If you’re hosting a party or event and need to raise some money, a great way to do it is by offering raffle ticket prizes. You’ll want items that people will want to purchase tickets for in order to help raise the money. If you’ve got a small budget, you can still provide much wanted items that people will be willing to shell out for tickets. Here are 5 great raffle ticket prize ideas.

- Movie tickets/passes: everyone loves movie and a family night out with sodas, popcorn, and candy. However, it can run pretty expensive on the budget. So this is a great raffle ticket prize. Package together movie passes, food and drink coupons for a family of four and you have a great prize pack.

- Ham or turkey: if you’re hosting your raffle drawing around the holidays, a large ham or turkey is a perfect prize to raffle off. A baked ham or turkey will serve many people and help out with your large family meal. Not having to prepare the main meat is reason enough to enter the raffle prize to see if you can scoop up the big prize of meat.

- Electronics – iPod/Nook/Kindle: electronics are small, portable, and easy to use. By adding an iPod or other MP3 or an e-reader such as Nook or Kindle, you’ll draw people to purchase tickets due to a useful, needed item. As a special incentive, you could add some books or music onto the device before raffling it off. In any case, tickets are sure to fly with this prize offering.

- Visa/AmEx gift card: Who doesn’t like cash? Tossing a gift card into a raffle guarantees instant interest. The cards can be used anywhere for anything. The winner can use it for groceries or gas or toward travel. They can also turn around and give it as a gift, as well. It’s the next best thing to cash.

- Weekend getaway: This is a great raffle prize to offer. If you have a connection to a hotel or spa, see if you can get the time donated. Most anyone would love to have a weekend getaway at a ski resort or spa hotel or a simple resort. Add in a food package and you have one amazing giveaway to raffle off.

Raffle tickets are one of the simplest and most popular games for events and parties, including birthdays, contests, and even bridal showers. So next time you have a party or event, remember these raffle ticket prize ideas.

Misha Anatolia writes about family and party topics like bridal showers. Raffle tickets are a popular game idea for bridal showers, but for other bridal shower game ideas and more bridal shower information, go to bridal-showers.org.

Fundraising letters – asking for support from business – are often an important part of any fundraising campaign. Getting them right is crucial. The work that goes into a letter however should start long before you sit down in front of the computer.

The best strategy for small organisations is to carefully target their fundraising requests and the key to a good fundraising letter is research.

So what research should you do?

Find out about your own supporters. – Who are they? Where do they work? What contacts do they have? Keeping volunteer records with a simple question sheet for new volunteers to fill in is an easy way to collect and save this information. If this is not possible simply make sure that you really get to know your volunteers. Talk to them, ask them about what they do and the companies they work for.

Smaller companies are often great prospects for gifts in kind. Your volunteers can be the key to making that contact. At the very least they can often find out the contact details of the person at their organisation you should be getting in touch with. A personal recommendation from a staff member with any request will also help it carry more weight.

Find out about the companies you think might help you. – Why do you think they are a good prospect? Have you seen them support other groups? Do they have anything about charitable giving or sponsorship on their website. With larger companies this information is often listed under Community, CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) or Sustainability. Do they have a Foundation (charitable giving department)? You may actually find guidelines for how to approach them for support on these web-pages.

Sometimes a simple phone call to reception will help you identify the right person to write a fundraising letter to. It really does make a difference getting your letter to the right person so try not to skip this step.

Is it a local request? Some companies might only offer help to non profit causes in their immediate locality. This is especially true of smaller organisations who tend to focus very much on their local areas. Some larger organisations will split their charitable efforts between bigger causes but also have special funds etc for local charity groups and community sponsorships which are popular with their own workforce.

Use your research - Your research will help you tailor your fundraising requests. There is no point asking a small company for a major cash donation but they might be great for an annual raffle prize, sponsorship of cup for a challenge event or advertising in a newsletter.

Similarly a bit of research might reveal a company’s charitable giving strategy that your organisation could fit to a tee for a nice big sponsorship package! (Well we can always hope!)

Having realistic expectations based on your research is an important part of the process. Tailor your request to the company you are approaching.

Keep a record - The final point to make about research is how to keep it. It really is worth setting up either a simple little database or recording information in a records book. This really doesn’t have to be complicated. A simple excel sheet with contact details is the start. Add a few details about the company. Then simply record any correspondence. This will help you keep on top of your fundraising letters and company replies and prevent duplication of requests. It also means that your work can be used and added to by others.

So good fundraising letters begin with research and end with administration! – But you will find spending the time on this is the key to success.

Ready to start your research?

Neill Wilkins

Neill Wilkins runs a popular web-site for fundraisers and non-profit organisations. For more information and sample fundraising letters please visit-

http://www.better-fundraising-ideas.com/fundraising-letters.html

As monies from traditional sources becomes more difficult to secure, organizations are stepping up their fund raising efforts within their communities to raise cash to cover operating costs. While soliciting for cash contributions is the most direct means, it is becoming more difficult as companies are cutting back on such contributions. In addition, competition for the same dollars among the various organizations has increased, forcing them to look for creative ways to reach their goals. Events such as community or school fairs that include door prizes and raffle prizes are becoming very popular and businesses are regularly solicited to donate items to these events.

A themed gift basket is the perfect item for such door and raffles prizes. Gift baskets are eye catching and can be designed to reflect the theme of the event, such as “fall harvest”, “casino night” or “winter festival” simply by choosing the right combination of items to include in the gift basket. Books and videos can be good choices. A cookbook featuring traditional Thanksgiving fare, a travel book about Las Vegas and a coffee table book of winter scenes would compliment the above event themes.

A creative designer can often incorporate promotional items from a business, such as coffee mugs, into the gift basket while maintaining the theme. Even though attaching the business name to the donated item or placing a sign in front of it is common practice, company brochures and printed material can be discretely placed in the gift basket to be later reviewed by the recipient of the prize.

Marie is the owner and chief designer at Laurel Mountain Basket Company, the New England gift basket service voted “Best In The Valley” by the Valley Advocate Readers Poll 5 years in a row and chosen among the Rave Reviews! Top 100 for 2007. Visit her at http://www.laurelmtbasket.com

One of the most common and probably the oldest kind of fund raising activity is the Raffle. Raffles are fun and enjoyable other than being totally effective. It involves raffle ticket sales, drawing of the ticket numbers and winning items that are either donated or sponsored.

Usually, for simple raffles, the winnings or the prizes are donated by good hearted individuals who have sincere sympathy towards the school and the students. These are usually the parents, stake holders and the alumni of the school. The donated items which are to be the prizes of the raffles may vary. It could be as cool as a Macintosh Laptop or as mundane as an electric oven toaster.

For these kinds of raffles, tickets may be sold for as cheap as a dollar. By selling volumes of tickets this cheap, the school may actually be able to raise funds as much as 2,000 dollars. That is assuming you are only able to sell two hundred tickets. Of course the number of tickets sold could depend on how many prizes there are to be won and how cool each of these prizes is.

There are times when large sums of money are required to be raised. For these, you will require a more valuable prize. Cars, motorcycles and even paintings from up and coming contemporary artists could be given away as prizes. Obviously, these items are either donated to the school for the raffle by alumni members or sponsored by good hearted companies.

For these kinds of raffles, you could sell tickets for as high as a hundred dollars depending on the value of the prizes. You won’t expect high sales from ticket prizes this high but you are sure to raise a lot more funds if the prizes are as expensive. You might actually be able to raise enough funds to construct new classrooms if not a new building.

It’s rare to have school raffles with really expensive prizes. But when it does, you can expect to raise large amounts of funds that could be put to good use.

Raffles, on the side of the people buying raffle tickets, could be considered a healthy and fun game of chance. But to the school and its members, this is a good and effective way of earning the much needed financial help in a short amount of time. As long as the information campaign for the school fundraising activity is disseminated properly, you could expect much results quickly.

If you are trying to come up with a great idea on raising funds for the school, then you should consider benefit raffles.

http://www.school-fundraising-ideas.net.au/

Non-profits organize fundraisers to collect money for their year-round social programs and activities. They host parties to hold charitable dinners and outdoor functions. However, as the main reason behind hosting such events is to raise money, the non-profits should know the ways of effectively promoting their fundraising programs.

Parties

Start organizing parties and balls of different sizes to attract people. Send invitations to your friends and colleagues requesting them to attend the party. Have proper seating arrangements and serve food and drinks to the guests to ensure customer satisfaction.

Dinners

Create excitement and enhance your non-profit fundraising event by holding a gala dinner. You can also promote your good cause by offering special prizes or a holiday trip to some exotic island! Declaring prizes will ensure maximum ticket sales and thus, generate greater revenues.

Outdoor Events

Arrange outdoor events to collect higher funds from people of diverse backgrounds. Introduce different games and make the donors participate freely. Summer and winter carnivals give you a chance to enjoy your time out and win exciting prizes.

Facebook

One of the best ways of promoting your non-profit fundraiser is to send out the message through Facebook. This hugely popular social networking site has millions of users hooked to it almost 24×7. The portal will give you an edge over your competitors in freely uploading your event details and pre-event images on your page. Facebook users liking your page will click on the ‘Like’ button and this is how you can count on the number of people liking your event(s).

Smartphone

Non-profit event organizers can also use smartphones to market their events. You can provide all event details in a convenient place, right on the mobile phones of your event attendees. Besides, smartphones offer easy access to any fundraising information within seconds! Many Cloud-based event and class management solutions have developed an in-built mobile application to let organizations share their program-related information with their customers.

YouTube

This video sharing website can act as a very powerful marketing tool. Record what your guest speakers are saying as well as the feedback of the audience after the event. You can upload an unlimited number of videos of your past events on YouTube. People will get to know how successfully you have organized the seminars. The videos help you advertise for similar occasions in future and these also act as a valuable proof that your event was a grand success.

Thus, we can see there are a good number of techniques to get maximum donations and pledges from individuals. Hope the method (s) applied by your non-profit work toward attracting support for your good cause.

Jonathon is a professional event planner. Event professionals worldwide are increasingly relying on automated software to streamline the online event registration, payment management, and attendee relationship management. Acteva is the market leader in providing event registration, & management solutions at competitive cost.