Pool winners can now give their prize back to the team

In a team fundraiser pool, plenty of winners don't want the money. A parent wins the week, finds the team manager at practice and says "keep it." Until now that lived in someone's memory or a text thread, and nobody else ever knew the parent did it. Locker Room Fund's Points Pool now keeps track of it, and gives the parent the credit.

What a winner sees

Once a week is scored, each cash winner gets a card at the top of the pool page: what they won, the place they finished, and two buttons. Collect it means the team pays them, the way it always has. Donate it to the team means the prize stays with the team. They choose once.

A parent who plays for their kids sees each kid's prize on the same page and can choose for them. The week's results email tells cash winners the choice is waiting.

If a winner doesn't choose, they get one reminder a week for four weeks. Every undecided prize for the same inbox goes in one email, so a family with two winners gets one reminder, not two. After the fourth, the reminders stop and the prize stays theirs. In this game we never give someone's prize away for them. They can still come back and choose whenever they like.

What the team admin sees

The admin page splits winners three ways:

• Winners to pay: the ones who chose collect, plus anyone without an email on file. They can't be asked, so the team simply pays them.
• Waiting on winners: the undecided. If a parent says "keep it" in person, the admin records it here with one tap.
• Given back: prizes donated to the team. If someone tapped the wrong button, the admin can switch it back to collect until it's paid.

A donated prize is owed to nobody, so for a team that tracks its money in the app, that money counts as the team's to spend. The admin's email after scoring follows the same split: the winners to pay now, and the winners still choosing.

On the standings

The Standings tab now opens with one number: Given back to the team. In the season money list, every winner who donated gets a small tag saying how much they gave back.

A team that moves its pool over mid-season can record donations from the weeks it ran before the switch, so the total starts out right. A week where nobody remembers who gave back just shows nothing. The page never guesses.

The point of a fundraiser pool is the fundraiser. Putting the money parents hand back on the same page as the winners makes that easy to see.

Squares follows the same rhythm

The Squares game already let winners collect or donate. Its reminders now work the same way: at most one email a week to each inbox, every undecided win in one message. Squares has one rule the Points Pool doesn't: a win nobody claims goes to the team after 60 days. The last reminder names the day that happens, and that day is never less than a week after the email, so nobody is surprised.

Rules like these are what a team's own software is for. An off-the-shelf pool app gives you a winner and a payout. This one knows a youth team runs on parents who'd rather the money stay with the kids.