EBClub Provider Standards

1The principle

2What Provider membership buys, and what it does not

Provider membership gives you	Provider membership does not give you
A directory listing across EBClub and Employer Branding News	Access to Practitioner-only spaces
Access to Provider spaces	The ability to direct message Practitioners who have not messaged you first
Access to selected Exchange events and discussions	Access to Practitioner contact details or the member list
The opportunity to publish useful research	A guarantee of publication
The opportunity to propose a course	A guarantee that a course will be approved
Online event engagement and community visibility	Attendance at Practitioner-only events
Visibility to practitioners who are actively looking	Leads, introductions, enquiries, sales or any commercial outcome
A voice in the conversation	Endorsement, certification or preferred supplier status

Practitioners can message you. You cannot message them first. That asymmetry is the product.

3Your profile and directory listing

• Keep your listing accurate, current and honest. Update it when your services, team or focus changes.
• Describe what you actually do, for whom, and where. Specific beats impressive.
• Do not claim capabilities, clients, results, certifications or awards you cannot evidence. We may ask you to substantiate any claim and to remove it if you cannot.
• Do not use superlatives or performance claims you have not measured. "Leading", "best", "number one" and "proven to increase" all need evidence.
• Get permission for every logo, client name, case study, testimonial and image you use. You are responsible for having those rights, not us.
• One listing per organisation. If your colleagues also join, they each need their own membership, and we will consolidate duplicate organisation listings.
• A listing is not an endorsement. We do not vet the quality of anyone's work and we will not describe you as vetted, approved or recommended unless a separate arrangement says so.
• Your listing appears on the public directory at directory.employerbranding.news, which is operated by Fathom Data Labs Pte Ltd on Employer Branding News. The EBN Privacy Notice explains how listing data is handled there.

4How you may participate

• Contribute before you promote. Be useful in the conversation for its own sake. If your only posts are about your own business, you are doing it wrong.
• Answer the question that was asked. Practical, specific help. Not a teaser that ends in a call to action.
• Keep it relevant. Employer branding, talent and the work around it.
• No sales posts. No pitching, no promotion, no offers and no launches in Practitioner or general spaces, whatever they are dressed up as.
• No bait-and-switch thought leadership. Content that looks like insight but functions as a funnel is not insight.
• No repetition. Posting the same message across multiple spaces is spam.
• Respect the room you are in. If you have not been given access to a space, do not try to get into it, and do not ask another member to bring you in.

5Outreach and messaging

• Do not use the community to identify people and then contact them elsewhere. Finding someone in EBClub and emailing or connecting with them on another platform to pitch is the same breach, and we treat it the same way.
• Do not ask another member, an admin or a chapter leader to make an introduction as a way around this.
• Do not use an event, a course or a research project as a pretext for outreach.

6Disclosure and transparency

• Be clear about who you are, who you work for and what your organisation does. Your profile should make this obvious without anyone having to ask.
• Disclose a commercial interest when you have one. If you are recommending a category your company sells into, say so in the same post.
• Disclose sponsorship, affiliate relationships and partnerships when they are relevant to what you are saying.
• Disclose material use of AI in research, content or course material where a reader would reasonably want to know.
• Never create or use a profile that misrepresents your role or employer, and never present yourself as in-house.

7Research, white papers and published content

• Research is welcome and is one of the best things a Provider can bring. It needs to stand up.
• State your methodology, sample size, sample composition, dates and any limitations.
• Identify who funded or sponsored the research and any commercial interest in the outcome.
• Do not present marketing collateral as research.
• Do not gate the findings behind a form. If you publish research to EBClub members, they get to read it without giving you their details.
• We review before publication and may ask for changes, decline, or remove something later if it turns out to be inaccurate. We will tell you why.

8Proposing a course

We review proposals for relevance, practical value, quality, accuracy, accessibility and community fit. A course must:

• address a real practitioner problem and deliver a defined learning outcome;
• teach something genuinely useful, with practical examples or frameworks;
• be free to members, with no upsell, paid tier or required off-platform registration;
• stand independently of your own products and services;
• not function as a product demonstration, a sales funnel or a lead-capture mechanism; and
• meet our accessibility and technical standards.

You will not receive contact details for anyone who takes your course. We may share aggregate participation numbers with you. If a learner chooses to contact you, that is their decision to make.

Before any material is uploaded or recorded you will need to accept our Course Contributor Terms, which cover ownership, the licence you grant us, warranties and removal.

9Events

• Practitioner-only events are Practitioner-only. Do not ask for an exception.
• Where you attend or sponsor an event, the event's own terms apply in addition to these Standards.
• Sponsoring an event does not entitle you to the attendee list. You will receive details only for people who have separately and specifically opted in to being contacted by you, by name.
• Speaking is an opportunity to teach, not to present a pitch deck. We will tell you the format and the expectations in advance.

10Data, scraping and lead capture

These are the breaches we act on fastest and with the least tolerance, because they are the ones that destroy the thing everyone else joined for.

11Personal responsibility

Your membership is yours personally, even when your organisation pays for it. You are responsible for your own conduct. Your organisation cannot transfer the responsibility, and "that was our marketing team" is not an answer.

Serious or repeated breaches by an individual may also affect your organisation's directory listing and the eligibility of your colleagues to join.

12Getting it wrong

Behaviour	What normally happens
Off-topic or overly promotional post, first time	We remove the post and have a quiet word
Repeated promotional posting after a warning	Restricted posting access, then suspension
Unsubstantiated claim in a profile or post	We ask you to substantiate or remove it
Failure to disclose a commercial interest	Warning, and correction of the post
Cold direct message to a Practitioner	Immediate removal from the community
Contacting a Practitioner off-platform after finding them here	Immediate removal
Scraping, exporting or harvesting member data	Immediate removal, and we will consider legal action
Misrepresenting your role or employer, or creating a false Practitioner profile	Immediate removal, and permanent ineligibility
Harassment or discrimination	Immediate removal

Where we end a paid membership for a serious breach, we will not normally refund the remainder of your membership year. Clause 13 of the Membership Terms sets out the full position, including how to ask for a decision to be reviewed.

13Questions

If you are not sure whether something is allowed, ask us before you do it. We would much rather have that conversation than the other one. Contact community@ebclub.app.