Fundraising · A practice, not a project
Compounding infrastructure for committees that come and go.
Every fundraising committee starts with the same blank spreadsheet, the same email-the-parents loop, the same scramble for volunteers. We are building so that no committee has to start from blank again.
The thesis
Each project leaves something behind for the next
Most school fundraising programs are amnesiac by design. When the committee turns over each year, the institutional knowledge — the spreadsheets, the menus, the supplier contacts, the lessons learned — leaves with the parents who built it. The next committee starts at zero.
We work the opposite way. The schemas, the email templates, the Apps Script wiring, the volunteer workflows, the financial reconciliation patterns — all of it is documented infrastructure that becomes more useful the more it is used.
One committee's late-night fix becomes every future committee's starting point. That is the practice. Each project below is a different way the same infrastructure compounds.
Read the philosophy → The Yixing pot of our intentions, in detail.
Three current paths
Projects
The same brewed-in pot, three different teas. A live committee project, a partner-school engagement, and a whitelabel kit anyone can adopt.
St. Matthew's Elementary · Class of 2027→
Grade 6 Events Committee · Surrey, BC · 6-person committee, 130-family school
The first project. A Grade 6 fundraising committee using the platform end-to-end: parent claim page, live community thermometer, MyClaims return view, dashboard, joint-venture proposal, day-of volunteer dashboard, and a year of reconciled reports. May 5, 2026 track meet is the closing event of their fundraising year.
Holy Cross Regional High School→
Surrey, BC · Joint concession program proposal under discussion
A draft joint-venture program: SMES-built infrastructure, Holy Cross student-run operations. The model would let HC students operate concessions at their own events using documented patterns and shared equipment. Proposal is open to restructuring depending on what shape works for the HC community.
Concession Carts — Whitelabel Kit→
For any committee, anywhere · Cart hardware + Apps Script + playbook
Everything the SMES committee built, packaged as a kit any committee can adopt. Three vendor carts, the parent claim page template, the operations playbook, the financial aggregator, the day-of volunteer dashboard. You bring the committee; we bring the brewed-in pot.
For committees considering this
Pour the next round
If you run a school fundraiser, parent group, or community program — and the spreadsheets and email-the-parents loops feel heavier than they should — there is a path here for you.
A six-person volunteer committee at a 130-family Catholic elementary school in Surrey, BC built and ran all of this in nine months — three concession events, year-round pizza lunches, the parent-claim page, the dashboards, the post-event reports. The structure is in code, and most of it re-keys for another committee in an afternoon.