Paul Landers built a business around the ask

Paul Landers sells help with an awkward sentence: will you give us some money? The cause may be a football season, a band program or a school activity. The people asking have something they want to do. First, they must persuade somebody else to help pay for it. Landers has made that small social difficulty the business of Vertical Raise, the fundraising company he founded in 2018.

On April 1, 2026, Arbiter announced that it had acquired Vertical Raise. Landers would continue leading the fundraising business, and its leadership and operations would remain intact. For a founder, an acquisition can rearrange the verbs in a biography. Founded becomes sold. Built becomes exited. In this case, there was still a present tense: Landers would keep running the work.

That arrangement offers a useful place to begin his story. His company combines digital campaigns with people who help launch them. The proposition depends on both: software to carry an invitation, and a representative to help a team make the invitation worth sending. Even after a sale, someone has to get the next fundraiser started.

Before Vertical Raise, a name in the filings

Landers is based in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. He attended the University of Colorado Boulder from 2004 to 2008. By February 2016, his name appeared in Idaho business listings for WeFund4U, LLC, alongside Alex Hamill. Landers was listed as a manager or member, filing party and registered agent. Fundraising was already part of his business life before Vertical Raise had its name.

The 2016 listing is a modest beginning for a founder's story: a company name, two people, a filing date. It has the advantage of being concrete. Entrepreneurship acquires a good deal of polish in retrospect; paperwork tends to retain its original complexion. Here, it fixes Landers in a business that preceded the company for which he is now known.

Vertical Raise followed in 2018. The organization he built would serve schools, teams and groups through online campaigns supported by fundraising representatives. The unit of work was a season or a program with a goal to meet. That gives his business a particular clock: the money has to arrive while the activity it supports can still happen.

The invitation needs a little coaching

Consider the sequence in a Vertical Raise direct donation campaign. A fundraising coach helps create the team page and gets participants onto their individual pages. Participants and parents then share invitations by email, text and social media. An administrative dashboard records activity and money raised. At the end, the organization receives its funds by check or direct deposit.

This sequence reveals the practical shape of Landers's idea. A participant needs a clear task. A parent needs something easy to pass along. An organizer needs to know whether the invitations have gone out. The product joins these separate jobs into a campaign. A donation button is a remarkably quiet employee; it generally needs introductions.

His own professional description on Contra emphasizes email delivery, detailed tracking, personalized pages and experienced representatives. He describes the audience as sports teams and performing arts groups. The pairing is telling. On a field or a stage, the work has a deadline, a shared purpose and people whose contributions have to come together. The fundraising is another group performance.

There is an everyday discipline beneath that design. An invitation has to be understandable to someone outside the team. A page has to explain what the group is raising money for. Tracking has to be useful to the adult coordinating the effort. These are small requirements individually. Together, they describe the work Landers chose to organize: helping a group turn its shared purpose into a request other people can act on.

“Schools and teams need fundraising that's simple, secure, and proven.”

Paul Landers · April 2026

The sums belong to the teams

The company's campaign examples make the work tangible. Its website displays the Carroll Dragon Athletics fundraiser at $190,409 against a $90,000 goal. York Dukes Football appears at $61,928 against $30,000. Star Middle School Music's popcorn fundraiser shows $27,834 against $15,000. These are separate campaigns with separate circumstances, rather than a forecast for the next school to sign up.

They also show the breadth of the business Landers leads. A large athletics campaign and a middle school music fundraiser occupy different places in school life. Both require someone to organize the ask. Vertical Raise offers several ways to do it, including direct donations, digital discount cards and popcorn. The format can change while the organizing problem stays familiar.

Fees deserve a place beside the totals. Vertical Raise says the amount a group keeps varies with the fundraising format, service level and participant prizes. A gross total therefore leaves another question to answer: how much reaches the program? For a founder promising to help teams, that arithmetic belongs close to the celebratory photograph.

Growth came with a court case

Landers's business history includes a prolonged dispute with rival Snap! Mobile. Snap sued Vertical Raise and Landers in 2019 over claims involving interference with contracts, trade secrets and unfair competition. Liability was determined in Snap's favor on summary judgment, and a jury awarded a total of $1 million in damages.

In February 2024, the Idaho Supreme Court reversed a later increase to the award and directed reinstatement of the jury's original $1 million verdict. It also found the permanent injunction overbroad and remanded for further proceedings. In a second appeal decided September 11, 2026, the court affirmed the Third Amended Judgment concerning post-judgment interest.

The case belongs in the account of how Vertical Raise grew. A business built around representatives competes over people and relationships as well as software. Here, that competition produced findings against the company and its founder, followed by appeals that changed parts of the result. The commercial milestones and the litigation are both part of Landers's tenure.

Buying experience, then crossing a border

In May 2025, Vertical Raise announced that XLR8 Fundraising had joined the company. XLR8 had served teams, schools and organizations in Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee for more than 20 years. Its owner, Jamey Sorsby, described the transition as a way to bring customers additional technology and support. Landers shared the announcement on LinkedIn.

The combination put an established regional fundraising operation inside his younger business. Its interest lay in the existing work: organizations already served, people already helping them and a platform that could be used across those relationships. In fundraising, a familiar introduction can be more useful than an elaborate presentation. XLR8 arrived with a history of introductions.

Another expansion was visible in January 2026, when Football Ontario named Vertical Raise its preferred fundraising partner for two years. The arrangement included partner pricing, additional platform features and an Ontario-based representative. Coaches and club leaders would receive help planning and launching campaigns. Even across the border, local assistance remained part of the offer.

The Ontario arrangement also makes the division of labor visible. The governing body connects a fundraising provider with its membership. The provider brings campaign tools and support. Individual clubs still have their own plans and participants. For Landers's business, expansion means serving that arrangement repeatedly, while each organization retains its particular reason for raising money. A provincial partnership gives the work an entry point; the next launch gives it a test.

A bigger desk in the athletic office

As Landers's company developed, it also built for the person overseeing several fundraisers at once. Funds Manager Pro offers reporting by team, school and donor, alongside payout monitoring and forecasting. That extends the work from helping one group make its goal to helping an administrator understand the fundraising happening across a campus.

The shift changes what a useful screen must show. A participant wants to know how to share a page. An athletic director may want to see which teams are running campaigns and where the payouts stand. Bringing those views into one operation gives the fundraising business a closer relationship with the administrative work around school activities.

This is the context for Arbiter's purchase. Arbiter already supplies school operations software, including registration, payments, scheduling, facilities and websites. Fundraising adds another task that schools handle throughout the year. Landers's continued leadership preserves responsibility for that task inside a larger organization. The acquisition gives his work a new organizational setting, with familiar customers still at its center.

An ambition measured in another season

At the time of the acquisition, Landers emphasized ease of use, security and a proven approach. He also described the opportunity to help more programs through Arbiter's network. The ambition was an extension of the company he had built: bring the fundraising service to more schools, while making it easier for programs to use.

His public activity keeps returning to the work of the wider team. He has shared company milestones, the XLR8 announcement and the Football Ontario partnership. In October 2026, NextUp's New York youth sports management conference listed him among its speakers as Vertical Raise's founder and CEO. His business now has a place in the conversation about how youth sports organizations operate.

There is a useful restraint in judging that career by its original task. A company can acquire another company, join a larger platform and fill a conference program. A school still needs its campaign to work. The invitation must reach someone, the payment must go through, and the organizer must know where the money stands.

For Landers, the next chapter begins in those details. He founded a business around helping groups ask for support; he continues to lead it after its sale. Somewhere in the process sits the person who has to make the first appeal. Giving that person a workable plan remains a sufficiently demanding occupation. Generosity may be spontaneous. Organizing it has office hours.