Setting up a child's FutureRoots Fund
A parent or guardian starts a child's FutureRoots Fund from that child's vault. This is a short setup with our payment processor, Stripe, so the money has a real account to go to. Until it's set up, family can't give a gift yet.
Giving a gift
Once a fund is set up, anyone in the family can open Contribute on that child's vault and give an amount of their choosing. Before you pay, you're shown the service fee and how much reaches the child. For a fund in another currency, the bank's currency conversion is shown too. Funds are paid to the family's bank when they reach a set amount, or every three months, whichever comes first.
Gift links and QR codes
A gift link lets someone without a FutureRoots account give to a child's FutureRoots Fund: a great-aunt far away, or a friend at a birthday party. A parent or guardian makes one from Gift links on the child's vault. Each link works for 30 days and can be turned off at any time. Whoever opens it sees only the child's first name.
Every new link has a QR code. Choose Show QR code and guests can scan it with their phone camera. On the website you can also choose Print a card with this QR code to make a card with the code and your own message, sized to tuck into an invitation. If you turn a link off, its QR code and any printed card stop working too.
Anyone who scans the code is asked their birth month and year first, because children will scan it too.
What the processing fee covers
Every gift includes a small processing fee, shown to you before you pay. It's sized to cover what card payments actually cost, including international cards and currency conversion. FutureRoots doesn't claim the fee is zero, and on some cards the fee covers a little more than the cost. The rest of your gift goes straight to the child.
Whose name the fund is in
The fund is set up and controlled by the child's parent or guardian while the child is young. FutureRoots doesn't hold, invest, or manage the money itself. It moves straight from the giver to the account the family set up.
Managing a FutureRoots Fund
Parents and guardians can open Manage FutureRoots Fund from the fund card in a child's vault. It shows which bank the money goes to (the bank's name and the last four digits only), whether payouts are on, and every gift the fund has received: who gave it, the fee, what reached the fund, and any message that came with it. On the website, you can download the full list as a spreadsheet.
The account is in the name of the parent or guardian who set up the fund, so only they see which bank it pays into, and only they can change it. They choose Change bank account, which opens Stripe's own secure page, where they confirm it's them and enter the new details. FutureRoots never sees or stores their bank details.