Warning! My wall of text for the day
I think the Net Zero is mathematically the best system, but I've never been in an FS that used it.
One of my FS's runs a Wonder Society spreadsheet. It is the one that requires the most work on the part of a few members and can be tough to explain to other members like
@Crow Last Elf talked about.
While one person sets it up, there are mages who help with the upkeep(I'm not one of them). It's a lot of work on them, but very easy on the FS members. There's a link provided to all FS members so they can view the sheet; only sheet managers have editing privileges. Whoever updates the sheet posts a new message in the
AW Targets*DoNotReply* message with new targets as well as permission to upgrade completed AW's. There are always 2 targets minimum; the secondary target is necessary in case the primary target member wants/needs to make donation. Putting kp into your own AW's is not a 'donation' and in fact reduces your contribution to the overall AW pool by the amount you put in your own. For us, the next few AW's that are coming up are listed as backups in the order they are rising. Our society is very active and this prevents us running out of places to put kp before the sheet managers can get the donations recorded and give the go-ahead to the member to upgrade a recorded AW. It also allows members to target soon to rise AW's for any runes they may need. It's extremely important members understand they can't upgrade until those donations are recorded and a sheet manager gives the go-ahead to upgrade. If they do and the upgrade is completed, there is no way to get that information back; if the upgrade has not completed they can cancel it and the donations will be viewable again.
Members just check the message, open the AW that is next up on the target list, make sure their donation won't cause any unclaimed reward chests, and donate. If they find an AW that's getting close to full and there are still chests left to be claimed, they usually post in chat 'JaneDoe's AW has 2 chests left and needs 15 kp' so members who have not donated can go in and donate a small amount to make sure the FS gets all the reward chests. If they complete the kp needed to upgrade a wonder, they post in the
AW Updates & Upgrades message that the AW is ready to be recorded (wording is important to avoid confusing members new to the system by saying things like 'finished' and they mistakenly think that means they can upgrade).
One advantage to this system is a way for the FS to reward players based on their contributions to FS activities like daily visits and tourney participation. Again, more work for the sheet managers, but points (kp) can be added to a player's 'balance' for activities that are tracked. Ex: 10pts for 6 visits/wk; 20 pts for 7 visits/wk. Can also do things like: 10pts for every 100 tourney points over the minimum, 10pts for completing the first floor of Spire, 20 pts for completing 2nd floor of Spire. I'm sure there are other possibilities I haven't thought of, too.
My other FS works off round-robin AWKP swap messages. We have 5 messages; one each for 5, 10, 15, 20 and 30kp. This does create an issue with other messages quickly getting pushed to p2, but we've learned to live with it. Members open the message for the amount they want to donate and note the last member to post and which AW they want donations to go into. They then post they are donating to that player and note which AW they want the next person to donate kp to.
Example: Sami goes in and posts: '5 to JaneDoe; GA for me, please'. The next person will post '5 to Sami, ToS for me, please'. This way everyone gets back the same amount of kp they donate, they just get it from the next player posting. Depending on who's participating at any given time, it's possible to end up with unclaimed chests, but we just usually post in chat if we see that our AW is getting close to full and there are chests still available. The players who are the most active in the swap threads get more of the rewards than those who are less active. The only issue I've seen come up with this system is if 2 members post msgs at the same time. Best practice is to post the message, close it, then re-open to verify before going to the AW and making the donation. Still, it happens that 2 players end up donating to the same AW (sometimes folks are time limited/moving fast and just forget to double check), but it usually gets worked out in chat since they're both on at the same time. At times, these msgs get too long and load slowly(~100 or so msgs), so someone needs to close out the old msg(with a 'Do Not Use, New Msg Starting) and open a new one. Anyone can do this, but usually a Mage that is very active in the swap takes the lead in doing it.