THE DIFFICULT PART
The total is shared. The amounts are not.
This combination is the whole reason it cannot be a spreadsheet, and it is the reason these arrangements are done badly and privately instead of properly.
Everyone sees forty-two of sixty
Progress is what makes the pool work. Without it nobody can judge whether to join, and the organiser becomes the only person who knows anything.
Nobody sees who put in twenty
Among friends, knowing that one person contributed twenty million and another two changes the relationship permanently. It is the single most sensitive fact in the arrangement.
The organiser is not an exception
They see the total like everyone else. Giving the organiser the itemised list would recreate exactly the position we are removing.
We hold no window into it
The pool sits between the contributors and the target. We have no window into the amounts, and building one would defeat the point.