Raffle-Tickets.us Blog

There are many follow-up tasks to a successfully concluded raffle, from delivering prizes to winners to filling out any necessary legal or tax forms. One item that you should make an effort not to forget is thanking your raffle prize donors. If an individual or organization has been generous enough to give your cause a prize to raffle off, a show of gratitude is definitely in order.

Your gratitude can take many forms: everything from a simple Thank You card to a gift certificate or other small token of appreciation. When choosing your method, keep in mind the nature of the donation as well as of the relationship between your organization and the donor. A thank you to a parent who donates a gift basket to a school fundraiser will probably look different from a thank you to a major corporation that has donated a car to a cancer charity.

When you’re thinking about what items to offer as prizes for your organization’s raffle, it’s a good idea to consider prizes that have something to do with the organization itself. Not only will this help you to start generating prize ideas more quickly, but it is also likely to generate larger raffle ticket sales.

For instance, say you are organizing a raffle for a non profit that helps get kids involved in sports. Who is most likely to be interested in helping out such an organization by buying raffle tickets? People who believe that sports can play a positive role in someone’s life. In other words, people who are interested in sports themselves. So make the tickets even more tempting by offering sports-related prizes.

Make sure to order custom raffle tickets on which you can list the prizes you’re offering. That way, ticket buyers can show their tickets to friends and the prizes are listed right there for them so they don’t need to remember specifics. A little bit of free marketing.

Well here’s a fantastic idea: The Red Sox Foundation is raffling off a chance for golfers to take a swing at Fenway with Hall of Famer Jim Rice. The opportunity has to be darn near irresistible for Bostonians with a penchant for putting. The proceeds of the raffle go to the foundation itself, plus, if the golfer can hit a target out in center field a $50,000 donation will also be made to the charity in the winner’s name.

While this particular prize may not be one your organization can manage to offer, you can certainly generalize the prize IDEA and come up with something great along the same lines that you can offer. Is there a local landmark in your area? Or just a place that’s iconic to local residents? Offer them a chance to do something really unique in that location. Something that they wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to try. You’ll be selling raffle tickets like there was no tomorrow.

There are few things that will perk up someone’s day than receiving a beautiful bouquet of flowers.  The bring so much joy and happiness to the receiver.  Even potted or hanging plants are just as beautiful, and are readily available.  I have a great idea for a raffle fundraiser involving summer flowers for any group that is fundraising this summer.

The idea is to raffle off summer flower bouquets deliveries.  Contact a local nursery or florist that will sell you flowers at a discount since you will be ordering a lot of them. Send order forms and raffle tickets home with the people doing the fundraising so that people can either buy a raffle ticket to have a bouquet sent to them or another person, or they can just order flowers that they want through you.  Either way, it is a great way to raise money for your cause.

Some fantastic summer flowers to include in your raffle/fundraiser are Asters, Birds of Paradise, Calla Lilies, Chrysanthemums, Casa Blanca Lilies, Daisies, Geraniums, Orchids, Pansies, etc.  The possibilities of arrangements could even been made to order as well!

Raffles, even for charity, are illegal in many states. Before you begin planning one for your organization, make sure you look into the relevant gaming laws. Here we’ve provided links to the most up-to-date information for all 50 states plus Washington, D.C. These laws are subject to change, so we’ve also provided the name of the government body on whose site we found the information.

• Alabama (illegal even for nonprofits)
• Alaska (Department of Revenue)
• Arizona (Attorney General)
• Arkansas (search the Attorney General’s site for the latest opinions)
• California Attorney General
• Colorado (Secretary of State)
• Connecticut (Licensing Info Center)
• Delaware (Gaming Control Board)
• Florida (State Senate)
• Georgia (Secretary of State)
• Hawaii (Attorney General–opens attachment)
• Idaho (State Lottery)
• Illinois (search state government page for up-to-date laws)
• Indiana (Gaming Commission)
• Iowa (Department of Revenue)
• Kansas (Racing and Gaming Commission)
• Kentucky (Department of Charitable Gaming)
• Louisiana (Office of Charitable Gaming)
• Maine (State Government)
• Maryland (Secretary of State)
• Massachusetts (Attorney General)
• Michigan (State Lottery)
• Minnesota (Gambling Control Board)
• Mississippi (Gaming Commission)
• Missouri (Attorney General)
• Montana (Attorney General)
• Nebraska (Department of Revenue)
• Nevada (Department of Revenue)
• New Hampshire (Racing and Charitable Gaming Commission)
• New Jersey (Legalized Games of Chance Control Commission)
• New Mexico (Gaming Control Board)
• New York (State Racing and Wagering Board)
• North Carolina (Department of Justice)
• North Dakota (Attorney General)
• Ohio (Attorney General)
• Oklahoma (ABLE Commission)
• Oregon (State Government)
• Pennsylvania (Department of Revenue)
• Rhode Island (State Police)
• South Carolina (search the Attorney General’s site for the latest information)
• South Dakota (search the Attorney General’s site for the latest opinions)
• Tennessee (Secretary of State)
• Texas (Attorney General)
• Utah (search the Attorney General’s site for the latest information)
• Vermont (Attorney General)
• Virginia (Office of Charitable Gaming)
• Washington (Gambling Commission)
• Washington, D.C. (Lottery and Charitable Games Control Board)
• West Virginia (search state government page for up-to-date laws)
• Wisconsin (Department of Administration)
• Wyoming (search state government page for up-to-date laws)

Loving this story today. The Centralia Police Officers Association recently raffled off a truck in hopes of raising a small amount of money. But guess what? The man who won the truck (a business owner from out of town) donated it right back! That’s right–not only did they get some money by selling their raffle tickets, but they got to keep the truck for their own use in the community. That’s some serious generosity on the part of the towing company owner who won the raffle.

I really love this idea. I like to buy raffle tickets from charities when I can afford it. They don’t usually cost any more than $20 at most, so I’m not really out much when I don’t win (and who ever expects to?). But say I did win a prize from an organization that I really cared about? It never would have occurred to me to donate the prize right back, but what a great thing it would be. Say the prize is worth something like $1000 (or even more like the truck in this story). That’s like being able to donate all of that money to a cause that I care about for only $20. It doesn’t hurt my budget, and could do so much for an NPO.

Unlike with some other forms of fundraising, in order to host a raffle you need to have some money budgeted to begin with. If you really want people to buy your raffle tickets, you need to be able to offer attractive prizes which means spending some cash long before you see any return on your efforts. However, if you put some careful thought into your raffle beforehand, you can often find ways to reduce this initial outlay.

One significant way to save money on your prizes is to find sponsors for your raffle. Individuals or organizations willing to donate their time, money or products to your cause. Of course, the more worthy they consider the cause, the easier this will be. If you’re a non-profit organization, it’ll probably be a lot easier to find sponsors. But you can also create incentive for sponsors by giving them something more in return for their generosity than just your sincere thanks. One very easy way to do this is to include your sponsors’ names on the raffle tickets themselves. This shouldn’t cost you any extra, and it gives your sponsors free advertising. Their name will reach as many people as your fundraising does.

Just in case there are any Lakers fans out there who haven’t heard yet (perhaps you were in a cave all weekend?), Ron Artest is raffling off his 2010 NBA Championship ring! Artest announced the raffle last Wednesday night on Larry King Live, and the raffle winner will be chosen on Christmas day, December 25. The announcement was followed by a record-breaking $120,000 of ticket sales in just 24 hours. You can buy tickets on Artest’s own site, www.ronartest.com, or an alternate site set up by CNN, www.netraffle.org. (The alternate site was apparently set up because Artest’s site crashed with the heavy inflow of traffic!)

Tickets for the Win My Bling raffle cost only $2.00 and the proceeds will fund mental health services for youths who can’t afford the care. Artest has been a celebrity supporter of making mental health services more easily available ever since apologizing for a fan/player brawl he was involved in in 2005. In that apology, he publicly thanked his psychiatrist for the help he’d received. This raffle therefore appears to be part PR, part personal. In any case, don’t miss out on a once-in-a-lifetime chance for a Lakers’ fan.

Oh, in my posts on raffle twists, how could I have forgotten the time-honored cow chip raffle? Running across this article this weekend reminded me of this unique way of picking raffle winners. The middle school I attended used to hold one of these yearly. Basically, the raffle organization paints a grid on a big field, numbering each space in the grid and selling tickets with corresponding numbers. Then you simply let some well-fed cows loose on the field, and voila! They choose your raffle winners for you by their own natural processes.

This is just another example of how creative you can get with your process for choosing raffle winners. Come up with some innovative way of picking a winner, tying the method to the organization you’re raising funds for. If you’re an agricultural or animal rights organization, the cow chip raffle’s a great choice.

The political raffle I wrote about back in August got me thinking about other ways for people to earn raffle tickets rather than buying them. No one ever said that a raffle ticket needs to be given in exchange for cash. For that political raffle, people earned raffle tickets by handing in names of prospective voters. What other types of effort or information might be worth offering raffle tickets for?

It occurred to me that sometimes more than money, non-profits and other organizations need man-hours. For example, do you have a community garden project that you’re trying to get going, but just don’t have enough people working on it to get underway? Offer raffle tickets in exchange for a certain amount of work. The prize could be garden tools, produce from the garden, seeds, or something completely unrelated. Or does your company need market research information? Offer raffle tickets to people who fill out surveys for you.