Raffle-Tickets.us Blog

When planning a raffle intended to be a significant fundraiser, it’s very important to advertise it properly. This is one aspect of running a raffle that many organizers forget or neglect. But if you don’t advertise well, you won’t enjoy the highest level of success. Think about it–if nobody knows about your raffle, how can they buy tickets? Many organizations don’t go beyond word-of-mouth advertising to promote their raffle. This is a great way to get the word out, but you really need to explore some more avenues to earn the most money for your enterprise.

Of course, the methods you use to advertise your raffle will depend on the cause you’re raising money for. For instance, if you’re running a school raffle you’ll probably focus on local channels, whereas for a national non-profit organization, you’d want to use channels that had a much wider audience. So start by thinking of that audience. Who are they, and how do they get their news? Where do they shop? What websites are they likely to visit? By asking yourself these questions, you can get a fairly good idea of where you ought to advertise. Some ideas include:

• School and community message boards
• Grocery stores and other local retailers
• Local radio stations
• Local television channels
• Newspapers, local or national
• Your website
• Enthusiast websites (e.g. environmental websites if you’re an environmental NPO)
• Flyers and bumper stickers
• Email lists

Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of news articles about organizations raffling off homes–everything from Brazilian castles to typical suburban single family homes. Now, in the case of a raffle being run by a huge organization or wealthy personality, I have no problem imagining where they got the funds to do such a thing. But I’ve seen a ton of references popping up to smaller non-profits raffling off houses. This peaked my interest, so I started to look into it.

Apparently, in some states individual home owners can work with non-profit organizations to raffle off their houses. The idea is that, if you can’t sell your house on the regular market (presumably because your buyers can’t get mortgages and not because the house is a disaster), rather than selling it off for way less than market value and not being able to pay off your own mortgage you can sell raffle tickets so that both you and the NPO get a good deal.

If you’re interested, you’ll have to look up the laws in your own state. But in general the way it works is that you draw up an agreement with an NPO under which they agree to buy your home from you at appraised value once they have sold a predetermined number of raffle tickets. If they don’t sell enough tickets, the house stays in your hands. But if they do, they buy the house and get to keep an raffle proceeds that exceed that price to fund their organization.

It sounds like a pretty sweet deal, if you can pull it off. Especially in this real estate market. Do you know anyone who’s done it successfully?

Before you go ahead and start planning your raffle, make sure to look into your state’s gambling laws. I just read an article about a Utah community that was planning to raise money for a new police dog by selling raffle tickets. Unfortunately, they failed to take into account that the state’s strict gambling laws forbade raffles. Now, these folks had the best of intentions. Their county needed a new drug-sniffing dog and this seemed like a harmless way to raise the necessary funds. But the law is the law.

So do a little research before you launch your raffle. In many states, raffles for charities are legally allowed, considered on the same level as state lotteries. In other places, like Utah apparently, they’re a no-go no matter what the cause. The relevant laws are legislated by the state. Simply Google your state and raffle laws. The information is often on the website of the state attorney general, though in some states, like Kentucky, a separate government department may exist to handle charitable gaming laws.

Here’s a new one to me. I just read a news article out of Austin Texas about a political candidate who’s trying to use a raffle to glean information about likely Republican voters. The campaign is offering raffle tickets to supporters who submit contact information for voters who might support the campaign. The idea is an innovative one.

Of course, it’s not far off from all of those raffles for cars you see in malls that are run for the sole purpose of getting consumer contact information. An interesting twist is that the campaign is tailoring the prizes to their constituency, hoping to narrow down the type of information that is submitted and weed out random submissions in that way. The prizes include meals with prominent Republicans, a lesson in marksmanship and a calf-roping lesson with a lieutenant-governor.

This could be turned into a good strategy for many organizations hoping to raise money through a raffle. Take a lead from this campaign and customize your prizes to your audience. Say you’re environmental group trying to get the word out about buying locally. Offer prizes like a membership to a CSA, a personal tour of a local farm or a year’s supply of locally-raised, grass fed beef. Not only could you sell more tickets to those who are already interested in your cause, prize winners who are not as familiar with locally grown food will get a first hand experience.

Believe it or not, football season is soon upon us.  It feels like baseball season just started, doesn’t it?  Anyway, it is time for the early fundraisers for schools.  I just recently heard that one of our local schools is holding a football raffle to benefit the school.  Most fundraisers are just to benefit the team, so this one definitely stands out.

Basically, they built a box seat in the bleachers on the 50 yard line.  They are raffling off the opportunity to watch one of the games in the box seat, which also includes free refreshments from the concession stand.  What a great idea, huh?!  They are selling raffle tickets for $3 a piece or 5 tickets for $10.

Not only is this a great way to raise money for the school before the school year begins, but it is also a great way to fill seats at the football games.  This raffle will benefit them down the road when people are paying to get into the game just to get a look at the box seat and who is in it that week.  I love this idea, and I wanted to pass it on for you all to use!

Have I ever mentioned how much I love new and unique raffle ideas?  Well, I found one that I think is great and would love to share it.  This one comes from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) and they are selling raffle tickets for their big game hunt raffles in the fall.  Basically, if you win one of the raffles they give you a big game permit for hunting.

Included in the raffle are opportunities to hunt black-tailed deer, mule deer, white-tailed deer, westside elk, eastside elk, California big horn sheep, moose, mountain goats, turkey, cougar, black bear, and bull elk.  I don’t know much about hunting, but I’m assuming the opportunity to hunt these animals is a big enough deal to buy raffle tickets to be able to do.  I know a few hunters and I’ve told them about this raffle and their eyes got pretty wide.

The prices of the raffle tickets range from $5.90 to $22.10 a piece depending on the species you want to hunt.  I love this idea of varying the cost of the raffle tickets to match the prize.  I would definitely recommend doing this if you have a raffle coming up anytime soon.  It’s a great way to increase your profits.

I just read about a raffle in Orange County, California today that seemed to be pretty idyllic.  Of course, we all know the Orange County, CA is a very nice part of the country to live it.  It is where Laguna Beach is located, for those of you who have seen the popular MTV show.  This may attribute to the reason why the raffle prize was so amazing.

Basically, the raffle was to benefit Irvine Unified School District programs in CA and offered an amazing travel opportunity to six of the most nice resorts in Orange County.  All of the resorts were coastal resorts and they include the Montage Laguna Beach, The Ritz Carlton, Laguna Niguel, The Balboa Bay Club, the Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach Resort & Spa, the Surf & Sand Resort, Laguna Cliffs Resort and Spa and the Hilton Waterfront Beach Resort.  The prize included a night, spa treatment, and dinner at each of these resorts.  That sounds like the high life to me.

This prize is just one of the many that they have been raffling off throughout the summer.  The other prizes include a BMW, $700,000 condo, and $500,000 cash.  I bet those raffle tickets sell like wildfire.  This raffle greatly benefits their school district because they just suffered a twenty million dollar cutback from the government.  More school districts should hold raffles like this to improve their schools.

The is this amazing raffle that goes on every year in the area where I live.  It is thrown by a hospital to raise money for their children cancer ward.  It is amazing how many people participate in this raffle and the prize is incredible.  They buy a dream house in a highly desirable neighborhood and raffle it off for $100 a ticket.  It is quite the hot ticket item around here.

My husband and I enter the raffle every year.  Not only are we happy to do it because it goes to a wonderful cause, it is also a fantastic prize to win.  I mean, who doesn’t want to win a dream house?!  It is much bigger than anyone would ever need, but it is extremely beautiful and desirable.

If any other organizations out there can afford to do a raffle like this, I would highly recommend it.  It will get a lot publicity for your organization and you will have no trouble selling raffle tickets.  People always want to support a good cause, especially when the money they donate is qualifying them to win a prize of a lifetime.

When you have sellers for your raffle tickets, it is important that they are trustworthy sellers.  I recently read a story where a seller of the Lion’s Club raffle tickets, which sell for $100 per ticket, left the $500 he had made so far along with $500 worth of raffle tickets in his car with his dog.  The dog decided to take the opportunity to eat both the the money and the raffle tickets.

Yes, this was your classic accidental situation.  The seller had no way of knowing that this would happen.  However, you do need to make sure that as a seller you are taking good care of your merchandise.  You can’t just leave your money and tickets laying around.  Keep them safely stowed away.  You also want to make sure that your fellow sellers are doing the same.

It is just important to remember that the tickets you are selling are not your tickets.  They technically belong to the organization you are selling them for and also the buyers you are selling them to.  It is your responsibility to make sure that the tickets not only get sold, but also don’t get lost.

I just read this article about how a guy was raffling off his amazing home for $50 a ticket.  After he sold 10,000 raffle tickets he canceled the raffle!  He made $500,000 off of these poor people, who are all demanding refunds.  The tickets were sold over Paypal, but his Paypal account has been canceled so Paypal can’t refund anyone right now.

It really makes me wary of raffle scams now, and I thought that I should probably warn others about it as well.  When someone is doing a personal raffle, that’s probably a good thing to stay away from.  Especially if their ticket prices are high.  You should really only buy raffle tickets from organizations that you can check up on.

Also, if the offer seems too good to be true, it probably is.  The best example I can think of is those car raffles that they offer in malls across America.  All you have to do if fill out a raffle ticket with your personal information and your entered.  That is way too good to be true.  Do not enter those raffles because all they want is your information so that they can send you and call you with marketing stuff.  Beware of those bad raffles.