Raffles, don't we all love to spend a buck to try and win something, anything? How about 6 tickets for $5.00, a chance to win and a bargain all in one! If you've ever attended a quilt show you know how Guilds love to raffle off quilts to raise funds. Guilds use their funds for the guild, speakers, bus trips and other quilt-related activities BUT they also support charities.
The County Line Quilter's, the guild I belong to supports our local food pantry, a children's home in another town, a woman's shelter for abused women, we make quilts for the military and for babies.
Quilter's in general are a caring, generous people, in my experience.
Back to the Raffles, I do love them but I get so discouraged when the tickets do not get a good mixing.
Today for instance I was at a show with my Mom and we bought tickets for their large raffle quilt, which is very pretty! We also bought tickets for a mini-quilt raffle in which there were over 20 small quilts that were raffled off at a certain time. There were three separate draw times so they had over 60 mini-quilts to raffle off at 3 tickets for $1.00. What a great group of minis they had!
At the appointed time the ticket holders awaited the calling of the numbers with tapping toes and bated breath. They had looked at the quilts and taken time to decide which numbered bag to take their chances on.
The Mini-quilt Chairperson did the picking, she stuck her hand in each bag and chose a ticket.
Almost all of the numbers were close, you could tell when they were put in the bag by what they were in sequence....one lucky winner won not 1 but 5 quilts! Another lady won 2 and everyone cheered when a winner came forward until the lady with the 5 wins who became so embarrassed she was slinking up to claim her prizes. These tickets were not mixed up, had the Chairlady held each bag closed and turned them upside down and shook them, then it would have been a better raffle.
I am looking at ways to help my guild with raffles, to make sure that every ticket gets a fair shake!
I want to support the guilds, the members who worked so hard on the quilts and on the show but I also want fair chance to have my ticket or yours chosen! What do you think? Do you have any suggestions to get those tickets shook up more? Please post a comment and let me know!
