Enhancing Profits With a Raffle Fundraiser
Tip o’ the hat to Carrie Caldwell for this well done “Impact a Life” College Scholarship essay. Thanks Carrie!
Raffles have been a staple at most large charity events that I have ever been to. Raffles are a great way to either promote your product, get the community involved, and raise money for your cause.
That is why when I hosted an event my senior year of high school, I hoped to throw together a raffle to enhance the profit we would be receiving for our purpose. The event that I hosted and created was a smaller sized comic book convention that we called Geek Mania. Geek Mania’s primary goal was to promote literacy through the usage of comic books. Comic book conventions are a great way to bring friends and families together to celebrate world of pop culture.
Pop culture includes anything ranging from comic books, board games, manga, video game characters and other varieties of elements. But the highlight, and hands down most significant and well known aspect of any convention are the abundance of comic books and literature you will stumble upon.
Now that that is explained a little more, it is probably more understandable why our goal was to promote literacy though this type of event. I came in contact with Mr. Robert Bird of Enkei America who was a significant part of the raffle’s success. Robert was able to come into contact with several board game distributors and obtained free models of the games that had either not been released, or were quite expensive to purchase. He set up his own raffle during the event where they raised over a thousand dollars at the end of the day! We also had a separate, much smaller raffle going on a little while before Roberts.
We gathered items that most attendees of the convention would be interested in, such as comic books, figurines, a cosplay as a big ticket raffle item, and select books. From that raffle we raised close to three hundred. All of this money was put forth into a school called Columbus Signature Academy New Tech, where they are lacking a proper library. These funds allowed them to purchase more books for the students to be able to sit down and read in the library. We also conducted a survey to see how many students would utilize the library if it were up to date and the outcome was a surprising 82% that said they would.
This experience was one I will never forget, not only because it was for the promotion of literacy but because it brought people together. We were able to buy hundreds of books (and even some comic books) for the school that could not obtain them itself, and provide an area where students could spend their free time effectively. The books were selected off of the voices of the students so we could obtain the most satisfying results and ensure that the books would be loved and utilized for years to come.
And after the success of the raffles, we were able to complete a small school’s big dream.
“Impact a Life” Scholarship contributor: Carrie Caldwell
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