Raffles and standard protocols...

[PaintGuru]

Hey folks,

Just thought I would bring this up here to get some outside opinions, just for fun. Recently an "anonymous" email was sent out to our club's mailing list voicing their concern about how the raffle at our conference was conducted. Each year the local club put on a conference where usually 75-100 people attend and there is a large raffle at the end of the event. According to this emailer, he/she (and those around him according to the emailer) found it troubling that the board members (those who set up the event and were running the raffle), were winning a rather large amount of the prizes. The emailer thought this should be brought to the clubs attention and discussed.

I was going to stay out of the debate until I saw one person reply with basically "stop your criticizing and help out to make the club better". This (stop criticizing) is a pet peeve of mine, but that is for a different day. I was just curious what other people think about this. I understand this is a bit of a Catch-22, where everyone has a right to buy tickets for a raffle, even board members. My point is that if one person noticed this and spoke up, there are 10 more out there that noticed and said nothing. I personally did not attend the last conference, but I have been to others and it is basically a mess of a raffle (disorganized, rushed, etc). In my opinion, if the general attendant does not feel the raffle is on the up and up, they will not participate which will decrease any money raised by the club. My suggestion was to have only 2 people run the raffle and these can NOT win prizes. The rest should sit with the crowd (not "help" out with the raffle), and I doubt people would have problems with them winning, since they are not seen as directly running the raffle. Yes, it may not be right, and yes, the organizers work hard and deserve a reward, but if it is looking bad in general, it should be fixed so that all think it is fair and so that the general population think it is on the up-and-up. Just curious what others think.

[Doug1]

When we have done contests in the past here on the board, we have had judges that werent eligible to win.
At several of out Picnics where we raffled stuff and money was involved, the person responsible was not a participent, and a civilian, usually one of the kids was used to pull names, etc.
If it doesn't seem on the up and up revenue is bound to suffer

[PaintGuru]

Agreed...one of their arguments was "well we were putting in money to give back to the club". Well they could do this without getting into the raffle. And if they really want a prize, heck, pick it out before the raffle and take it, but dont win a bunch of prizes in front of everyone. I'm interested to see the kind of response my reply got because the majority of the replys that were posted in response before mine were "well buy more tickets if you want to win more" and "everyone should have the right to enter".

[Doug1]

Gee that kind of logic is kinda like politicians that get the really great bennies telling me if I want more I should work harder. Wait a minute they do that now. I want my money back