With Zeffy, Flyers 12U raises more money with no fees and fewer hours wasted on admin.

Flyers 12U is a youth travel baseball team based in Georgetown, Indiana, and the team’s admin ) fundraises from local families and businesses to cover pretty much everything their players need. Flyers 12U has a team of just five running the game. There are three coaches: head coach Mark Matheny and assistant coaches Brandon Miller and Kevin Roach. Sonya Matheny and Lori Miller run all admin and logistics.

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“We fundraise for our team to pay for tournament fees, uniforms, practice fields, gear, and more!” says Sonya Matheny, one of the administrators.

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Background

Coach Mark Matheny and Sonya took over Flyers 12U in 2024, and they decided they wanted to build a different kind of travel baseball team. Their team competes at the AAA level, which generally asks a lot of the players and their families. 

The players are middle school-aged boys who are already taking their sport very seriously. They’re at the elite level of travel baseball, taking steps toward implementing the discipline, persistence, and teamwork they learned in the first levels of travel teams. 

These life lessons don’t come cheap. The families of AAA-level players are usually asked for significant investments of time and money, but Flyers 12U is different. Sonya, the de facto fundraiser on the team, says donations from local businesses and families dramatically offset the normal costs of joining a team that competes at this level. 

“Most teams like ours charge anywhere from $500-$1500 in fees alone, and we wanted to be a part of that change,” she says. “Our hope and mission is for our team and their families to have little to no fees to be on our travel baseball team.”

To make life easier for donors, Sonya collected donations through Venmo, CashApp, and PayPal. But these scattered platforms made her life more difficult.

PayPal fees cut into team resources, but Sonya’s main problem was keeping track of funds across several platforms. She secured plenty of corporate sponsorships and individual donations to keep the boys in uniforms, bats, and practice spaces, but getting those funds to the right place could be chaotic. 

Between managing three platforms, transferring everything into bank accounts, and keeping track of payments going out, “money would get lost in the shuffle,” Sonya says. These disconnected links made it difficult for Sonya to gauge the effectiveness of her work and plan for future seasons.

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“We would also have to design flyers for every fundraiser, and they would look tacky, cheap, and piecemeal,” she says. “There was no way to know what fundraiser brought in money-wise. When you are fundraising, it is nice to know what fundraisers to do the following season.” 

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Sonya wanted the centralizing power of a CRM, but she didn’t have thousands to spend.

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Sonya was just looking for a way to manage money without losing track of who gave what. She didn’t necessarily expect to find an entirely fee-free fundraising platform that also gave her the campaign insights and donor management capabilities. 

But Zeffy was there, ready and waiting for her search.

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“I did market research on several different platforms for a few weeks, and with that research, everything pointed to Zeffy,” Sonya says. “Zeffy offered literally everything I was looking for plus some.”

From day one, Zeffy was a home run for Flyers 12U. It does more than Sonya expected.

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“Zeffy was the best decision I have made for our team,” she says. “The origami action of the platform alone allows me to see what we have raised, set goals, schedule email blasts, send donation tax forms, etc. I am so blessed that I found Zeffy.”

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Now, Sonya knows exactly where the team’s money is, who it came from, and how well her fundraisers are doing at all times. The fee-free fundraising platform also lets Sonya stay in better touch with her donors, cultivating lasting relationships that keep travel accessible for every member of her team. 

In addition to the free fundraising, the team also uses Zeffy’s ticketing services for their annual golf tournament, and they keep in touch with Zeffy-generated email lists. All of these tools help Sonya run more effective fundraising drives, ensuring that the opportunity to join Flyers 12U is free to more families, just like Zeffy keeps fundraising free for the team.

And then there’s the fact that Zeffy’s fundraising pages just look great, which promotes donor trust and helps connect the team to the community.

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“I wanted to find a platform to use that wouldn’t charge our team fees, but also a platform that offered extras when doing our fundraisers, and Zeffy was exactly what I was looking for, plus some!” Sonya says. “The forms make for an eye-appealing way to showcase your fundraisers, and the more people that utilize Zeffy, the more emails you collect to be able to stay in contact with your supporters!”

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Suddenly, Sonya is dramatically more efficient, and her fundraisers are much more effective. All of her saved time and increased cash flow go right to tournament fees, equipment, and travel fees for the team, helping them grow into the best athletes and young men that they can be.

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“Most importantly, Zeffy's user-friendly platform means we spend less time managing fundraising logistics and more time focusing on what matters—developing our young athletes,” Sonya says. “As a volunteer-run youth baseball team, having reliable, professional-grade fundraising tools has been game-changing for our organization.”

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These days, Sonya lets other teams at tournaments know that Zeffy is “the best of the best and does absolutely everything from top to bottom.”

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“If you are a coach of a team and collect fees or fundraise, you absolutely need to use Zeffy,” Sonya says. “This platform has made my job as the administrator stress-free and easy. It’s a one-stop shop for all your fundraising needs from top to bottom. Hands down, this platform will NOT disappoint. Just trust me!”