booster review: our own platform, scored honestly

What booster is

booster is the only platform on our list where the fundraising unit is a subscription, not a campaign. Fans — parents, grandparents, alumni, local supporters — subscribe monthly to the team at a price the team sets itself. The team posts content: highlights, game recaps, behind-the-scenes. Money arrives every month through Stripe, including June, July, and August, and the program keeps 90% of every dollar.

Everything else on this list — Snap! Raise, Vertical Raise, Double Good, a-thons — is a one-shot event. You wind it up, it runs for two weeks, and next August you start again from zero with a new roster and an empty donor list. booster's entire thesis is that the reset is the problem: recurring supporters retain at high rates year over year, so season three starts where season two ended.

The fee, with no varnish

booster takes 10%, flat — plus Stripe card processing. Three things an honest reviewer has to say about that number:

• It is half the rep-led incumbents' 20%+ take — and we'll note openly that booster cut it from 20% in 2026. Fees can move down; ours did.
• Still not the cheapest: true 0%-platform tools exist (99Pledges, Zeffy for 501(c)(3)s). If price is the only criterion, use them.
• What the 10% buys is infrastructure that persists — the subscriber relationships, the payment rails, the content platform — rather than a two-week labor burst.

What genuinely sets it apart

• No student contact lists. The most-criticized mechanic in this market is rep-led platforms asking athletes for 20+ family phone numbers. booster's supporters arrive through shared links. Nobody hands over a contact list, and nobody gets a quota.
• Off-season revenue. Subscriptions are the only model here that pays in the summer. Every campaign competitor is structurally dark from June to August.
• The donor list is yours and it persists. Snap! Raise retains no donor data between campaigns; booster's subscriber relationships carry forward by design.
• The Players Fund. 10% of booster's company equity is reserved for the athletes on the platform, paid as periodic bonuses. No competitor has an analogue.
• Zero logistics. No popcorn, no cash envelopes, no delivery day, no treasurer reconciling product inventory.

Where booster loses — the full list

• Price: 99Pledges, Zeffy, Teamfi, Fund-Team, and Givebutter still take less than our 10%. Some take nothing.
• Coach effort: Snap!'s rep runs a two-week campaign and then it's over. A subscriber community needs someone posting content through the season. If your program can't sustain that, the recurring engine idles.
• Tax-deductibility: a fan subscription is a purchase, not a charitable gift. A 501(c)(3) booster club taking direct donations can issue receipts we can't.
• Year-one totals: a well-run rep-led blitz will usually beat a subscription launch in its first season. booster wins on the compound curve, not the sprint.
• Individual-athlete monetization: booster is team subscriptions only — there is no athlete-payment tier. That's a limitation if you wanted per-athlete NIL income, and it's also exactly what keeps the model clean under high school NIL rules in every state.

Who should pick booster

Programs with an engaged fan community and someone willing to post regularly — a team parent, a student media manager, an assistant coach — that are tired of re-running the same fundraiser every August. Programs whose donors are fatigued by product sales and pledge drives. Programs that want summer revenue for travel, camps, and equipment cycles.

Who shouldn't: programs that want one check with minimum effort (that's Snap! Raise's honest win — see the head-to-head), or booster clubs whose donors need tax receipts.