anyone can play and share, and it stays up. Search engines can find it. The people who were in the room are told the replay is ready, and if the durbar was public it is announced to the host's followers. An unlisted durbar is different: it is reachable by its link and is deliberately kept out of every listing and every search engine.

If you spoke in it and you erase your account, the durbars you spoke in are removed with it. Short of that, ask the host, and report the durbar if there is something in it that breaks the rules. A recording is not edited in place, because taking one voice out of a mixed room is not something that can be done cleanly.

No, and neither can anyone else, on any platform. We would rather say that plainly than imply a filter that does not exist. What we can do is make it answerable: hosts can mute, remove and end the room instantly, reporting from inside a live durbar marks the exact moment so a moderator lands on the right minute of the recording, an account has to be past its first days before it can speak at all, and the recording makes what was said attributable afterwards.

It will be. The best available speech recognition gets roughly one word in four wrong on Ghanaian English, and does noticeably worse on personal and place names. A transcript is there so a durbar can be searched and so you can jump to a moment, not as a record of what was said. Every line links back to the audio at that point, and the recording is the record.

Yes. This answer used to say "not yet", and it is no longer true: the app does everything the website does. You can open a durbar, schedule it, take it live, raise your hand, speak, run it as host and end it, all from the phone. It also plays in the background with your screen locked and shows on the lock screen like any other audio. The microphone is only ever asked for at the moment you take the stage, because listening does not use it. Some phones, Tecno, Infinix and itel among them, stop apps when the screen goes off even while you are speaking; if yours is one of them the app tells you once and shows you where to change it.

Yes, and it is free. Paste the link into WordPress or anything that reads oEmbed and a card appears on its own. There is a WordPress plugin, an embed script, and a read-only API that lists public durbars, who spoke in them, and the transcript of a recorded one. The card links back to Ardent rather than playing audio in your page: listening to a live room needs a sign-in and, for a recorded room, agreeing to be recorded first, and neither can happen inside an embed on somebody else’s site.

No. There is no fee to open one, no charge to listen, no paid entry, no tipping and no gifts, and Ardent takes no cut because there is nothing to take a cut of. If you want to charge for a session, run it as an event with a ticket; that money settles through your own payment provider and a durbar can be attached to the event.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) fundraising allows supporters to create their own personal fundraising pages for your campaign. They can set individual goals, share their personal story, and track their progress. All funds raised through P2P pages count toward the main campaign total.

Use the share buttons on your campaign page to share on social media, via email, or copy a link. We also provide advocacy tools to generate email templates and social media posts optimized for each platform.

Your address on Ardent. Every person, NGO, company and claimed business listing has one profile at ardent.africa/@yourhandle, and it is how people find you, follow you, and mention you in a post. You get one automatically when you sign up, and you can change it in your settings.

Campaign challenges are friendly competitions between campaigns. Campaign creators can create challenges (like fundraising goals or signature targets) and invite other campaigns to participate. Participants compete on leaderboards, and winners are recognized. Challenges help build engagement and create friendly competition to drive impact.

No. Ardent never custodies third-party money. Marketplace payments are settled directly between buyer and provider, off-platform, and Ardent takes no cut. Paid event tickets are processed through the organizer's own Paystack or Hubtel account, so ticket money goes straight to the organizer. The only money Ardent collects for events is the flat, non-refundable GHS 699 platform fee per paid event.

Visit the Volunteer page to browse available volunteer opportunities. You can filter by campaign, skills required, location, and time commitment. When you find an opportunity that interests you, click "Apply" to submit your application. Campaign creators can also create volunteer opportunities for their campaigns to find skilled volunteers.

Impact reports show the real-world results of campaigns. Campaign creators can submit impact reports with photos, metrics, and descriptions of how funds were used and what impact was achieved. Verified impact reports appear on campaign pages and in the Impact Reports showcase. This transparency helps build trust and shows donors the difference their support makes.

Campaign creators and admins can export signatures and donation data as CSV or PDF files. Use the "Export Signatures" button on your campaign page. Exports include names, emails, locations, comments, and dates (subject to privacy settings).

You can contact our support team through the Contact Us page, email us directly, or check our Help Center. We typically respond within 24-48 hours. For urgent issues, please use the contact form and mark it as urgent.

Ardent Africa is available across Africa, though payment methods may vary by country. We support Paystack in countries where it's available. We're continuously expanding our payment options and country coverage.