If low ticket sales have gotten you down, don’t give up! You can always sell more Raffle Tickets. You simply need to cast a wider net and reach a larger audience. How are you making the public aware of your organisation and the fabulous prizes you have to offer? Have you kept the news within a narrow circle, alerting only those who belong to the group, along, perhaps, with some family, friends, and neighbors?

Why not reach your entire community with some properly places print ads?

In many cases, you can inexpensively print Posters and Flyers with the same design as your favourite Raffle Ticket, and in many cases, these advertisements allow you to upload your own images. You can provide your sponsors with additional exposure, or add photographs of the prizes, or even honour men and women in your organisation by uploading .JPGs or other visual files right from your computer’s hard drive.

Sophisticated, lovely, or playful, there is a proper Poster for all of your prize draws. It’s simple to choose a matching design when you print your Raffle Tickets. You can print your Posters at the same time. You can also choose a different design, which may be brighter, more colourful, or more eye-catching than your Raffle Tickets.

Use your Poster or Flyer to include all the relevant information about your prize draw. You’ll have ample space to describe the organisation, the specific cause toward which the money will go, the prizes to be won, along with the date, time, and location of the draw. Of course, you will want to highlight where and how potential customers can purchase Raffle Tickets. Then hang your Posters where they are likely to see them: in shops, near bus benches, and anywhere else it is allowed.

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Here’s a brilliant resource for charitable organisations interested in earning more money through a prize draw, yet lacking the time, energy, manpower, or will to seek out donors, collect prizes, and print, market, and sell Raffle Tickets: Raffle.it Here’s a website that does all the work for you. You throw your lot in with other charities, the prizes are provided by the website, and all sales are online. You receive 80% of the price of each ticket sold, and your entire commitment consists of providing links to the site.

This site allows you to set up your own prize draws as well, provided you have prizes to offer. You can manage everything from a unique domain assigned to you. Prizes are high-interest items such as a new iPhone, iPad, iPod, or MacBook, a variety of digital cameras and shopping sprees, and other items that quicken the buyer’s pulse, such as a signed England Football shirt!

All you have to do is provide supporters with the proper web address. The site will build your widget, so you can add a snippet of code to your website and start selling immediately. Only a limited number of tickets are sold for each raffle, and prizes are awarded regardless of how many tickets sell.

Raffle.it adds a certain extra dimension of amusement, with an unusual method of choosing prizes. Rather than selling sequentially numbered Raffle Tickets, this site asks buyers to choose their own ticket number. The winner is the one who has chosen the lowest unique number. In other words, if 6 people choose the number 1, and 4 people choose the number 2, but only 1 person has chosen the number 3, number 3 is the winning ticket.

It may be the lazy man’s raffle, but if your charity need to earn more money and lack the resources to mount their own fundraising drive, this is an interesting option!

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In Humberside some lucky raffle ticket holder went home with a World Cup match ball after attending the North Cave Flower Festival. What a prize! You may not have access to the match ball, but if you want to capitalise on football fever, it’s not too late to print up some raffle tickets and start selling them for your prize draw.

Besides match balls, consider other inexpensive prizes such as:

• Team tee shirts
• England Team fan books
• A selection of flags
• Team pennants

Then, print out a run of raffle tickets and start selling! Be sure to make the rounds of all the pubs and parties where your community are likely to watch the games. If possible, bring some of the prizes with you so people can see what they may win. Come prepared to discuss your cause, explaining where the money will go and how purchasing a raffle ticket will contribute to charity.

Be prepared to wait for a commercial to make your pitch!

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I can’t believe I missed this one! I’m going to resist the urge to weigh in and simply report the news. Apparently, in March, a group raffled off a human egg. This was an enormously controversial move, not only because trafficking in human genetic material is a moral grey area at best, but also because the very terms of the raffle violate UK gaming laws. To circumvent this quandary, the treatment will be provided in America.

I’m not certain how much they were selling individual Raffle Tickets for, but the value of the prize is placed at £13,000. This covers not only the egg from a healthy female donor (the winner can choose a donor who looks like her, or choose based on the donor’s racial background, upbringing, and education) but also the cost of the IVF treatment needed to fertilise the egg with the male genetic material of ones choose and the implantation of the embryo into the uterus.

The company’s idea was to sell Raffle Tickets in order to promote their new service: Baby Profiling. It was a joint venture between a London fertility clinic called Bridge Centre, and and American group, the Genetics and IVF Institute (GIVF) in Fairfax, Virginia.

No matter how you break it down, this prize draw helped the group reach its goals. Not only did they earn money selling Raffle Tickets, they garnered a remarkable amount of publicity, a great deal of it free. Yes, much of the publicity was controversial, but I would argue that those who decry this prize draw are not potential clients to begin with. Their outrage, however, has allowed a greater number of potential clients to become aware of the clinic, as well as the technology.

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Ready to end the school year with a bit of excitement? Encourage your students to become team players, raise money, and build life skills with a massive prize draw before the summer holiday!

Selling Raffle Tickets helps children learn important skills: presenting themselves in front of adults, the power of persuasion, accounting for money, and more. Encourage each child to reach an appropriate sales goal. Prepare them in advance with scripts explaining who they are, what their school stands for, and what programs the money will support.

You may choose to have two levels of Raffle Tickets: a larger prize with more expensive ticket for adults, and a lower level that most children will be able to purchase with pocket money. For instance, for twenty-five or fifty pence, you could raffle off lunch with a favourite teacher or administrator, or some other coveted prize. Do your students like to make announcements over the PA? Eat pizza and ice cream at lunch? Leave class for some undirected computer time? Offer the prize that will motivate the children.

Offer prizes for those children who sell the most Raffle Tickets to grown-ups. Turn your prize draw into a math lesson: let them keep track of earnings, perhaps with a large graph shaped like a thermometer. Announce the winners in a public assembly and let their peers cheer on their accomplishment.

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Want to sell more Raffle Tickets?

The first thing you’ve got to do is print more Raffle Tickets. Why? This provides that extra psychological boost you and your sales team need to keep hustling. More Raffle Tickets means more work, but it also provides you a visual estimate of how much you’ll need to work.

If you tell your volunteers they must sell fifty Raffle Tickets apiece, and each of them can do so easily, why not tell them instead to sell one hundred Raffle Tickets? Even if they don’t hit their mark on the first try, they’ll still sell more than they would have if they only had the option of selling fifty!

Plan ahead to determine when and where you’ll make up the difference. Get out the local event calendar to check out fairs, festivals, and other large, public gatherings where happy crowds can be found. You may want to check with promoters to see if you can have a booth, kiosk, or table where you’ll be able to sit comfortably and wait for the crowds to come to you.

If you’ve gone to the trouble of obtaining a licence for a large prize draw, why not make the most of it? Open up your sales to other villages or counties. Recruit out-of-town volunteers. Use the telephone and the Internet to increase your sphere of influence.

Want to get big? It’s time to start thinking big.

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You probably already know that your sales numbers are only as good as your sales team, and your team—volunteers or paid staff—are only as good as their commitment to selling. If you wish to sell more Raffle Tickets, you may need to find further methods of motivating your sales team.

In the past, we’ve discussed some common motivators:

• Coffee and doughnuts
• Weekly staff meetings
• Prizes for top sellers
• Penalties for not meeting quotas
• Regular email communication

If you’ve tried all these methods and still wish your team exhibited a bit more enthusiasm, try something new.

Involve them more deeply in the decision process. For instance, choose a selection of Raffle Ticket templates and let your team vote on which design they’d prefer to sell.

Offer recognition. Let the team know that the top seller will receive not only a prize, but also recognition, such as a photo in the organisation’s newsletter, or an award at a large event.

Commemoration. Plaques, certificates, or trophies may help a volunteer sales force stay motivated through a lengthy charity campaign. Display them prominently throughout the duration.

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It may surprise you to learn that the most attractive prize one can offer in a prize draw is a holiday getaway. It surprised me to learn, anyway, as a new telly lasts a lot longer than a trip to Majorca, and a new car can take you on all manner of holidays, but there you have it. If you want to sell more Raffle Tickets, team up with a travel agent, an airline, or a hotel.

Arrange the type of holiday your supporters are most likely to prefer.

• For outdoors types, a camping trip
• For singles, a resort holiday
• For young couples, a romantic spa
• For families, a theme park
• For elders, a group tour

Use your imagination. Who is likely to buy your Raffle Tickets? Where are they likely to want to go?

If your donors are generous, an all-expenses paid trip to an exotic country across the sea might help you earn more money, but even a few nights in a hotel in London will appeal to those who feel stuck in their village and simply need to get away from it all for a little while. Wherever you can send them, they’ll be happy to go.

The more you can include, the better. Remember, a true holiday will require:

• Airfare (or bus fare, or money for petrol)
• Hotel or other lodgings
• Three meals a day
• Some form of entertainment

If you have a choice of locations, think of the extra you can include, such as lift passes for a skiing holiday, theatre tickets in the city, or hour-long massages at an expensive spa.

Then book the trip and start selling more Raffle Tickets.

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I’ve entered so many raffles this week!

Some of them were free raffles, and others cost a pound or so to enter. I could be winning extra borrowing privileges at the Uni library, a 50 pound gift certificate to the Uni book store, a year’s subscription to a newspaper, a Curious George doll, a few different books by unknown authors, or a tiny torch that clips on to your book so you can read in bed without keeping your partner awake with excessive light.

As you may have guessed, I attended a large book festival this week!

While I often write about printing your own Raffle Tickets online to help you raise more money, free raffles have their place in the world. Rather than selling Raffle Tickets for fund raising purposes, completely free raffles help your organisation in another way: they help you to build your mailing list and create free publicity for your group. While potential supporters are filling out the information on your Raffle Ticket, you have an opportunity to pass out literature, discuss your mission, and generally create goodwill around your name.

Once you’ve mined the data from these Raffle Tickets, you can add the names and details to your database. Spreading the word about upcoming events and promotions is easier than ever. Remember, with free raffles, you need not obtain expensive prizes. Small, coveted items work just as well. What do people like? As you can see, an item like a book can draw certain customers to you. Perhaps a tray of meats from a local butcher, or an attractive scarf. If it’s attractive and perhaps a bit frivolous, you will quickly collect plenty of names while drawing in new supporters!

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The best intentioned fundraisers may court disaster if they are unprepared for the human element. You may succeed at bookkeeping, organising, and research, but if you can’t speak to your donors, you will find yourself disappointed again and again.

When you are selling Raffle Tickets, it’s ever so much more important to rehearse a proper pitch to potential customers. While you must of course be able to answer any questions regarding your charity, it’s best to lay all your cards out on the table straightaway.

For instance, rather than approaching strangers and asking, “Would you care to purchase a Raffle Ticket,” it makes more sense to provide the information that will persuade them to trust you and want to help out. Create your own introductory script, such as this one:

“Hi, my name is Ticket Girl and my organisation, Reading Seed, has been working to promote youth literacy since 1999. We send scores of volunteers to work with underprivileged children to ensure that every child in our city can read to standards by grade three! We’re selling Raffle Tickets, with all the proceeds earmarked to purchase supplies, including books for children who have none, small prizes to encourage young readers, and to cover the cost of training new volunteers.”

Speak with cheer and authority, with appropriate friendliness, and remember to smile!

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