Keep more of what your academic and robotics teams raise.
Percentage platforms take a bigger cut as your sponsorships grow. UnitTally caps its fee at $20 per transaction — for robotics clubs (VEX/FIRST), speech and debate teams, and academic decathlon squads securing sponsorships, grants, and registration fees.
What UnitTally does for academic and robotics fundraising
Protect your grants & sponsorships
When a tech sponsor writes a $1,000 grant, standard fundraising platforms take up to $200. Our platform fee caps at $20, keeping more money available for electronics, tools, and travel.
Ready for school board audits
School boards require strict accounting of team funds. Every change, manual deposit, and online payout generates an entry in a secure, append-only audit ledger that can be exported as a CSV at any time.
Low-overhead setup
Launch team fundraisers in under 10 minutes without custom website builds, plugins, or complex merchant account applications. Connect your Stripe account and start accepting payments.
How a season runs on UnitTally
Publish sponsorship tiers
Set up Bronze, Silver, and Gold sponsorship products for local engineering firms and businesses. Because the platform fee caps at $20 per transaction, a large corporate grant is not reduced by a percentage. Log each sponsorship and email an itemized receipt for the sponsor's records.
Register for events
Collect competition and event registration fees for a VEX or FIRST season with custom text fields for student names and grade levels. Families pay by card, or you record a cash or check payment at a $0 platform fee.
Run a supporter store
Sell team shirts and supporter merchandise. Each student gets a private attribution link, so sales credit to the member who made them without a separate tracking sheet.
Reconcile for the board
Every action — an online card payment or an edited cash deposit — writes to a read-only audit ledger. Export a full CSV audit trail whenever your school district or booster board needs it.
Sponsorships, registrations, and store sales all sit in one ledger, backed by a full append-only audit trail you can export as a CSV for school-board audits.
The sponsorship tier
Suppose your robotics team secures a corporate sponsor at the Silver tier for $500.00. A take-rate platform charging 20% would take $100.00 from your sponsor's contribution.
With UnitTally's capped per-transaction fee (on our Free plan), your group keeps $472.40 after Stripe's standard card processing. That leaves an extra $72.40 in your robot kit fund on that single donation.
| Platform | Fee | Your Org Keeps |
|---|---|---|
| 20% platform | $100.00 | $400.00 |
| UnitTally Free plan (card + Stripe) | $27.60* | $472.40 |
| UnitTally Free plan (cash/check) | $0.00 | $500.00 |
Frequently asked questions
Can we issue formal invoices and receipts to corporate sponsors?
Yes. When a local engineering firm sponsors your team, you can log the sponsorship in the dashboard and email an itemized receipt for their corporate tax records.
How does the audit trail support school board audits?
Every action in UnitTally — from registering an online card payment to editing a manual cash deposit — is logged in a read-only audit ledger. Your board can export a full CSV audit trail for school district compliance.
Do we get tax-receipt generators for individual donors?
If your team operates under a school district or 501(c)(3) booster club, you can customize the checkout confirmation email to include your tax ID and tax-exemption language, serving as a donation receipt.
Start your next fundraiser
Join the waitlist. Launch your next wreath, cookie, or spirit wear sale with capped per-transaction fees.