Payments · Consumer
A crowdfunding platform for US school parent-teacher associations — schools raise money for projects with tiered rewards, donors pay by card as guests or signed in, and every donation reconciles to gross, fees, platform cut and net settlement.
A PTA can run a fundraiser and trust the numbers it hands to the school treasurer, down to the fee and the refund, instead of reconstructing what actually landed after the platform took its cut.
// the problem
A PTA running a fundraiser needed to accept card donations from parents and supporters, then know exactly what landed in the school's account after processing costs and a platform fee — and get that arithmetic right every time, because the money belongs to a school, not the platform.
// engineering
Parents and supporters donate to a specific project, choosing a reward tier where one applies, and can opt to cover the processing fee themselves so the school keeps more of the donation. Guests can give without an account, and anonymously if they choose.
Every donation is broken out into gross contribution, payment processing cost, platform fee and net settlement, and that breakdown rolls up into a per-project reconciliation report. Consumer donations with fees and refunds look simple from the donor's side; getting the arithmetic right on every one of them, at scale, is the actual work.
Partial and full refunds reverse the same gross, fee and net figures they created, so a refunded donation never leaves the reconciliation report out of balance.
Card payments are tokenized through a payment gateway at the point of entry, so the platform holds a token, never a card number. A back office handles school and project approval, sponsor and co-administrator management, with email verification and device fingerprinting to keep fraudulent signups and donations out.
// result
Schools raise money through approved projects with goals, deadlines and reward tiers; donors pay by tokenized card as guests or signed in, anonymously if they choose; refunds — partial or full — reverse cleanly; and every donation reconciles to gross, processing cost, platform fee and net settlement per project.
No donation totals, school counts or launch dates are claimed here — this case describes the mechanics we built, not figures we don’t have.
Payment gateway integration · Relational database · Fraud signal ingestion · Financial reconciliation reporting · Frontend application layer
Tell us what you're building. You'll leave with an honest opinion, even if it's "you don't need us."
Reference calls with past clients are available under NDA during evaluation.