Make Your Raffle Fundraiser Irresistible by Jeremy Swope
Make Your Raffle Fundraiser Irresistible by Jeremy Swope
It seems that in this day and age different non-profit organizations are trying to come up with different ways to raise money for their organization or other projects they are involved in. However, sometimes this can be a bit of a challenge for a number of reasons. For example if the fundraiser was a ticket raffle, the organization may not have a high number of ticket sales, the prizes to be won may not be seen as a prize worth winning in many people’s eyes. Also the prizes that are being raffled off may only be geared towards one specific age group leaving the rest of the different age groups seeing the prize as undesirable. Finally, ticket raffles may not do so well because of the volunteers selling the tickets may not be particularly motivated to really drive and push to sell as many as they can. I have a few ideas that I think could really benefit these non-profit organizations to increase their tickets sales and overall have a successful ticket raffle and bring in a lot of money.
First off, one of the main problems with ticket raffles that I have seen from personal experience is that the number of tickets sold is particularly low. I think that to fix this problem the organization needs to make the raffle something so irresistible that the people just can’t pass up. This past semester I worked at dirt racetrack and saw a ticket raffle idea that sold a lot of tickets and made quite a bit of money to fund the track. The raffle was a 50/50 raffle, essentially this means that for every ticket purchased that money goes into a pot, then at the end of this raffle all of the money is counted up and then a winner is drawn. The winner of this raffle gets half of the total money that was raised by each ticket sale and the other half goes back into the organization. This was the first time I had ever seen a raffle like this and it made so much sense to me. What better a prize to win than money! With winning money a person can buy any prize they want, which leads me into the next problem that ticket raffles seem to have.
People want to win the best prizes, something that they are going to see as "getting their money’s worth”. Now again this is what I have seen from my personal experiences volunteering with ticket raffles, but a lot of people just don’t care for the prizes being offered. It defiantly can seem hard to offer prizes that are going to appeal to every person of every age and every walk of life. Sometimes in life you just can’t please everybody, however you can offer a wider range of prizes that will appeal to more people. Again going back to my experience at the racetrack and also my church I have seen another method of the ticket raffle that has worked really well. For example at the racetrack, they received prize donations from many of the track sponsors and also people from the community. Now these prizes ranged from gift cards to racing gear, but the thing that worked about this is that the prizes appealed to most of the ticket buyers at the event, resulting in a lot of tickets being sold. I have seen the same thing at my church. We have had a lot of ticket raffles that have brought in quite a bit of money for different projects. During the raffles at my church a lot of members in the church will donate different items, from things they have made to things they have purchased to donate and so many other things. Once again though, they had prizes that appealed to the majority of the ticket buyers, keeping the prizes broad but still valuable in the ticket buyer’s eyes. Going along with this idea, it is also essential, especially for groups that have all different age groups, to include prizes that all different ages can enjoy so that the raffle targets a wider group, therefore increasing ticket sales and overall success of the raffle.
Finally there has been one common occurrence with all of my raffle ticket volunteer experience. The volunteers are just not motivated to sell the tickets. Ticket selling can be hard at times. You may face a lot of rejection that can diminish your fire to sell and sell hard. A volunteer can easily lose their focus of the goal and begin to slack off thinking “I won’t sell that many anyway”. I however think that there are two easy ways to fix this problem. First I think that organizations need to make sure they are selling the tickets for a reasonable price. For instance, you could sell 10 tickets for 5 dollars or 5 tickets for 2 dollars or any number of combinations; you just need to remember to make the people really believe they are they are getting a good deal. Doing this will also help the buyers want to buy tickets in bulk, creating great sales boost. Having more fair priced ticket options will lead to less rejection for the volunteers which will keep their spirits high and sell more. I also strongly believe that there should be some sort of incentive in place for volunteers selling tickets. Let’s say that could be the volunteer that sells the most tickets, wins a gift card to a movie or a restaurant. There should be something in place or something to work toward to make them want to sell more and also increase a little friendly competition.
I strongly believe and have seen firsthand, that by implementing these simple ideas into ticket raffles, ticket sales will increase making an overall successful fundraiser that benefits the non-profit organization enabling them to keep doing what they are doing.
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Contributed by Jeremy Swope