Booster clubs pay for the things the budget doesn't: the new uniforms, the trip to the tournament, the instrument nobody's family can afford. Most of them run that money through a familiar stack: Square on someone's phone at the gate, Venmo for the parents who don't carry cash, a Google Sheet the treasurer rebuilds every month, and a stack of paper tickets in a cash box. It works, in the way that things work when one dedicated volunteer refuses to let them fail.
The goal of this guide is not "buy software." It is to name the five money jobs a club actually has, so you can pick a tool for each one deliberately and stop paying the volunteer tax.
The five jobs
Selling at events. Gate tickets, concessions, spirit wear at the table. This is where most booster money moves and where most of it goes untracked, because a Square reader tells you a total, not which game or which item.
Taking donations. The annual ask, the sponsor banners, the family who wants to round up at checkout. These need a receipt, a record of who gave, and a way for the donor to cover the processing fee if they want to.
Running a campaign. Once or twice a year there is a big goal (a scoreboard, a trip) that needs a page, a target, and social sharing.
Coordinating people. Volunteers for the stand, the parents who need to know the bus time. Not money, but it is where the money conversations happen.
Closing the books. Total, fees, net, per event and per program, in a form the treasurer and the school's business office both trust.
What fits each job
For selling at events and taking donations, the thing that matters most is that every dollar lands on the event it belonged to. A platform that sells the ticket, runs the concession stand, and takes the donation on the same event record (Admittee is built this way) gives the treasurer a per-game report instead of a lump sum to allocate by memory. If your school already runs its calendar and gate on a platform like this, the booster club should sell inside it rather than beside it.
For a big campaign, a dedicated campaign tool (SnapRaise, GoFundMe and similar) does the personal-page-and-share job well, and it is fine to use one for the two weeks a year you need it. Just move the total into the same books afterward.
For coordinating people, use what the parents already open: TeamSnap, GroupMe, Remind, SignUpGenius, ParentSquare. Don't try to make a payments tool do this.
For closing the books, QuickBooks or whatever your treasurer already uses is the ledger. The improvement is upstream: if the event platform reports total, fees, and net per event, the monthly close becomes an export instead of a reconstruction.
What about Venmo?
It is on this list because it is on every list. It is free, every parent already has it, and the money arrives before the person walks away from the table. For collecting, it works.
The trouble is what it is: a way to pay a person. A booster club is not a person.
The money lands in somebody's personal account, which makes one volunteer the club's bank. When they step down, the account and the payment history leave with them. The treasurer gets a feed of names and emoji rather than a record: "Kim received $340 on Friday" does not say which of that was tickets, which was the stand, and which was a donation. A donor who wants a receipt for a gift cannot get one that names the club. And payments into a personal account can generate a 1099-K in that individual's name; the reporting thresholds have moved several times in recent years, so do not rely on a number you remember from a previous season.
If you keep Venmo, at least get off a personal profile. Venmo has business and charity profiles, and a club with 501(c)(3) status should be on one.
The better fix is the same one as everything else here: take the money where the event already lives, so it arrives already labeled.
The one change that matters most
If you do nothing else, stop taking event money on a general-purpose reader. The difference between "$1,840 on the Square account Friday" and "Football vs. Westview: 312 tickets, $940 concessions, $180 in round-up donations, $2,110 net" is the difference between a treasurer who can answer the board's question and one who has to guess. Everything else on the list is easier once that is true.
Two smaller changes follow naturally. Let buyers cover the processing fee at checkout; most will, and it turns the fee into a non-event for the club. And ask donors to cover the fee on gifts by default, which most donation tools now support and most donors accept.
What this looks like on a Friday
The gate sells on phones, no cash box. The stand takes tap to pay. A parent rounds up $3 at checkout for the uniform fund. On Monday the treasurer opens the report for that game, sees the tickets, the stand, and the donations as three lines and one net, and the business office sees the same thing. The board asks how the season is going and the answer is a screen, not a weekend.
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In Admittee: tickets, concessions, donations, and sponsor placement live on the event, and reports show total, fees, and net per event and program. Donations carry a fee of 5% + $0.75, and the organization covers it by default. See Fundraising and sponsors.