Fees and caps

UnitTally charges a fee only on online card transactions. Cash, check, or any other manual payment method costs $0 in UnitTally fees, on every tier, always.

Every online card transaction is priced the same way:

fee = min($0.30 + subtotal × rate, cap)

The flat $0.30 and the rate apply first; the cap is a ceiling, not a starting point — most transactions never reach it.

Manual payments are $0 on all three tiers — the table above only applies to the online card path.

A $30 sale, Free tier. UnitTally’s fee is $0.30 + ($30 × 0.025) = $1.05. Stripe’s own processing fee (its standard published rate, roughly 2.9% + $0.30) is a separate charge of about $1.17 — that number is Stripe’s, not UnitTally’s, and moves independently if Stripe changes its pricing. Combined, roughly $2.22 in fees on a $30 sale, so $28 of every $30 stays with the organization on the free tier.

A $1,000 sponsorship, Free tier. The linear formula would be $0.30 + ($1,000 × 0.025) = $25.30 — but the $20 cap engages, so the actual UnitTally fee is $20, not $25.30. That’s the proof behind “$20 max, even on a $1,000 sponsorship”: the platform fee doesn’t scale linearly once a sale gets big.

The cap only matters once the linear part of the formula would exceed it. Solving for the subtotal where that happens:

Below those subtotals, the fee is just the flat $0.30 plus the percentage — no cap involved. Above them, the fee holds flat at the cap regardless of how large the sale gets.

On the online card path, a transaction always has two distinct fees, not one combined number:

• UnitTally’s platform fee — the tier fee from the table above.
• Stripe’s processing fee — set by Stripe, not UnitTally, and uncapped: it keeps scaling with the sale price even after UnitTally’s fee hits its cap.

The cap above caps the UnitTally fee only. It does not cap what Stripe charges to move the card transaction. See Payment methods for how the two charges flow through Stripe Connect.

Every organization can process online card sales with $0 in UnitTally platform fees by utilizing Free Grants. When a Free Grant is applied to an order, UnitTally waives its tier fee entirely, and the organization pays only Stripe’s raw card processing fee (~2.9% + 30¢).

Free Grants are earned through three mechanisms:

• The Welcome Grant: Every newly created top-level organization receives 10 free online card transactions automatically at sign-up to test real transactions before committing to a paid tier.
• Shop-to-Support Wishlist Grants: Organizations can feature curated wishlist links (Amazon, Target, Dick’s Sporting Goods) on their storefront or campaign pages. Outbound clicks carry UnitTally’s affiliate tracking. 50% of all confirmed affiliate earnings generated by community shopping are returned directly to the organization as Free Transaction Grants.
• Referral Grants: When an organization refers another booster club, PTA, or Scout troop that signs up, both organizations earn bonus Free Transaction Grants (+10 for the referring organization, +5 for the new organization).

Free Grants apply automatically at checkout to eligible online card orders. The console dashboard tracks your organization’s total granted, consumed, and remaining grant balance.

Storefront checkout offers supporters an optional checkbox, off by default, to cover both fees themselves — UnitTally’s platform fee and an estimate of Stripe’s processing fee — on top of the listed price. When a supporter checks it, more of what they pay reaches the organization instead of coming out of the sale.

The processing fee is an estimate, not a lookup. UnitTally doesn’t know a card’s exact processing cost before the charge runs, so the estimate uses Stripe’s published rates — the same 2.9% + $0.30 standard rate (2.2% + $0.30 for verified 501(c)(3) nonprofits) used in the worked example above. Stripe’s actual fee depends on the card: Amex, international cards, and some business cards cost more than the estimate assumes.

That means a given order can net a few cents above or below the exact listed price — usually within pennies on a standard consumer card, more on a card Stripe prices higher. UnitTally’s platform-fee half of the calculation is always exact, because that fee is UnitTally’s own formula; only the processing-fee half carries any variance, and it’s Stripe’s variance, not UnitTally’s.

UnitTally never keeps more than its disclosed platform fee. The covered amount rides through Stripe to the organization’s own connected account the same way the sale itself does; Stripe deducts its own fee there, not UnitTally. Any gap between the estimate and Stripe’s actual fee settles to the organization — UnitTally doesn’t profit from the spread either direction.

Nothing is hidden. Checkout shows the exact itemized breakdown — subtotal, platform fee, estimated processing fee, total — before the supporter pays, and the confirmation page and the receipt repeat the same breakdown.

Online card orders have a $1.00 minimum. Below a dollar, the flat portion of the fees (UnitTally’s 30¢ plus Stripe’s own ~30¢ per-charge fee) would eat most or all of the sale, so a sub-$1 card charge isn’t worth running. This applies only to online card checkout — manual (cash/check) orders have no minimum and can be any amount, including $0.

Tier prices are set at signup:

A subscription is what unlocks tier-gated features (admin seat limits, group leaderboards, urgency tooling, and similar) — it doesn’t change what a manual payment costs, which is $0 on every tier. Subscription billing itself isn’t active during the closed alpha — every organization runs on Free while the platform is validated; billing turns on as UnitTally rolls out paid tiers.

• Payment methods — how the two fee types flow through Stripe Connect vs. manual entry.
• What is UnitTally? — the cost model at a glance.
• The fundraising model — where fees fit in the season arc.