A raffle is a competition that involves holding a draw among a group of people. The one who is drawn is the winner of the raffle and, therefore, is the recipient of the stipulated prize.
For example: “Last night I won the club raffle and I got a new bicycle,” “We are going to organize a raffle to raise funds so we can cover the travel expenses,” “We have sold few raffle numbers.”
Raffle example
It is common for a raffle to be held to raise money . High school students can organize a raffle to accumulate funds to pay for their graduate trip . In this way, they decide to raffle a video game console , selling the raffle numbers for 5 pesos each .
The students, therefore, buy a video game console for 500 pesos and sell 300 numbers for 5 pesos each . By selling all the numbers, they make a profit of 1,000 pesos , since they raised 1,500 pesos and spent 500 on the prize they gave.
The raffle itself consists of drawing among all the numbers . In the case of the example, the students gave a number to each participant. Then they put all the numbers in a bag and drew one at random . The person who had that number was the winner and kept the video game console. The winner, in this way, invested just 5 pesos and took home a product valued at 500 pesos .
Its importance in raising funds
Decades ago, especially in rural areas, it was very common for some people to hold raffles to get money. Specifically, what they did was draw from the birds they had hunted to certain products they had managed to obtain in the field, such as asparagus or even mushrooms.
In this way, they made money in a simple way in order to boost the necessary economy within the family.
Raffle Features
The key to the raffle is the transparency of the draw. If the organizers implement some mechanism so that the winner is chosen on purpose and not at random, the raffle competition will not actually be such.
In addition to ensuring transparency at all times, it is important to organize the raffle following a series of steps:
- The first thing is to make sure that the entity, association or group in question can, as established by law, launch this type of raffle.
- Secondly, it will be necessary to determine what prize is going to be raffled. In this case, you can choose to establish a single “trophy” or three for the first, second and third.
- The next step will be to proceed to print the tickets, which can be done quickly and inexpensively at a printing press. These documents must clearly reflect who organizes the raffle, the number being played with, the prize, the day of the draw...
- Of course, next will be the process of selling the tickets, which can be done directly in person or through different channels such as the Internet.
- Then it will be time for the draw and the publication, as established, of the winning number and how the seller can obtain the prize that corresponds to them.