About
BootlegBooster
What is bootlegbooster?
In short, BootlegBooster is a website designed in response to a very strict set of rules an underfunded public high school softball team faced regarding how it could and couldn't raise money. The team's boosters had to pre-purchase all merchandise with already limited funds from only select vendors the school chose to then try to resell, with no guarantee they wouldn't lose money from failure to sell those products. They could only use official school logos, essentially limiting them to a handful of designs, recycled year after year. The booster club was so restricted that it couldn't have its own bank account, with all money going to the school to be given back to the booster club as the school saw fit. Frustrated by the circumstances, one of the softball moms/booster club members set out to create a better, more modern way to drive merchandise sales. Thus, BootlegBooster was born.
How does bootlegbooster work?
The merchandise itself is mostly designed by the website's creator, who happens to also be a graphic designer. However, organizations are welcome to submit their own designs/product ideas, so long as they do not use AI to create or conceptualize them. (We keep it human-made here 24/7!) Products are printed on-demand with no minimum quantity necessary, so there is no waste or product sitting and taking up the organization's storage space. If something isn't selling, no money is lost, because the product was never actually made in the first place! The lack of physical stock on-hand allows organizations to offer more designs, more kinds of merchandise and gives the buyers more choices for their individual budgets.
Show me the money...
Proceeds from sales are collected into a savings account, earmarked by organization and paid out as a donation from BootlegBooster on a schedule the organization has set. All applicable sales taxes are charged to individual buyers at the time of a merchandise purchase automatically, based on buyer location. And unless your organization is set up as a 501c(3), there are no tax benefits for donations anyone misses out on by buying and receiving donations via BootlegBooster.
OK but that "service fee..."
Simply put, The service fee paid by buyers keeps the website alive. The website costs monthly. The Domain costs yearly. The accountant we keep stressed out bills us. That's where the service fees go. And in the name of transparency, we put he rest of the pricing breakdown on each individual product listing in your organization's store.