On a percentage-based platform the fee comes off the top before the money reaches your account, so the three things to confirm in writing before you sign are the platform fee, the processing rate, and whether the donor tip is optional; on Schoolfundr, Hometown's fee-free fundraising platform, there is no platform fee and the only deduction is Stripe's 2.9% plus $0.30 per donation.
In Coach & Athletic Director's 2021 athletic directors survey, 17.3% of schools reported that fundraising made up more than half of their athletic budget. When your community hits a fundraising goal, how much of it actually reaches your students? On a traditional percentage-based platform the answer is smaller than the number on the dashboard, and the gap is rarely the first thing you see. Choosing school fundraising software starts with understanding what it charges, and that is a contract question before it is a product question.
Most district auditors and business office leaders find the shortfall late, when the campaign is closed and the money is already short. The useful time to find it is before anyone signs.
The math of platform fees
What you keep vs what was donated
There is a real difference between what a donor gives and what the school keeps, and your budget runs on the second number. The gross total on a dashboard looks impressive. The deposit is what pays for equipment.
The arithmetic worth holding onto is simple: if you give up 20% of the funds you raise, one campaign in every five was run entirely for the platform. Whether that applies to you is a question only your own paperwork can answer, which is why the checklist below matters more than any example.
The cumulative cost over a school year
Whatever the rate turns out to be, it compounds. A department running several campaigns a season pays it every time, and a district running campaigns at a dozen schools pays it a dozen times over. Run the arithmetic on your own numbers: take the total raised across last year's campaigns, subtract what actually landed in your accounts, and you have a budget line rather than a rounding error.
That money is not abstract. A program that misses its target comes back to the district to make up the difference, so a fundraising shortfall lands in the general fund either way.
Auditing your fundraising contract: 3 red flags to watch for
Before signing a new agreement for the upcoming season, read the fine print for these three things. Most fundraiser companies for schools will answer all three in writing if you ask, and the ones that will not have told you something. The same questions apply to a district-wide contract, to a coach fundraising platform a single team signs up for on its own, and to booster club fundraising run outside your accounts.
- Look for a mandatory platform fee. If the contract specifies a percentage of the total raised, that percentage comes off before the first donation reaches you. Ask for it as its own number, separate from processing.
- Identify processing markups. Standard card processing is a published rate. Ask whether the vendor charges more than that, and if so, where the difference goes.
- Check whether the tip is optional or required. Ask to see the checkout flow rather than the pricing page, and confirm whether a donation completes when a donor leaves no tip.
None of those three can be answered from a marketing page. All three can be answered from a contract and a test transaction, which is the whole point of asking before you sign rather than at reconciliation time.
How Schoolfundr fee-free fundraising works
Schools should keep the money they raise. Schoolfundr, Hometown's fee-free fundraising platform, charges no platform fee, no setup cost, no subscription, and no contract. Your school keeps every dollar donated, less the Stripe processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30 per donation, and cash or check donations you log by hand carry no processing charge at all. The pricing page states it in the same terms, so you can hold it against the three questions above.
Any no-fee fundraising platform has to answer one question honestly: if there is no fee, who pays for it? Here the answer is an optional tip at checkout, which the donor can decline. Donors are charged no fee either way. That is the distinction your business office will test against the third red flag, so state it plainly in the paperwork: the tip is voluntary, and a donation completes whether or not the donor leaves one.
This is what makes the accounting shorter rather than longer. What makes fee-free fundraising for school districts hold up at the end of the year is exactly this: the business office sees a single deduction, named and rated, so there is one line to match up instead of a percentage to recalculate per campaign. Finance officers can spend that time on allocating resources instead.
Why Schoolfundr
Schoolfundr fundraising comes down to three things a finance officer can check in a contract.
- Every dollar, less processing: your program keeps the full donation minus Stripe's 2.9% plus $0.30, and no percentage of the total comes off the top.
- Nothing to cancel: no platform fee, no setup cost, no subscription, no contract.
- Donor trust: an optional tip and no donor-side fee make the ask easier to explain to your boosters.
Frequently asked questions
How can schools raise money without paying platform fees?
Run the campaign on a platform that does not charge one. Schoolfundr charges no platform fee, no setup cost, no subscription and no contract, so the only amount deducted from an online donation is Stripe's processing fee of 2.9% plus $0.30. Offline cash and check donations you log by hand do not incur any processing fee at all.
What do fee-free fundraising platforms for K-12 schools cost a district?
Nothing to use. On Schoolfundr the entire cost sits in card processing at 2.9% plus $0.30 per donation, and the platform itself is funded by an optional tip the donor can decline at checkout. On a $10,000 campaign paid entirely by card in $50 donations, that comes to $350, with no percentage of the total taken on top of it.
Do donors pay a fee?
No. Donors are invited to leave a voluntary tip, and the donation completes whether or not they leave one. If a donor chooses not to tip, your school pays nothing extra.
When does the school actually receive the money?
Once your fundraiser ends, funds can be transferred to your bank account or a debit card through Stripe, or mailed to you as a physical check. Cash and check donations logged in the platform count toward the goal without passing through processing at all.
What to do next: the fundraising fee audit
- Gather your fundraising contracts from the last 12 months.
- Add up the total dollar amount deducted as platform fees, separately from processing fees.
- Compare what you kept against what a fee-free model would have left you.
- Present these findings to your district business office to make the case for more transparent tools, alongside what a district auditor needs from a fee-free fundraising platform.
- Review success stories from other programs, and if you are also after fee-free fundraising ideas for high school sports teams, that is the fastest place to see what has worked.
Whether the question is district-wide compliance or simply the best fee-free fundraising site for sports teams, the answer starts in the contract rather than on the pricing page.
Book a demo and bring the agreement you're being asked to sign.
