The Paddle Register is free, has no affiliate links, and is now ninety-two paddles across three years. Keeping it current costs research and hours. Here is how it stays free without becoming a store.
A patron pass is twenty-five dollars a season. Half goes to the house: hosting, the weekly research that checks every paddle against both approval lists, the hours. Half goes into the Court Fund, which buys concrete things for courts within a few miles of where this is written. Season one's candidates: a ball machine for El Segundo Recreation Park, two nets and a season of balls for Hollyglen, a block of youth hours at California Smash. Patrons vote. When the fund can cover a pick, it gets bought, and the receipt and a photo go on the ledger.
The ledger is the point. Every dollar in is a dated line. The split is two numbers next to the total. No payout is recorded without a receipt; the page will not show one. A pass buys nothing on the register that anyone else cannot read: a vote, a name on the wall if you want it, and your corrections reviewed first.
Every paddle page now has a corrections door too. A claim needs a source URL; accepted ones land in the changes feed with that source. That is the other way the record gets kept.
Until the checkout opens, the page takes pledges: a count, no money, no email. That count is what opens it.