Car Raffles -
Tips & Ideas

Car Raffles are high end fundraisers that need to be marketed to thousands of people to be successful...

But they are not as scarily hard to organize as you may think, and can be achievable even if you are a small organization!

You will essentially be taking advantage of two human desires...

1. Having a Dream Car.

2. And helping and supporting a worthy cause.

So when designing your campaign you need to think carefully about how you are going to communicate the benefits of your car raffle in regards to those two desires.

Use them to catch people's attention and then convert them into ticket purchasers!

Fundraising with Car Raffles (Photo by Newtown Grafitti / Flickr)

The secrets to a Successful Car Raffle is having a DREAM car as the prize, having loads of tickets sellers, and promoting it to a wide audience, plus some other ideas that we'll get into below...

If you're looking to actually buy tickets for car raffles then follow the links to the 2 referenced car raffle sites in the resource section.



Acquiring a DREAM Car:

The first important step to a successful raffle is to have an AWESOME prize...

In this case it needs to be a dream car. Not any car - A DREAM CAR. Something that people actually want and not something that is just nice transportation!

It must be really desirable.

Sometimes that dream car can also be a classic car!

Car Dealers:

The best way to acquire your car will be by setting up a deal with a local car dealer. Approach local dealers to see who would be interested in getting involved.

It will benefit both parties!...

Your organization can get a discount on the car cost and will not have to purchase the vehicle up front. You should also be able to promote your raffle to the dealerships' past customer list, which will help with ticket sales.

The Dealership will then get huge publicity from the raffle, as they will be able to promote or place their logo on all your marketing material and announcements...

And will also receive great publicity through your raffle draw event, which you should hold at the actual car dealership.

Not to mention that they will get a sale of a car.




Additional Prizes - Important:

You should also add additional prizes to increase interest and opportunity for winning!

The more items you have, and the more opportunity for someone to win; the more you will increase the probability of a sale!

Some prize suggestions would be...

  • Other vehicle related items. Car wash vouchers, car care gift baskets, etc.
  • Other Gift Baskets.
  • Gift Vouchers.
  • Vacations or Cruises.
  • Other highly desirable consumables and electronics.
  • Organization Apparel



Selling Tickets:

The secret here is to have a large team of sellers/volunteers and a solid sales strategy.

You should also have enough tickets to raise 2 to 3 times the cost of the car (Remember that you will also have other expenses to cover), and then make sure you sell all those tickets!

Fundraising with Car Raffles: Learning how to sell loads of tickets and making it highly successful. (Photo by Michael Styne / Flickr)

Your ticket prices should not be too expensive either. If they are, you will be limiting your market and losing sales. If they are too low though, you'll then have to sell too many tickets to make it profitable.

A good balance is what you want.

I would suggest anything between $10 to $50, depending on the actual car you are raffling off. Although some organizations with big reaches have had success with $2 tickets.

Also try making it a price that is dividable into a bigger, commonly used cash note. For example $10, $20, $25 and $50 divides into $100, so people with a $100 note can now buy say, five $20 tickets, increasing their chances of winning.

This will obviously increase ticket sales!

You can also add an incentive for buying multiple tickets like this, by offering one free ticket if that amount of tickets is bought (5 in our example above).

Sellers:

Lots of sellers, means a big reach, which is what you will need. Start recruiting volunteers early on and give them some basic sales training.

They will target their family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, the general public and their social media networks!

Look to offer an incentive/rewards program for large sales, which will increase your volunteers' motivation for selling.

Stands:

You will also want to target high traffic areas to market and sell your tickets.

Get permission and setup ticket sales stands outside high traffic shops, restaurants, on streets and at events!

Have catchy banners promoting the raffle that grabs people's attention, and not just broadcasts that you're holding a raffle!

Ideally you will want to have the actual car on raffle their as well.

Also have "mobile" sellers who will walk around the location that your stand is selling at, and sell tickets.

Online Sales:

You must also look to sell tickets online.

There are some great websites (see the resources below) that help charities and nonprofits promote and raffle off cars. You should definitely consider using them.

You could also sell tickets off your own website and Social Media accounts. (Or if you don't sell directly off those platforms, you must at least use them to promote your raffle and direct people to your sales page.)




Promoting Your Car Raffles:

Obviously your sales drive will promote your car raffles pretty effectively, but you should also be promoting aggressively through other methods!

And remember to focus all your promoting on the benefits of both desires that we discussed further above. Also use great images of the car and your cause in the promotions.


Start by sending Press Releases and contacting local media directly, informing them about your Car Raffle.

Use all the other usual methods to...

  • Your websites
  • Your newsletters and Mail Lists.
  • Social Media. Remember to get your volunteers, members and supporters to also promote through their personal accounts.
  • Posters, banners and flyers.

Then add listing for your Car Raffles to the Raffle websites below.

And you can also use listings in popular free advertising websites like Craigslist.com and Gumtree.

For more great ideas on Promoting Fundraisers read here.




The Raffle Draw Event:

You should hold your drawing event at the car dealership that provided the car. If you can't do it there, you will need to find another suitable venue.

The event should be classy and all ticket purchasers should be invited to attend, but have to RSVP if they want to.

In the end this could also become a big fundraiser on its own if you look to include a couple of extra fundraising ideas for the event... Like selling Organization Apparel, other products, an Auction, Drink sales, etc.

Try find a local sports hero or celeb to come as a guest and draw the raffle tickets.

And of course, use the event to further promote your cause!



Vehicle Raffle Resources:

If you're looking to personally buy tickets from car fundraising raffles, or you need a site to sell your car raffle tickets off, then I would suggest you look into these two websites...

I would also recommend this Raffle Secrets eBook as a resource for making all your raffles superbly successful!



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Recommended Fundraising Articles:

Profitable Fundraising Raffle Ideas

Online Auctions



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› Car Raffles


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