The notebook · August 5, 2026 · 3 min read
By The Reunion Fund team
Cheddar Up collects the money. Then you still have an event to run.
Cheddar Up collects group money well. It doesn't run the event around it: no RSVPs, no committee, no approval before funds move. Here's the comparison.
Of everything in this category, Cheddar Up is the closest to what a reunion committee actually needs. It collects money from a group, cleanly, without anyone having to be the Venmo handle in a Facebook post. That is the hard part of the problem and it solves it.
The gap is what happens on either side of the collection.
What Cheddar Up does well
- Purpose-built for group collection. Not a payment app doing a favor, but a tool designed for one person collecting from many.
- Line items work well. Collect for the cake, the decorations and the venue as separate things people can pay into.
- No personal payment handle in public. The money isn't landing in someone's personal balance next to their rent.
- The free tier is usable, with Pro at around $20/month as of August 2026.
If your entire problem is "collect $30 from forty people," Cheddar Up is a good answer and this article is largely academic.
Where the event outgrows it
No RSVP or guest management. Payment and attendance are different lists, and you'll maintain the second one somewhere else. When the caterer asks for a guaranteed number, the number you need is a headcount, not a payment count, and the two never quite match. The gap between them is predictable and worth planning for.
No committee layer. No task assignment, no shared documents, no chat attached to the event. Reunion committees are groups of five or six people who need to divide work; Cheddar Up assumes one collector.
No timeline. Reunions run on deadlines: deposit dates, catering guarantees, payment cut-offs. Those live in someone's calendar rather than with the event.
And no approval before money moves. This is the one that matters most. Collection is only the first half of the trust problem. The second half is what can happen to the money afterwards, and there is no step requiring a second person to agree before funds are released.
The pricing comparison
| Cheddar Up | Reunion Fund | |
|---|---|---|
| Free tier | Yes | 2 active events, 30 guests each, 3 co-organizers |
| Paid | ~$20/month | $12/month or $120/year |
| Built around | Collecting money | Running the event and governing the money |
At $12/month we're cheaper than Cheddar Up's Pro tier, and cover more of the job. That's a real advantage rather than a rhetorical one. Though as always, check their current pricing before deciding, because these numbers move.
What the approval step actually is
Since it's the main difference, worth describing precisely rather than as a slogan.
Contributions are charged directly to the organizer's own Stripe account. Reunion Fund is never in the flow of funds and never takes custody of your group's money. The organizer is the merchant of record, the same way they would be with a committee bank account.
Releasing money from a shared fund requires two committee approvals. The person who requested it cannot cast one of them, and neither can the organizer receiving it. If the system cannot confirm who the organizer is, the release fails rather than passing. A check that quietly succeeds when it's unsure isn't a check.
That structure isn't a statement about anyone's honesty. It's what converts the person holding the money from trusted to verified, which is a much better position to be in when eighty classmates are watching.
Which to choose
Cheddar Up if collecting money is genuinely the whole task: a team fundraiser, a class gift, a one-off collection with no event scaffolding around it.
Reunion Fund if there's an event attached: a date, a venue, a guest list, a committee dividing the work, and a fund that more than one person should have a say over.
Reunion Fund gives a committee one shared workspace (tasks, RSVPs, budget, documents and chat) with an optional shared fund that pays contributions straight to the organizer through Stripe and takes two committee approvals to release. The fund is off by default. Free plan: two active events, up to 30 guests each, three co-organizers. Start planning at reunionfund.com.
Competitor details above were checked in August 2026. Pricing and feature sets change, so verify against their site before deciding.