Raffle questions

[Addicting]

@Oak @brocksw @Big Fin @magnum44270 or anybody with experience in the raffle world.

Our HS band was selected to perform at Disney next year. Being the dutiful parent, I am now attending the Band boosters meeting to fund raise.

I’m aware each state has different rules on raffles and I am reading up on Michigan’s.

But what are the pro tips you can impart on me from your experiences running raffles?

We are thinking starting small and doing a beef. Selling this fall a drawing at home coming this September. 2 winners, half a side each, $20 a ticket 500 tickets? Would hate to sell out, think we can possibly do 1000.

I have a processor who will give a cut rate for sponsorship. We have a local livestock auction to buy it from. Figure less than 4K invested on our side.

Would lobby to do something hunting but there is major hurdles with that and school board.

 

[Treeshark]

In my experience with youth sports raffles, cash tag raffles are the easiest to sell and easiest to administer. Each kid gets ten cards (more if they can sell them), $10 each card. It’s usually good for $7-8k net to the team. Weekly drawing of varying amounts.

The one law we have here (not sure about Michigan) is that participation cannot be mandatory- but everyone does anyway.

 

[Big Fin]

Michigan requires you get a raffle license from your Gaming Board.

Your state does not allow the sale of online raffle tickets. Must be sold in-person.

Must be sponsored by a non-profit. Make sure your school is the sponsor, unless your booster club is a qualified non-profit.

If you do it as a sweepstakes the rules are far easier. The biggest difference is a sweepstakes requires an “alternative means of entry” and the alternative method must be free.

 

[Addicting]

Michigan requires you get a raffle license from your Gaming Board.

Your state does not allow the sale of online raffle tickets. Must be sold in-person.

Must be sponsored by a non-profit. Make sure your school is the sponsor, unless your booster club is a qualified non-profit.

If you do it as a sweepstakes the rules are far easier. The biggest difference is a sweepstakes requires an “alternative means of entry” and the alternative method must be free.

I was tracking that, the license takes about 8 weeks to get. The boosters is a 501-3c so we are covered there.

One opinion tonight was to limit the tickets to make it more attractive. But I think we can easily sell more especially for kids fund raising.

Is there a rule of thumb for cost to revenue generated on raffles?

 

[Addicting]

If you do it as a sweepstakes the rules are far easier. The biggest difference is a sweepstakes requires an “alternative means of entry” and the alternative method must be free.

I seem to remember Matthew hating the alternative entries recently. I think we will be sticking with a raffle.

 

[CT_SD]

Beef prices are at record highs. Currently trading around $4/# hanging weight. Add in something for processing and you might be over your $4k estimate on a fat calf.

 

[Addicting]

Beef prices are at record highs. Currently trading around $4/# hanging weight. Add in something for processing and you might be over your $4k estimate on a fat calf.

Auction last week had around $2.15 a pound for live. If we pick up a 1200lbs steer that is around 2500ish and the processor will do $.45/ lbs hanging weight for vac sealed and froze. Figured 60% hanging weight for an additional $324 in processing.

Who knows what will be at the sale when we get approval to purchase. So I figured 4K on the safe side and hopefully 10k in ticket sales. I’m new at this livestock auction thing so I could be way off.

 

[Big Fin]

Is there a rule of thumb for cost to revenue generated on raffles?

Depends on if the prizes are donated or purchased. Most groups want a 50% net, after all costs are accounted for. So build and audience of buyers and can do even better than that.

 

[Dakotakid]

How much do you need to raise?

Getting a beef donated goes a very long ways towards the goal and is usually tax deductible or great advertising. Banks usually have a specific budget that they are required to donate back to the community.

We generally try to raise funds from multiple angles— donations by business towards the prizes, sponsors get there names on the tickets.

Then the raffle of the prize.
And if you do a banquet for the raffle- funding per table.

 

[Gulf of America]

Auction last week had around $2.15 a pound for live. If we pick up a 1200lbs steer that is around 2500ish and the processor will do $.45/ lbs hanging weight for vac sealed and froze. Figured 60% hanging weight for an additional $324 in processing.

Who knows what will be at the sale when we get approval to purchase. So I figured 4K on the safe side and hopefully 10k in ticket sales. I’m new at this livestock auction thing so I could be way off.

View attachment 407285

I would think you could do 4 winners that each get a quarter - plenty of potential ticket buyers aren’t hunters with a 3 freezers in the garage and might have a hard time dealing with 300lb of beef anyway. $20 a ticket for an ~$800 prize still seems like good value. We do an annual raffle for ski patrol, and we get some generous prize donations, but we still sell $6k of tickets with about $1k spent on prizes each year.

 

[CT_SD]

Auction last week had around $2.15 a pound for live. If we pick up a 1200lbs steer that is around 2500ish and the processor will do $.45/ lbs hanging weight for vac sealed and froze. Figured 60% hanging weight for an additional $324 in processing.

Who knows what will be at the sale when we get approval to purchase. So I figured 4K on the safe side and hopefully 10k in ticket sales. I’m new at this livestock auction thing so I could be way off.

View attachment 407285

FuturesOne cash cattle update:


Sharply higher cash cattle yesterday. Early afternoon $250-$252 began to trade. The trade then jumped up to $255. Late inB the day western Nebraska traded at $256. Finally a few ended up trading at $257. Dressed trade similar started out $395-$396 then moved up to $400.

From this morning. Definitely talking about different regions of the country. Also, most fat steers in major feeding regions are finishing at ~1600# live weight. Just didn’t want you to underestimate cost.

 

[Addicting]

How much do you need to raise?

Getting a beef donated goes a very long ways towards the goal and is usually tax deductible or great advertising. Banks usually have a specific budget that they are required to donate back to the community.

We generally try to raise funds from multiple angles— donations by business towards the prizes, sponsors get there names on the tickets.

Then the raffle of the prize.
And if you do a banquet for the raffle- funding per table.

The problem we run into in our small community is every booster club hits up the same 20 businesses. They can only support so much. We were talking that we needed to step away from that and do something different.

The community already supports us with 4 other revenue sources. That doesn’t cover as much as we need to help pay for some of this trip.

 

[Addicting]

Dressed trade similar started out $395-$396 then moved up to $400.

I don’t know what that is.

Talked with the local farmer who attends the auction and she said we should expect 1200-1500 at that sale. Even at 1500 at 2.50 would put us in at $4250. If they are up to $4 a lbs I will try and find a local farmer where we can buy off the farm and use heart strings. $4 is high.

 

[CT_SD]

I don’t know what that is.

Talked with the local farmer who attends the auction and she said we should expect 1200-1500 at that sale. Even at 1500 at 2.50 would put us in at $4250. If they are up to $4 a lbs I will try and find a local farmer where we can buy off the farm and use heart strings. $4 is high.

$400 is per hundred weight for dressed cattle-not live wight-so equivalent to $4/# hanging weight. Live cattle are at $250-257/100#. A 1500# live steer would be about $3750 at $250/100#.

 

[brocksw]

I’m not sure on Michigan laws, but I know here in ND gun raffles sell the best. Local Hockey club sells a pile of gun raffle tickets every year.

In terms of selling tickets, I’ve found some similar ratio to the 80/20 rule applies. In other words, 20% of the sellers sell 80% of the tickets. Find those people and make sure they always have tickets. Obviously ymmv.

Also, if you have some friends who own a local bar or store with a lot of traffic, they tend to do fairly well at selling tickets.

Use social media if you have that option. If your c3 has a social media presence, don’t be afraid to use 100 bucks to boost the advertising post. You can target certain demographics, cities, interests, etc. sometimes this works better than others, but if you want high volume exposure very few things these days works better for exposure.

As far as pricing, total ticket numbers available….i don’t feel confident enough in that to make a recommendation. At 20 a ticket I would tend to think there’s no need to limit the number of tickets available, most people just want to support a cause like that, especially for 20 bucks a ticket. At more expensive ticket prices, I would tend to want to start looking at limiting tickets available. But I don’t have that down to an exact science.

If you can, it might even be worth having a special ice cream evening where someone donates ice cream for the kids in the band and they all split up into teams and go door to door to sell tickets then get free ice cream afterwards. This can be productive if the adults are slackin at slingin tickets.

To me, in your situation, I’d want low ticket price and high volume.

Sorry if I’m not more help, that’s about all I got.

 

[Addicting]

$400 is per hundred weight for dressed cattle-not live wight-so equivalent to $4/# hanging weight. Live cattle are at $250-257/100#. A 1500# live steer would be about $3750 at $250/100#.

Thanks, I added the processing in on my numbers so that’s how I got to 4250.

 

[Addicting]

If you can, it might even be worth having a special ice cream evening where someone donates ice cream for the kids in the band and they all split up into teams and go door to door to sell tickets then get free ice cream afterwards. This can be productive if the adults are slackin at slingin tickets.

Unfortunately, because it will be a licensed raffle, it has to a person 18 or older in our state. The only thing the kids get to do is the school sponsored fundraiser sales.

 

[magnum44270]

So far my organization has done a hog raffle, a bison on raffle and now a firearms raffle.
We have set the price at $20 a ticket and I just added or decrease the number of tickets to reach the goal We believe we could reach. Definitely sold ourselves short on a couple of the raffles, but wanted to keep the price good in the odds decent.

The hog was donated, and the processing got donated as well, so we turned a good profit on that one.

The Buffalo hunt was donated and we definitely could’ve sold a lot more tickets on that one. Lessons learned.


If doing a beef, I would definitely split it into 1/4 package. Not everyone can handle half of a beef. You could also look at adding a brand new small chest freezer to the package.

For a kids fundraiser you usually get good buy in, so I wouldn’t limit yourself on a number of tickets. I’d leave it open to print more as needed.

 

[Addicting]

So far my organization has done a hog raffle, a bison on raffle and now a firearms raffle.
We have set the price at $20 a ticket and I just added or decrease the number of tickets to reach the goal We believe we could reach. Definitely sold ourselves short on a couple of the raffles, but wanted to keep the price good in the odds decent.

The hog was donated, and the processing got donated as well, so we turned a good profit on that one.

The Buffalo hunt was donated and we definitely could’ve sold a lot more tickets on that one. Lessons learned.


If doing a beef, I would definitely split it into 1/4 package. Not everyone can handle half of a beef. You could also look at adding a brand new small chest freezer to the package.

For a kids fundraiser you usually get good buy in, so I wouldn’t limit yourself on a number of tickets. I’d leave it open to print more as needed.

From what I’m hearing from a lot of folks is 240 ish pounds of frozen beef is likely a burden on the winners. Guess they don’t elk hunt and have a garage wall of freezer space.

 

[Dakotakid]

So far my organization has done a hog raffle, a bison on raffle and now a firearms raffle.
We have set the price at $20 a ticket and I just added or decrease the number of tickets to reach the goal We believe we could reach. Definitely sold ourselves short on a couple of the raffles, but wanted to keep the price good in the odds decent.

The hog was donated, and the processing got donated as well, so we turned a good profit on that one.

The Buffalo hunt was donated and we definitely could’ve sold a lot more tickets on that one. Lessons learned.


If doing a beef, I would definitely split it into 1/4 package. Not everyone can handle half of a beef. You could also look at adding a brand new small chest freezer to the package.

For a kids fundraiser you usually get good buy in, so I wouldn’t limit yourself on a number of tickets. I’d leave it open to print more as needed.

I can’t speak to Michigan rules but I believe Montana requires the odds to be posted. Which means the number of tickets must be set. I think the 50/50 raffles are not required to set the odds. But pages and pages of rules to try to follow.

Ask me about the bingo tent at the fair that had to be cancelled because the wrong permit was applied for resulting in many angry elderly ladies.