Your promotional materials are the first word in a discussion between you and your guests, and your event tickets are part of the publicity. Tickets should contain any and all information you desire your participants to know: What, Where, When, and even a Why will not only help to attract your participants, but will function as a reminder to them to attend the event.
*Event Ticket Design and Ticket Templates: Research event ticket designs and use an online ticket template to make your idea a reality. If your event has a logo, include it on the template, or use your sponsor’s logo. Don’t forget any pertinent information, such as your website or phone number, in addition to What, Where, When, and Why.
*Creative Uses of Event Tickets: Depending on your event, you may or may not want to charge for the tickets. Free souvenir tickets may merely be a way to add a special dimension to your event and serve as a reminder to participants. Either way, event tickets add an element of exclusivity. Whether the ticket is purchased, raffled, or given away, you can’t get in without one.
*Proofread Again and Again: The last thing you want is to design, create, print, and distribute your tickets only to find an error after the fact. When you receive your proof, proofread diligently. Check for typos, misspellings, or wrong dates, and times. It is most helpful if more than one person is proofreading.
*Distribution of Event Tickets: Again, the way in which you distribute your tickets depends on the event itself. If it is a fundraiser, you will want to charge for the tickets. If your intent is to attract a large volume of participants, even if the tickets are free, you still need to pay attention to distribution. If your event is to raise awareness about a problem in your community and sheer numbers will help to make change happen, pound the pavement and distribute tickets all around the community. If the event requires paid tickets for entry, decide where you can most effectively sell them. If your event is to raise money for a larger cause such as hunger in America, visit places that attract people who have money to donate as well as money to buy the tickets to the event.
*To Raffle or Not to Raffle: You can print separate raffle tickets, or the event tickets can also function as raffle tickets for door prizes at the actual event. The best event tickets are individually numbered on the body and stub of the ticket, so it’s easy to keep track.
You’ve put plenty of effort into publicity and promotion. Don’t overlook the role of the humble event ticket in your efforts to attract guests to your gathering!
When local governments are falling far short of their desired budgets and school districts across the country are cutting once essential programs just to stay open, parents, students and affected communities are starting to get creative. Instead of waiting for new revenue to come in through tax hikes or ballot proposals, many groups are taking a proactive approach to fill the budget gaps.
While some communities are standing by traditional fundraising techniques, such as car washes and bake sales, other communities are going for the gold, participating in high stakes fundraising in hopes of high stakes returns.
While a traditional raffle might offer small value tickets to a large number of individuals for a mid-level prize, a high value raffle involves selling a limited number of high value tickets for a very coveted grand prize such as a house or large cash payoff. The tickets for the Irvine Public Schools Foundation raffle are $150 each.
While the tickets may be out of some buyer's budgets, the foundation has provided other opportunities so everyone in the community can contribute. In addition to the raffle, a fundraisng concert is also being held. Tickets to the event are between $12 – $15, and raffle ticket holders get in for free. The whole community gets to participate.
Other communities are also getting creative. In Cupertino, California parents got together and raised $2 million dollars for their local school district in less than two months. Some of this was done through traditional fundraisers like garage sales and silent auctions. The parents also asked each member of the school community to donate a specific amount of money. Again, in this fundraiser, no one was left out. If one family couldn't donate, a family with more means stepped in and contributed on their behalf.
The money will go to save over 100 teachers jobs.
While times are especially tough on education, glimmers of hope can be found when teachers, parents and communities get creative with their fundraising efforts.
It might be a surprise, but research shows that the majority of organizations who hold raffle ticket fundraisers do not know how much money they will make until after the raffle is over. Nearly all raffles have a target amount of money that they would like the raffle to produce, and there is a simple calculation that can be made to see how many tickets you will need to sell at what price in order to meet that goal. By playing around with the quantity of raffle tickets and the pricing in order to match your customer base it is fairly easy to plan your raffle so that you meet your fundraising needs.
In order to help ensure that your next raffle ticket event is a success, the rest of the article describes factors that you should take into consideration when planning your fundraiser. This raffle ticket calculator utility will help you price the correct amount of raffle tickets for your event. Fundraising Goal It is important to know how much profit your organization would like to earn during your raffle ticket event. This value should be the ideal net proceeds to the event after all other costs have been subtracted.
Raffle Costs – There are several costs that can be incurred during a raffle ticket event. The list below lists the most common ones.
Raffle Ticket Costs: whether you print your raffle tickets yourself or have a company like www.TicketPrinting.com print the tickets for you, your raffle tickets are going to cost money. Often times the look and feel of the raffle ticket will help convey a sense of value to your supporters allowing you to charge more for them. I have talked to customers that wanted custom raffle tickets designed that looked expensive so that it would be easier for them to sell the raffle tickets at a higher price. This price should include all related costs as well (shipping, sales tax, and other fees all add up to produce the total cost of generating the tickets that you will use for your event).
Raffle Prize Costs: More often than not, you will not find an organization that is willing to just give you an item for you to give away (at least not something cool enough to make people want to win it). Often times you will have to pay at lease part of the price of the prizes for your event. Most people will be willing to give you a prize at a reduced price after you sell them on the publicity that they will be receiving as a sponsor to your event.
Raffle Ticket Distribution Costs: The distribution costs of your raffle include all of the related costs of marketing and selling your raffle tickets. This could be posters that will be printed or even a television or radio advertisement. What ever the costs are; they will be a factor in how profitable the event is.
Total Expected Raffle Ticket Revenue – The total revenue that your organization will receive as a result of the sales of raffle tickets is a factor of two things: the number of raffle tickets sold, and the price at which the tickets are sold. These are most likely the two variables over which you have the most control and the ones that are most important to match up directly to your customer group.
Quantity of Raffle Tickets: The quantity of raffle tickets should be decided upon while thinking about the number of people in your community who are likely to buy raffle tickets. It is important to remember that people often buy more than one raffle ticket and this can be encouraged by offering a discount if you buy a larger quantity of tickets ($5 each or 5 for $20 is an example of quantity discounts).
Price of Raffle Tickets: The price that you can charge for raffle tickets will depend on the prizes that you are offering and the demographic of your target market. Selling $100 raffle tickets to college students might be a long shot as would be selling $15 raffle tickets for a chance to win a DVD. When deciding the price you need to take into consideration how much the prizes would be worth to most of your participants. It will also help boost sales if the ticket price is a convenient amount (most people do not want to pay $3.76 for a raffle ticket).
Finalizing Price and Quantity of Raffle Tickets – Once you have an idea of the price that people will pay for your tickets and how many you can sell, you can calculate how much money you can earn. First, add up all of the costs of your event. As an example, $75 for Raffle Tickets, $500 for prizes and $50 for additional marketing materials would give us a total cost of $625. The next step is to add the fundraising goal to that value. If we wanted to raise $2000 we would add that to the $625 that we already have spent to get $2625.
Calculate Price of Raffle Tickets: Once we have the total revenue to be raised ($2625) we can find out what the price of the tickets would need to be for a given quantity of raffle ticket sales. To do this we divide the total revenue by the quantity of tickets. As an example, if we thought that we could sell 1000 raffle tickets we would need to sell each one for $3.63 to reach our goal (I would recommend that we round up to the nearest dollar).
Calculate Quantity of Raffle Tickets: To calculate how many raffle tickets we need to sell we can divide the total amount of revenue by the price of the tickets to find out how many tickets we need to sell. In our example, if we wanted to sell each ticket for $5 we would need to sell 2625/5= 525 tickets to meet our goal. Again I recommend always rounding up as most organizations can deal with extra money easier than they can with too little money.
This simple calculation will make it easier to plan profitable raffle ticket events that do not leave you in the dark.
