Keith Kamer
I am intending to study business and I have not yet declared a major, but I am thinking possibly actuarial science or business management. Some of my outside interests are athletics, especially basketball, soccer, and track. I was a captain in both track and soccer and I won a state championship in track. I have also been involved in Future Business Leaders of America, Mu Alpha Theta, and National Honor society. I have served as the Vice President of Mu Alpha Theta and Treasurer of National Honor Society. Here is my response to the first essay prompt:
Non-profit organizations can greatly benefit from hosting and organizing raffles. Raffles assist non-profit organizations fundraise and therefore achieve their goals. Non-profit organizations can best realize the benefit of raffle fundraisers by maximizing the sales of their raffle tickets, having prizes that encourage and stimulate ticket sales, and motivating volunteers to sell more tickets. Although these three tasks maybe challenging, there are ways to get all three done and realize the benefits of a raffle fundraiser.
The first problem is increasing the sales of the raffle tickets. Most of my proposals directly to accomplish this task are intertwined with having more desirable prizes and motivating volunteers to sell more tickets, so I will elaborate on those aspects later. A different way to maximize the sales of the raffle tickets is to incentivize consumers to purchase more tickets. One way to encourage consumers to purchase more raffle tickets would be to quantity discounts on the raffle tickets. To do this, a non-profit organization could set the price per ticket at 3.00 dollars, but give deals such as 5.00 dollars for two tickets. This would increase ticket sales because more people would choose the 2 for 5 deal instead of just 1 ticket for 3 dollars. Incentivizing people to purchase more tickets will maximize the fundraising efforts of the organiz ation and help them reach their goals.
Another way to best derive the most benefit from the raffle fundraiser would be to have prizes that stimulate ticket sales. The trick to achieving this is to have prizes that are highly valued by the target market for the raffle tickets, but not too expensive so that the organization is forced to use a large proportion of their funds to obtain the prizes. An example of this would be having a Ferrari as a prize. Even though this prize would be highly valued by the population of buyers, the money generated from the number of tickets sold wouldn’t come close to covering the cost of the Ferrari thus causing the organization to lose money. The organization must find a prize that balances the need for consumer utility while minimizing costs. An example of this sort of prize for a school fundraiser, could be principal for a day or teacher for a day. These prizes do not cost the school money but can generate a lot of ticket sales because students value them highly. There are many other examples of prizes like this- the organization must find one that fits their needs. By minimizing costs and maximizingutility from the prizes will help the organization maximize the revenue generated from the raffle.
Lastly, the fundraising organization must have motivate the sellers to sell more tickets. There is a simple solution for this, all the non-profit organization would have to do is award a prize to the person who sold the most raffle tickets. This would encourage the sellers to try and sell more tickets so that they could get the prize, and selling more tickets would generate more revenue for the non-profit organization. Again, the organization must find a prize that maximizes utility while minimizing cost. So, to best realize the maximum benefit for their fundraising effort, non-profit organizations should make special discounts if people buy raffle tickets in bulk, have prizes that maximize utility and minimize costs, and give prizes to the person who sells the most raffle tickets.