I am so sorry that that happened to you we are having a situation kind of the same . It has come to our attention that a few children have found out where aour candy stash is at and have been helping themsevles durring an afterschool program . We have not came up with a solution yet. We have confronted them and now installed a lock but as for a disipline I don't know what to do . We are unsure as to how much we are out until the end of the fundraiser. If you have any Ideas feel free.

Good Luck to you next year.

It does take time to iron out the details and I find it difficult to do "these things" without someone with some experiance in the room . I hope you stick it out for next year. Your input will be invaluable and you can aviod the issues you had this year. It is not too late for you to try another raffle and try to reoup some of your losses.

You are absolutely right. Both you and pals are right. Thank you for your thoughts and input. I am filing these responses with this fundraiser file. None of that, surprisingly, was brought up by our members. It just makes so much sense. Thank you!

I have to agree with Pals.
There is no way I would buy those tickes either. I have no desire for a motor cycle in my home or anywhere near my kids.

I find that the raffles that do the best are things with mass apeal. golf at 5 different clubs, a harbor cruise a vacaton destonation. AND the thing you raffle need to be as close to free as possible. Most golf clubs are happy to donate. Many people have vaccation homes or something like disney points for hotels, frequent Flyer miles etc. It takes some work to put this stuff together, but you end up having little cost and everything becomes proffit, less the cost of printing the raffle, advertizing.

If your raffle is ment to be in house, you have to find a good in house item. You probobly did all of the right things, you just did not have the right item.

I agree that you have to do the pizza party, did you put a disclaimer that if you didn't sell so many that the party wouldn't be offered? Probably not so take the lost and do it.
I am wondering though about as fars as it being a failer? You said something about parents not purchasing their 5 tickets at $10.00 a piece? Were you expecting each family to buy $50.00 worth of raffle tickets? If you were that might be an issue, personally how many of us would do that? We may buy one but how many people want a Harley? Seems that your market may have been limited by what you were raffling? Think about it would someones grandma buy a ticket? Chances are no, unless you reach out to that market it is a item that not everyone wants. Yeah you could say they could sell it but do people think that way, Maybe a fourwheeler would be better then parents would see it as something their kids could use?
Just my thoughts...

I absolutely believe it was a great idea and would've been a success had we:

1. Bought the bike during the summer to travel with it to surrounding fairs/carnivals so that people could actually see what they were going to win.

2. Try to get the dealer to work with us on a better deal for the bike. Perhaps half of the cost donated.

3. Be proactive in our updates about the number of raffle tickets we sold and how much money was raised on a regular basis.

4. Have a clear and measurable goal to aim for so that the parents knew what we were raising the money for.

5. Been more up front with the parents who didn't purchase their 5 tickets at $10 a piece by letting them know our status and that we won't meet our "goal" without them and will have to run another fundraiser in the spring if needed.(We didn't make the ticket purchase mandatory)

6. Made the tickets readily available at the front desk for purchase. (Certain board members felt to ask the secretaries to do this for us would have been frowned upon.)

Those are the big ones I can think of. I'm positive in hindsight there are other smaller things we could have done to have had a successful fundraiser. It's so ironic since we got such a good response to it. We thought it would be easy. I'm sure it would have had we worked smarter.