PledgeStar is built around participant-driven school and team fundraising. Students and families receive personal fundraising pages and can reach friends and relatives through automated email, text, and social sharing. It supports simple pledge drives as well as read-a-thons, walk-a-thons, fun runs, and other activity-based fundraisers.
Category
Donation platforms
Change the fundraiser assumptions or pricing setup to see how each amount changes.
Fundraiser assumptions
Compare PledgeStar's Free plan with its capped 7% plan. Both results use the calculator's Stripe card-processing assumption of 2.9% + $0.30 per online donation.
Your group now receives $19,366.16 from $20,000 in intended online donations.
PledgeStar's Free and Standard plans use different approaches to platform fees and donor-paid amounts. The Free plan has no PledgeStar platform fee but still has payment-processing costs, while donors may optionally contribute directly to PledgeStar. The Standard plan charges a 7% fee capped at $1,195 and can let donors optionally help cover the organization's fees.
PledgeStar supports jog-a-thons, walk-a-thons, read-a-thons, fun runs, pledge drives, and many other participant-based events. Activity logs, student pages, classroom totals, and prize reporting make it more specialized for these campaigns than a basic donation form.
PledgeStar can report fundraising by student, classroom, and grade, provide teacher access to participation information, track prizes, and maintain reading or activity logs. These features can reduce spreadsheet work during a schoolwide fundraiser.
PledgeStar's Free plan charges the organization no platform fee. Standard card-processing costs still apply, and donors may separately choose to make an optional contribution that supports PledgeStar.
PledgeStar's Standard plan charges 7% of funds raised until the platform fee reaches $1,195. The cap means the effective platform percentage falls as a large fundraiser raises more.
On the Standard plan, donors can optionally add money to help cover the organization's platform and card-processing costs. Those additional amounts go to the organization's account and can offset its fundraising expenses.
PledgeStar provides substantial tools for running a campaign, but it is not designed as an all-in-one system for parent-group websites, volunteering, stores, programs, family relationships, communications, board turnover, or year-to-year organizational continuity.
“Free” means PledgeStar charges your group $0 in platform fees. It does not mean every online donation has zero transaction cost.
Payment processors still charge for card transactions. This calculator assumes Stripe processing of 2.9% plus $0.30 per online donation, paid by your group in the modeled Free-plan result.
PledgeStar may separately ask a donor to contribute to PledgeStar. That optional amount is not part of the group's fundraiser proceeds and is not estimated here.
This option charges a 7% PledgeStar platform fee, with a maximum platform fee of $1,195 per campaign. The calculator applies its Stripe processing assumption separately. Donors may be asked to cover fees, but coverage is optional and is not assumed in the result.
1
Donor gives $100
The full intended donation enters the payment flow.
2
Stripe processes the card
The modeled processing fee is $3.19.
3
Your group receives $96.81
The PledgeStar platform fee is $0.
A donor may also choose a separate contribution to PledgeStar. That optional amount does not change your group's retention bar.
The platform fee is 7% until it reaches $1,195. For example, 7% of $20,000 is $1,400, but the PledgeStar platform fee is capped at $1,195.
PledgeStar is designed for school and team pledge-style campaigns. Common uses include walk-a-thons, jog-a-thons, read-a-thons, pledge drives, and similar fundraisers built around participant outreach.
Compare all fundraising platforms →PledgeStar's platform-fee terms are verified from its pricing page. Processing uses the calculator's Stripe card-rate assumption and is not presented as a PledgeStar fee.
PledgeStar supports straightforward pledge drives as well as participant-based events such as jog-a-thons, walk-a-thons, read-a-thons, fun runs, color runs, dance-a-thons, math-a-thons, spell-a-thons, and many other activity-based campaigns.
PledgeStar supports personalized fundraising pages for participants. Families can share those pages through email, text, and social media, while PledgeStar can automate fundraising requests and reminders.
Yes. PledgeStar includes classroom and student reporting, classroom leaderboards, participation tracking, prize reports, and teacher tools that can show student progress and classroom totals.
PledgeStar currently offers a Free plan with no PledgeStar platform fee and a Standard plan that charges 7% up to a maximum platform fee of $1,195 per campaign. Standard payment-processing costs can still apply.
On the Standard plan, the 7% platform fee stops increasing when it reaches $1,195. For example, 7% of $20,000 would normally be $1,400, but the PledgeStar platform fee would be limited to $1,195.
The Free plan has no PledgeStar platform fee and allows donors to optionally contribute directly to PledgeStar. The Standard plan charges the capped platform fee and offers Donor Fee Coverage, which lets donors optionally add money that the organization can use to offset its platform and processing costs.
On the Standard plan, PledgeStar says amounts donors add through Donor Fee Coverage go into the organization’s account, where they can be used to offset platform and card-processing expenses. That differs from the optional contribution used to support PledgeStar on the Free plan.
Yes, but the card-processing formula shown in this comparison is a calculator assumption rather than a universal PledgeStar-published processing rate. PledgeStar describes its Free plan as subject to standard payment-processing costs.
No. PledgeStar is primarily a fundraising platform. Its school-specific features are strong within the fundraiser itself, but organizations typically need other systems for websites, volunteer management, year-round communications, stores, programs, documents, and board continuity.
PledgeStar uses different fee structures on its Free and Standard plans. On the Free plan, the organization pays no PledgeStar platform fee but still has payment-processing costs, while donors may optionally contribute to PledgeStar. On the Standard plan, PledgeStar charges a 7% platform fee capped at $1,195, and donors can optionally help cover the organization’s fees. Those are separate concepts, which is why the two plans can be easy to confuse at first glance.
Use the same fundraiser to review PledgeStar alongside Donation platforms, All-in-one parent group software, and Full-service fundraising companies.