Having organised your school prize draw and sold most of your tickets, it’s time to turn your attention to the big event: the actual draw, where you will choose the winning raffle ticket and pass out the prizes. Make it exciting, draw a crowd, and keep selling raffle tickets right up until the moment you choose the winner.

Whether you’re holding the draw at a school dance, a reception, or a fundraising carnival, you can increase attendance with a celebrity appearance. Perhaps someone on your staff knows a true celebrity who can be persuaded to show up, but if not, consider that you do know someone whose presence will encourage others to attend: this might be a local sportscaster, a popular teacher, or even a popular older student.

Advertise the big event with posters and flyers. Print out invitation and event tickets to help your students and their friends feel special. Spread the word in any way you can. Use your social networks, website, and any other online forum where you can advertise the event.

Whatever the event, be sure to have students circulating with the remaining raffle tickets so you can keep selling right up to the last minute. Then, make a production of it! Use a microphone and an emcee. Gather a crowd. Find a drummer and get a drum roll. Draw out the moment: announce the number of tickets sold, the amount of money raised, and explain how this money will help your school. Then, have your celebrity draw the lucky winners and announce them. While the crowd cheers and the winners mount the stage, you can relax, knowing you’ve held a successful school fundraiser.

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Having printed your customised raffle tickets online, you are now ready for the most difficult part of your big educational prize draw to support your school: selling all those tickets. Once those tickets are delivered, you can begin distributing them to your pint-sized sales force and send them out to sell.

Some things to keep in mind: how will you track sales? You need to decide in advance, but you should keep a record not only of how many tickets you’ve sold, but the names and contact information of everyone who purchases one.

While your students can certainly ask their friends, families, and neighbors to buy tickets, for maximum impact, you’ll want to use every tool in your arsenal. Other schools have had success with some smart ideas.

Consider finding a business or a festival that will allow you to set up a little table where your students can sell to passersby. If they have uniforms or costumes, they should wear them: the more adorable they look, the more tickets they will sell. Displaying the prizes prominently helps fuel sales. If this is not possible, at least have photographs of the prizes available.

Prepare your students by coaching them. You don’t want them to sound as if they’re reading off of cue cards, but they should be able to explain to potential customers where their money will be going. Let the students know why raffle ticket sales are important to their education. If they understand the meaning of the raffle, they can tell ticket buyers how their contribution will enrich the lives of children.

Next week: The Big Draw

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Educational fundraising is an uphill battle: when your school needs money for extras (or even for essentials, when times are hard) and you must turn to the community for additional funding, generating interest and maintaining it over the long term requires a lot of forethought.

Long-term prize draws for nonprofit organisations such as your school can be fun, but they require a lot of hard work. Start planning in advance and make a success of the occasion. Choosing the appropriate prizes, proper sales strategies, and turning the final draw into an exciting event can all translate into success.

First, know your supporters. To whom will you be selling raffle tickets, and for what prize are they most likely to open their wallets? Ask around, or use an Internet quiz feature like Facebook Questions to get the best intelligence. Your draw will be a bigger success if people are excited about your prizes.

Next, prepare your sales force. Consider a separate prize draw for students who sell the most tickets, or else offer them their own tickets for a student raffle based on the number of tickets they sell. Get them excited to start selling, and teach them the fundamentals of sales. Be sure to teach them how to be safe as well as how to be polite and be good salespeople.

Then, set a date for the big draw. If you can incorporate it into a larger event such as a carnival, performances, or dance, you can increase interest and continue selling raffle tickets right up to the moment of the prize draw.

Once you know what prizes will be offered, how much they will sell for, and when the draw will take place, it’s time to print those raffle tickets. Choose an appropriate design online, fill out the ticket template, and print those tickets. They’ll be shipped to you so you can get your kids to start selling.

Next week: The big sales drive

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Selling Raffle Tickets without a License

Games of chance fall under Gambling Act 2005: in most cases, your fundraiser will require a licence and some degree of government supervision if you intend to sell raffle tickets and hold a prize draw for a large, multi-day raffle open to the general public. One way to circumvent this oversight is to transform the game of chance into a trivia contest.

To do so, rather than simply selling the ticket, you are selling an opportunity to answer a trivia question, which may lead to a prize. In general, this is done by selecting a question that most of your contestants should be able to answer. For the most part, asking this question eliminates the need for a licence, and in general, there should be no problems.

However, there have been cases wherein organisations with higher profiles have been held under suspicion for asking questions that were too easy: common knowledge versus trivia. According to the law, the question must be complex enough to “deter a significant proportion of potential participants, or to eliminate a significant proportion of entrants.”

Don’t court trouble! Protect yourself by choosing a question that is not dumbed down. For instance, “Name the Prime Minister,” might be considered a no-brainer. Depending on your supporters, you might instead ask donors to solve a math problem, or answer a question that would only be common knowledge only within your group.

Naturally, there will be a number of correct answers. All these raffle tickets go into the hat, and from there, you may hold your fully legal prize draw!

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Educational Fundraising Success

Selling Raffle Tickets to support your local school is perhaps the simplest way to help earn more money for education. You need not organise food, drink, and entertainment, as you must for some charitable events, and no one need sort and delivery boxes of biscuits, candies, or other popular fundraising sales items. I might point out that such fundraisers also mean that a large percentage of your money goes to the organisation that sells the biscuits and candies to your school, whereas all prize draw profits stay at the academic institution.

The key to successful school prize draws is to motivate the salespeople: that is to say, your children. Small children may not be able to visualize the outcome of a successful draw. Perhaps they don’t understand why you need the money, or the long-term benefits they will receive. But they can certainly visualize winning a prize on their own.

You may choose to offer a large prize to the top salesperson, but an even better way to motivate them is to instead set up a second raffle for the kids, but they cannot buy tickets to this draw. Instead, they must earn those tickets. For instance, for every ten pounds of money they raise, they earn one ticket for a prize draw to win something they really want: such as an iPod or a new bicycle. Take a survey and determine what prize will best motivate them, and then watch them start selling!

Here’s a new tip for earning more money: the “fill in service.” If supporters buy a large amount of tickets, your students can fill in their names and contact information on the tickets for them. Make it a number worth your time: say, twenty-five pounds. You’ll be surprise how many people will buy more tickets to earn this free service!

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Fundraising is always a gamble, but learning more about the successes and failures of those who have come before you can help ensure that you choose the correct path for your own financial accomplishments. Do you know others who have printed their own raffle tickets online, or organized their own prize draws? If so, have you not learned something from their experience? If not, would it not be helpful to find out how others have succeeded?

Coming soon, UK Ticket Printing will devote this space to sharing the stories of our customer’s successes (and failures!) for all to learn from. We’ll profile the best and worst prize draws you’ve ever seen, learn what to print on a raffle ticket, and see top fundraisers in action.

Have you a story you’d like to share? We’ll be contacting potential customers for future features, but if you have something to say right now, why not let us know through this blog? We’ll write an article about your group and your raffle, sharing links to your websites and pages for your upcoming activities, plus pictures of your event, your prizes, or your logo. There may even be some extra incentives for your future draws involved.

Keep checking this space for more top idea and the freshest thoughts on local and regional trends to make your upcoming activities more profitable than ever!

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Prize draws are a popular way to earn a little extra money for your business, club, or organisation. The simplicity of the prize draw, which can be easily arranged with nothing more than a roll of raffle tickets, or, if you are feeling ambitious, some lovely stapled booklets, perhaps printed with the name of your group or cause, and even customised with your logo.

If you’ve found success with a one or two day prize draw or raffle conducted within the auspices of your event (considered a “small lottery” under the law), it might seen logical to take it to the next step. Why not increase your profit by increasing the size of your prizes?

The answer to that is, of course, that this may be illegal. The law restricts small lotteries to prizes of with a value of 250 GBP or less, and forbids the awarding of a cash prize in such situations. You may already be aware of some of the other laws pertaining to small lotteries, lucky dips, tombolas, and sweepstakes. For instance, you may only sell these raffle tickets during the event, and you must choose the winner during the course of the event.

Cash Raffles may be arranged, but they require special licence and oversight. If you wish to maintain your fundraiser as a small lottery, you must avoid cash prizes. Otherwise, you must register with the Gaming Council and be subject to other rules and oversight.

If you’d like to learn more about using a prize draw or raffle as a fundraiser, you can ring the Institute of Fundraising on 020 7840 1000.

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You may recall, some weeks back, a post about a prize draw where raffle tickets could not be purchased, but rather were rewarded for each instance of an online activity benefiting the sponsoring organisation. Recently, I participated in such a raffle, earning four virtual raffle tickets.

The prize? A free professional massage!

Yes, I wanted to win this very badly.

One of the nice things about this sort of draw is that the odds are very, very good. I was able to increase my odds by taking action to receive the maximum number of raffle tickets. And my efforts paid off. For the second time since I became your fabulous ticket girl, I won!

If only I had scheduled my massage a few days earlier. Little did I know that the therapist would cancel on me at the last minute, having contracted a disease that left him unable to stand for any period of time

However, the sponsoring organisation made a complete success of their raffle, garnering a great deal of free publicity. In this case, every raffle ticket represented, essentially, a free advertisement, written by customers, extolling their virtues! This type of prize draw is a winning situation for everyone!

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Time is of the essence.

Your fundraising needs may be extensive, and your schedule is important, but you must keep in mind the needs of your donors as well. If you intend to sell Raffle Tickets for multiple prize draws in 2011, it is in your best interest to stagger them out.

Our experienced correspondents note that constant requests for money, particularly in a sluggish economy, can be irksome for your supporters. You may need it quiet badly, but remember that your fans are also experiencing the economic downturn. If they are good enough to give money a few times a year, the last thing you want to do is alienate them with repeated solicitations that seem endless.

Instead, schedule your prize draws so that you are selling Raffle Tickets at particular times when you are most likely to have success. A big raffle at the end of the year is a good idea, as is one that corresponds with a large event you hold annually. If you hold too many raffle, however, you may trigger a compassionate burnout, where followers begin to resent your request. Rather than continual, small draws, combine your funds or your prizes to hold a few larger draws at fortuitous times throughout the year.

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Item 3 in our countdown to Christmas tips and hints for prize draw sales success is a combination of factors that can work on their own, or, when joined together, become a dynamic powerhouse for selling event tickets.

First, consider a large shop or department store where you know there will be increased foot traffic this month. If you represent a charitable organisation, or one that works for children, perhaps the owner will allow you to set up a table outside. This lets you bring your Raffle Tickets to your supporters, rather than forcing them to find you.

Second, man the booth carefully. If possible, have children or teenagers at the table, selling the tickets for you. Their pathos will improve sales. If your group represents a sport team, a band, a scouting group, or any club in which members can be identified by uniforms, make sure everyone wears their uniform!

Finally, if you can manage it, bring the prizes to the table. Set them up in an appealing arrangement. This raises interest levels in your prize draw and encourages people to purchase Raffle Tickets upon falling in love with your prizes!

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