Community Relief official rules

No donation or purchase of any kind is necessary to enter or to be selected. Donating does not improve your chance of being selected, and the size of a donation gives no advantage whatsoever. Every eligible entry receives identical treatment.

The program is being finalized. Entries are being accepted so the community list is ready, and the selection step is kept switched off until the official rules have been reviewed for the places where entries are accepted. Nothing on this site is an offer where prohibited.

• You must have a free Weather Signal account.
• You must be 18 years of age or older and legally able to receive assistance.
• The bill must be an essential household expense: electric, water, gas, internet or phone, or rent.
• The account or bill must be in the name of someone in your household.
• Employees of BAIFI Analytics and Defense LLC and their immediate households are not eligible.

• A selection period is one calendar month, ending on the last day of that month.
• One eligible entry per household per selection period. Extra accounts from the same household do not create extra entries.
• A household that has already been assisted enters a cooldown period, normally 12 months, before it is eligible again.
• Having the same last name as another entrant does not disqualify anyone. Unrelated families share surnames.

When the program is active and funding permits, selection is performed automatically on our servers from the final pool of eligible entries. No administrator picks the result by hand. We keep an internal audit record of the selection period, the number of eligible entries, the time of the draw, the selected account, the eligibility verification status and the assistance status.

Weather Signal does not promise that a household will be funded in every calendar month. Assistance only happens when the Community Relief fund holds enough money and the program requirements are met.

• Being selected first means potentially selected, eligibility verification required. It does not automatically mean money is sent.
• We contact you privately using the email on your account.
• We verify the documentation the rules require, such as a copy of the bill showing the provider, the amount due and the service address.
• Where possible, Weather Signal pays the utility or provider directly rather than sending cash.
• We never ask for utility passwords, and we never ask for your online banking login.
• If a selected entry cannot be verified, it is marked ineligible or unverified and another selection is made from the remaining eligible entries.

• Eligible bills are electric, water, natural gas, and other essential household utilities approved by Weather Signal.
• A selected member uploads a recent bill as a PDF, photo or screenshot showing the provider, the account holder, the service address, the current amount due, the due date and the account number needed to pay.
• If the bill is in a spouse's, parent's, landlord's or another household member's name, that is allowed. We simply ask for an explanation or documentation showing you live in that household.
• Uploads are private. They are never public, never shown in Local Pulse or profiles, are opened only by the review team with access logging, and are deleted after the program retention period.
• Automated document checks only route a case to a human reviewer. A computer never makes the final decision and an automated flag is never treated as proof of fraud.
• We confirm the provider through an independent official source. We do not trust phone numbers, websites, QR codes or payment instructions printed on an uploaded document.

Assistance is limited to the amount available in the Community Relief fund and to the maximum set in the program settings for that period, currently $250 per approved household per award period. Weather Signal pays the verified amount due, up to that maximum: a verified $87.42 bill is paid at $87.42, and a verified $486.19 bill is paid at the $250 maximum. Nobody receives $250 simply for being selected, and assistance is never paid to a member as cash. Assistance is paid toward an approved essential expense only.

We never publicly display a selected person's full legal name, home address, utility account number or uploaded documents. Address information is collected only to make sure one household does not enter twice, and it is not shown anywhere on the site. See our privacy policy.

The program is operated by BAIFI Analytics and Defense LLC, doing business as Weather Signal. Questions, disputes and withdrawal requests go to baifi@baifisystems.com. These rules may be updated, and the version posted here governs. Void where prohibited by law.