A short reference for what the founding-league and founding-member flags mean, what they grant, and where the badges show up in the product.
What it is
The founding program is a small, capped recognition track for the earliest leagues that committed to running on Racey. It exists for two reasons:
- To thank the people who showed up before the platform was finished.
- To put a permanent, visible marker on those leagues and their primary admin so other users can see the program exists.
The cap is hard-coded at 5 founding members. The grant API rejects an attempted grant once the user count hits 5. Existing founding members can be re-granted (the cap check is skipped on idempotent re-grants), but new entrants are blocked once the slots are full.
As of the May 2026 production audit, 1 of 5 founding-member slots are filled and 5 founding leagues are flagged. The seat ratio is 1:5 because a single founding member's account can be associated with multiple founding leagues. Founding-league flags are granted alongside the user grant — see "Who qualifies" below.
The public founding-league application window is closed. The admin API still enforces the hard cap at the founding-member level, so any future exception is an internal platform-admin operation rather than a public application path.
Who qualifies
Founding-member status is granted only by a platform admin. There is no self-serve path, no application form, and no public criteria. The decision is made off-platform and applied by the Racey team.
The grant applies three changes in one operation:
- Marks the user as a Founding Member.
- Marks the named league as a Founding League.
- Upgrades that league's subscription to perpetual Enterprise with no expiry.
After the grant, any active paid subscription on the user's account is cancelled to prevent double-billing. This is a one-way cleanup — if the grant were ever revoked, the user would need to re-subscribe through the normal flow.
Revocation reverses all three changes (user flag, league flag, and subscription back to the free tier). Stripe cancellations from the original grant are not auto-restored on revoke.
What founding members get
Enterprise tier features, free, forever, on the leagues they admin.
The mechanism is not "the user gets Enterprise" — the mechanism is "the user's leagues get treated as Enterprise regardless of their subscription." All feature gates short-circuit for Founding Leagues:
- Every feature check returns "yes, allowed" unconditionally.
- Every limit check returns "no, not at limit" unconditionally — effectively unlimited drivers, seasons, storage, and everything else that has a numeric cap on Free or Pro.
- Plan-gate badges are hidden in the league-admin UI so Enterprise-only items render as if you were on Enterprise.
Founding member status (User.isFoundingMember) does NOT, by itself, automatically promote the user's leagues. The promotion happens because the grant API also flips isFoundingLeague on the named league in the same transaction. If a founding member creates a new league after their grant, that league starts on the founding member's plan tier (whatever their personal subscription says — typically free) and is NOT auto-flagged. A platform admin would need to grant founding-league status separately on the new league for it to inherit Enterprise behavior.
In practice this matters less than it sounds, because (a) founding members usually run one or two specific leagues that were named in the original grant, and (b) a platform admin can re-run the grant API on any new league with the same user.
The badges
Two badge components ship in the app, visually consistent and both styled in the same amber/gold pill:
- Founding Member — a small amber/gold pill with a Shield icon and the text "Founding Member". Renders on users who hold founding-member status.
- Founding League — the same amber/gold pill, but with a Trophy icon and the text "Founding League". Renders on leagues that hold founding-league status.
Both come in two sizes:
size="sm"— compact inline pill, used next to names in lists, cards, table rows.size="md"— slightly larger pill, used next to page-header titles.
Both are theme-safe (light + dark) and use the same gradient + border treatment, so when the two appear on the same page they read as a matched set.
Where they appear
Founding League badge:
- Public league directory cards at
/leagues— badge appears in the meta-badge row on each league card. - Public league detail page header at
/leagues/[slug]—mdbadge next to the league name. - League admin sidebar at
/league/[slug]/*—smbadge under the "League Admin" subtitle. - Driver dashboard "My Leagues" page at
/my-leagues—smbadge in each league card title (covers both Racing-In and Managing sections, plus the Archived collapsed section).
Founding Member badge:
- Public driver profile at
/drivers/[id]—mdbadge next to the display name in the page header. - Public drivers directory at
/drivers—smbadge next to the driver name on each card. - League admin Roster page at
/league/[slug]/roster—smbadge next to the driver name in both the desktop table view and the mobile card view.
Surfaces that intentionally do NOT show the badges:
- Form fields, settings panels, destructive-action confirmations, and other "active-action" surfaces. The principle is: discovery / browsing surfaces show badges; doing-work surfaces do not.
What it's not
- Not a refund. Founding status does not retroactively refund any prior Pro subscription payments. The auto-cancel of active Stripe subscriptions on grant prevents future double-billing, but past charges stay charged.
- Not transferable. The
isFoundingMemberflag lives on aUserrow, not on an account holder identity. There is no built-in mechanism to move the flag to a new account if the user creates a new login. A platform admin could revoke + re-grant manually, but this is an off-platform decision. - Not visible to billing. A founding member's subscription rows are real Stripe subscriptions only when they were paying before the grant; afterwards their league's behavior is driven by the
isFoundingLeagueflag, not by Stripe. The billing page on a founding league still shows the Subscription row (plan: enterprise, status: active, currentPeriodEnd: null) so the state is auditable, but no invoices are issued. - Not retroactive on new leagues. As noted under "What founding members get," founding-member status does NOT auto-flag any new leagues the user creates after the original grant. Platform admin action is required for each additional league.
For anything else — case-by-case questions about transferability, account changes, what happens if a founding-flagged league is deleted, etc. — these details are intentionally unspecified. Contact founders@racey.gg for case-specific questions.
Cap reference
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Hard cap | 5 founding members |
| Current count (May 2026 audit) | 1 of 5 founding members, 5 founding leagues |
| Cap enforcement | Grant is rejected once the user count reaches the hard cap |
| Re-grant on existing founding member | Allowed (cap check skipped for idempotent re-grants) |
Related guides
- Racey School index — the full list of role and program guides.
- League Admin Guide — how leagues are configured and where founding-league perks land.
- Glossary — definitions for plan tiers, leagues, and program-related terms.