Raffles

Automatically generated from the audio, so it may not be perfectly word-for-word.

Hi, welcome to the PTA Podcast. My name is Yvonne, and I've been a PTA volunteer for a few years now. But I'm just one of thousands of volunteers up and down the country who all want to make a difference to their schools. PTAs are becoming even more crucial in UK schools to boost budgets, and I find it fascinating to talk to other volunteers about the different approaches they take. So please join me in this podcast to share information, generate ideas, debate issues, and celebrate success. And I hope that you can take something away for your PTA today. This is very unusual for us and has mostly stemmed from the from the COVID restrictions and having to change the way we do our fundraising. So before Covid, my PTA would have only had one raffle per year, and this would have been at our annual summer fate in June. So I had a friend who was great at sourcing prizes, and she would take the lead on approaching local businesses to ask for donations. Then tickets would be sold on the day of the event itself, and it would be drawn at the end of the fate. We'd have a table full of the prizes, and when your ticket was drawn, you could go up and choose your prize, and we just used those little cloakroom tickets sold at the fate with people's names and phone numbers on. But once COVID and all the restrictions hit, obviously we couldn't run anything similar to a summer fair. In fact, when lockdown happened in March 2020, we had already secured all raffle prizes for that summer, but we couldn't use them. We asked the businesses concerned whether they would kindly extend them for us until summer 2021, which they did, so that was great. However, when uh summer 21, 2021 came around, we were still unable to hold any in-person events, and uh it's such hard work to source raffle prizes, especially when they're donations and you're asking businesses for them, that we really couldn't run the risk of losing them again. Um so that's when we began to explore other options for online raffles as an alternative. So there are quite a few different ones available online. Uh if you're looking for one, then it's definitely worth investigating their terms and conditions, especially looking at their fees and considering which one would be the best fit for your school and community. I decided that the best one for our school was the national funding scheme, as they have a text raffle which we could use, and it also looks like a very reputable company. The fees are quite low, and I really like the fact that the ticket buyers would not need to create an account to buy the ticket. All they had to do was send a text. So I didn't want people getting fed up with having to create yet another account with yet another um password. Um, I I always think you need to make it as easy as possible for people to give you money. Um, so their text raffle was a great option, and uh the added bonus was that it was incredibly easy to share. So all we had to do, which I'll I'll talk about in more detail in a moment, is share a text uh number and a special keyword, and that was all the information that people needed. So it was really easy to register on their website, and you just need a couple of kind of official documents, they do a few checks to make sure that you're a legitimate charity and ask for your raffle license details. We'll talk more about raffle licenses later, of course. Um, then you pick a keyword and how much you want to charge for one entry into the raffle. So one entry, which is one text message, is the same as one ticket, and there is no limit to the amount of times you can enter. Uh, their website is really helpful and actually recommends a £3 per entry, but you can pick as low as £1 or as high as £20, depending on what you're actually running. We went with their recommendation of £3 per entry. Um I do remember reading something on their website where they recommended £3 per entry instead of £1. But I I've just had a look on the website and I can't find what I read, and I can't quite remember why it said that, but uh but I remember it was based on a factual thing that I read, so um so we went for the £3. Um so £3 per entry is more than what we would usually charge, which would be £1 per ticket, but I felt it was worth it following their recommendation, and um to be honest, when we um saw how many people entered at the end of the raffle, it really didn't seem to make a difference to our takings at all. So once you've chosen your um entry price, um you get allocated a text number which you cannot change, but the important thing that you can change is the keyword, which is the word that people put into the text message. So the way that you buy a ticket for the raffle is you send a text message with the keyword in the text to the text raffle number, and that's all you do, so it's just a one-word text that you just send in to a particular number. It's very, very easy. You just send one text, one text is one ticket. So to choose our keyword, um, we just kept it simple but also relevant by using part of the school name as the keyword, and I also wanted to make people feel it was a legitimate text raffle, so I felt that using part of the school name would kind of um tie us to the text raffle. Um, and also the hope was that people would share with friends and family, and that also made me feel better about them texting in. So basically, then we were all set up. We just had to advertise the prizes and publicize the keyword and the text number. Uh, to activate the raffle on the website, you literally just click a button and then the raffle is classed as live and can accept entries from that moment on. So we decided to run the raffle for two weeks and we maintained a constant stream of reminders to parents via email, uh, our WhatsApp groups and Facebook. Because we didn't really have a physical presence at the school and this raffle was very much online. In fact, most of the prizes were vouchers, so we didn't really even have many kind of concrete things to show people, we couldn't make a display or anything. Um, we really had to make sure the raffle was in at the forefront of people's minds, it was in their inbox, it was on their phone, so they wouldn't forget about it. And um that was that was quite hard work actually, trying to remember each day or every other day to do something to remind parents to buy tickets for the raffle, but it was incredibly important. So because our text raffle wasn't connected to a particular event at school, um, we had to decide when the raffle was going to finish. And we picked a particular day, which as I said was about two weeks after we started, and we chose a time of 12 noon on that day. I felt that it was better to choose a a time um sort of midday-ish, so that perhaps there might have been last minute entries that morning, and I didn't want people to miss out. And I could also I also knew that I could send an email out from school on that day saying, you know, last tickets now because it's going to be drawn at 12. Um, and that that worked really well actually, and we did get a few last-minute entries, so I think it was a good move. And something else we weren't really used to is um how we would actually allocate the prizes. So, as I mentioned before, our raffles had always previously been at a summer fate, they would be displayed on a table. If your number was drawn, you would go up to the table and select your prize. But of course, this time all the prizes were basically at my house in an envelope, um, and we would not be able to allow people to choose their own prizes. So we decided together that the um so what we did was we we numbered all the individual prizes and we decided to allocate the first winner to the first prize, the second winner to the second prize, and so on. And we felt that was the fairest option. So drawing the raffle is another click of a button on the website, super easy, and I did this in the presence of a PTA friend, so again, we could both be witnesses in case of any problems. Um, and I did take some screenshots as we went through because again, we hadn't done it before and I wanted to protect ourselves, um, but there were no problems, everything was absolutely fine. And so when you have pressed the button to draw the raffle, the website draws a list of the top 25 phone numbers that have entered, and helpfully they are all numbered, um, starting with number one. So it's it was really easy for us to cross-reference um like the first phone number with the first prize, etc. So we had about 10 prizes, so we used the first um 10 phone numbers, and yes, some phone numbers were repeated as those people had entered more than once. So a couple of people won two prizes in in our top 10, but of course, that's normal for any raffle, certainly normal for raffles that we organise anyway, so I didn't see that as being an issue. Then I just use my mobile phone to contact the prize winners by text um to let them know they were a winner and how they could claim their prize, and basically that was it. It was so simple. In fact, it was so simple, um, we ended up using this text raffle system again twice as we really liked the format. So the only slight fly in the ointment with this system is that the National Funding Scheme website has to wait for all the money to be transferred from the mobile phone companies from the people that bought the uh the tickets before paying it out to you. And this means it can take up to three months to get all the funds transferred into your PTA account. So that's just something to bear in mind as it can obviously affect your cash flow. So I just wanted to give you an overview really of our text raffle experience, and I'm going to talk more generally now about organising a raffle and what I have learned about them so far since I joined my PTA. I think I'm probably right in saying that raffles are for most PTAs one of their bread and butter events, which means that in any given academic year you can almost guarantee that a PTA somewhere is running a raffle, and some PTAs run more than one raffle in one year. Uh but perhaps you are not familiar with raffles, or perhaps you are starting a completely new PTA, so you've never organized a raffle before. So uh let me tell you that raffles are extremely popular fundraising events because they can generate really healthy profits for your PTA pot of money. So in my PTA, we've always had our prizes donated free of charge, which means that all the money given to the raffle through people buying tickets is a hundred percent profit for us. And the beauty of a raffle is that people generally buy more than one ticket to take part. They might want more than one chance of winning, they might might want five chances of winning. And so instead of just selling one thing to one person, you're selling multiple entries to a single person, and that is why they can generate quite a lot of money. People, of course, love taking part in the game to take a chance that they might win, and a raffle generally has a great selection of prizes as well. There's always something to tempt everyone, and the odds of winning on a school raffle can be really good indeed, much better than a national raffle or a regional raffle. If you just concentrate it down to one school, you generally have a very good chance of winning, and I think that inspires people to buy more tickets. They know that all the money is going to the school, so if they don't win anything, they're still making a donation to the school. So raffles are a fantastic fundraiser to have in your PTA events calendar. Um, and now we'll go on to talk about how you actually organise one. Now there seems to always be a question that crops up when people are talking about raffles. It certainly crops up a lot on uh some PTA Facebook forums that I um I read regularly, and that question is do you need a license to run a raffle? Like I said, a question everyone asks, a question that I have often had in the past. So a couple of years ago I had had enough of constantly wondering whether I was doing the right thing or not, and I endeavoured to find out the correct answer. So, Google was my friend, and I went on the internet to try and find some information. And what I discovered was that some raffles do require a license under the Gambling Act 2005. The license is granted by your local authority, so you need to go to your local authorities website and search for something like license or raffle license or gambling license, and that should take you to the appropriate page. On my local authority website, there was quite a lot of information to read through to see if my raffle required a license, and because it's written in legal jargon, sometimes it is really difficult to understand. So there are also other websites that you can go to if you're not quite sure. So something like the PTA Plus website also has a lot of information on there. Um when I read through my local authorities info, it seemed to boil down to quite a simple distinction, I felt, and that is if your raffle is just held at an event and tickets are sold just at the event, and the raffle is drawn at the end of the event, then no license is required. So an example of that would be our summer fate. So we always used to have a raffle at our summer fate. The summer fate would open, people buy tickets at the fate, the raffle would be drawn at the end of the fate, the event closes, the raffle closes. So it was very um easy to say that yes, our raffle was just at that event. But if you wanted to sell tickets in advance of the raffle draw, then you yes, you do need a license for that. So, for example, we could have said that the uh raffle was going to be drawn at the summer fate, but we wanted to sell tickets from two weeks before the draw, so that's selling in advance of the event. So, yes, we needed a raffle license to do that. So the license costs £40 for the first license and it lasts for a whole year. And if you then renew the license each year, it's only £20 per year going forwards. Um, and the renewal takes place about two months before the end of your license date. So we decided to take this approach because we thought we're probably going to run more than one raffle in a year, and now we had tried the text raffles which were selling tickets in advance, then we decided to go for the sort of rolling license, if you like. And so we have actually designated that as the treasurer's responsibility for renewing the license each year, and there is another responsibility as well that you have to complete something called a returns form, which is a form you fill in after the raffle has finished, and it just goes back to the licensing authority, just with details about how much money you raised. And that is also the treasurer's responsibility in my PTA. So basically, because we've made the decision to keep the license rolling over, it's only going to cost us £20 a year, and we never need to worry about whether we have the license or not because it's always there. So I feel like that's quite a good strategy and definitely works for us. But as I say, sometimes it is difficult to understand the information, so have a look on a few different websites, and hopefully, you can get a clear answer. Okay, so you've decided what kind of raffle you're going to run, whether it's going to be linked to an event or like a standalone raffle, and now you have to actually organize the raffle. So the way I see it is there are three main parts to running a raffle. Uh, the first part is sourcing the prizes. So whether you choose to buy some prizes or ask for donations for prizes, um, that takes a significant amount of time and quite a lot of thought. So I normally have that as a sort of little mini project on its own. Then uh once you've got the prizes sorted, the raffle generally starts. So you will be so the next section is running the raffle, which uh is mostly uh well actually mostly just publicising the raffle and encouraging people to buy tickets, um, and then following that section, the results are uh drawn. So you're into section three, which is um thanking your um participants, thanking your donors, and issuing the results and uh giving out the prizes. So um, because we've run three raffles um within the past 12 months, I've tried to kind of have each raffle as like um three mini projects just to kind of keep it on track and uh make sure I remember what we're trying to do at each stage. So I'll just run through those three mini projects now. Let's talk about sourcing prizes. So, as already mentioned, it's probably best to allow at least three months for sourcing prizes, and you need to decide how your committee is going to manage that process. So I do know that some PTAs do purchase prizes for their raffles, and I know that my PTA um in the past uh did um purchase some sort of higher value items, and uh so, for example, an a Kindle or something like that, and they used to buy it uh possibly on Black Friday or when there was a really good offer on, so it was at a reduced price, and they would kind of use that as a like a headline um raffle prize. Um, but of course, the the the risk associated with buying prizes is you have to sell then a certain number of tickets just to cover the cost of your prizes, um, which and obviously a higher costing prize means you've got to sell more tickets to cover that cost. So we have certainly um actually not considered buying prizes in the last couple of years, and we have just um asked for donations. Um I don't think it's something I would rule out, but when you get all your prizes for free and all the ticket sales go to 100% profit, it is actually quite hard to consider you know, sort of losing some of that money for prizes, if you know what I mean. Anyway, um I know some PTAs do it, so it's definitely something to consider if you've got a themed raffle or if you want to bulk out the the prizes that were donated, something like that. So uh so sourcing prizes can be tricky as you if you want all your prizes for free, sourcing prizes can be tricky as you're essentially asking people to donate things for free to your PTA. And for some people, me included, um that's actually quite a difficult thing to do to ask somebody or a business to give you something for free. I just feel uncomfortable doing that. Not everybody does, but um but a lot of people do. Um so as PTA chair, I guess it's really important to be aware that not everyone on your committee would be willing to help with um asking for donations. Um so you kind of have two choices there. Either you specifically ask your PTA volunteers that you know would be okay with it, so you delegate um the task of getting donations to a smaller group of people, or possibly even just one individual, um, or you find a way for everyone to be able to help. So uh I feel that I've been really lucky with Raffle Prize organization so far. When I took over as chair, we had one member who was really happy to approach loads of local businesses just by herself and to shoulder the burden of collecting. The prizes. She put loads of time and hard work in and was really successful. And then last year I had a friend who wrote a brilliantly worded email that we could send out to local businesses that any PTA volunteer could use. And that was great because that enabled the volunteers who felt less comfortable asking to take part just by sending an email, and that really helped help to share out the workload. So this time around we took a new approach and it was so successful that I can't believe we haven't done it before. And when I explain it to you, you probably think, Well, that's really obvious, Yvonne. But sometimes when you inherit a PTA, you just kind of do things that everyone else has done before and don't really think, oh, maybe it could be done in a different way. Of course, you've got different people on your committee, so it is great to try and rethink how things are done based on you know your team of volunteers and their strengths that you have at that time. So so this time, um we almost kind of started from scratch, I suppose. Um, and our starting point was a massive, brainstormed list of places we could approach for prizes. Everybody just suggested local businesses, local organizations, and I put this into a massive Excel spreadsheet. So we had saved the list for the future so we didn't have to repeat this exercise again, which was also really helpful. Um and we used this Excel spreadsheet to keep track of responses from the businesses or the individuals, again, extremely helpful. And we divided the list up by the number of volunteers in the PTA, which meant that we only had to approach about six or seven um possible donators each, and that is completely manageable. Um, so if you're just firing off six or seven emails, you know that's only like a 15-minute job, isn't it? So it was really easy for everyone to take part, and that the whole burden didn't fall on somebody's shoulders, which was which was really great. Um what I also found with that approach was that my volunteers were actually taking initiative to contact other people that we hadn't got on the list, that we hadn't thought of, um, which was really great because I felt then that this um method with the email um it really empowered the other volunteers to take ownership of it, and um and actually some of those um extra organizations that they contacted did come back with prizes, so it worked really well. Um so the having a clear management plan over sourcing the prizes did empower the individuals, and I think that was really positive for everybody. So on our list was a mixture of local businesses and organisations plus some national ones that we just kind of plucked out of thin air. Um, but I have to say the national ones that we had on our list anyway weren't very successful. So, for example, I contacted um Harry Potter Studios on a whim, and uh but the response I got from them was that they said they tend to support local charities and we're across the other side of the country from them. Um, so there was no way that they could give us any free tickets, which was such a shame because I thought, wow, that would be amazing to have in a raffle. Um, but I did receive a similar response from other national um businesses and organisations. So just be aware that whilst while some national ones did donate a voucher or something, a lot of them say that they just support their local businesses, that sorry, their local um PTA schools, charities, whatever. Um but yeah, it's definitely worth asking because you never know. And because we had this Excel spreadsheet, um we could keep a record of who we'd asked and who we don't need to bother asking next time, uh, which is really useful. Most of our prizes for Raffle do come from local businesses, so make sure you approach those, but don't forget your own school community too. So do ask parents, teachers, and governors. You never know who might have a business that's willing to donate something. Um, partners of teachers might have a business that's willing to donate something. And yeah, governors have definitely have a brought-in interest to your school, so they should always be approached. Um so, for example, in the past, our governors have each donated a bottle of wine, and then we've put them all together to have then a case of wine available at the raffle, which is a fantastic prize. Um, and you just never know what you're going to get. So don't be afraid to ask around. Um the worst thing that can happen is they just say no, and then at least you know, um, and you might not ask next time, but I would definitely encourage you to have a go at that. So coming up with a list of businesses to approach and then doing all the approaching of them is really time consuming. But once that chunk of work has been done, you can just sit back and let those raffle prizes hopefully flood into your PTA. Um, for anyone that hadn't responded to the emails we sent out, after a few weeks we did send a really gentle uh chaser email to them, just making sure that they got our first email, and we did get a few extra prizes from doing that. So, again, it's definitely worth doing if you feel able to. I know it's hard to ask for things for free, um, and uh sometimes it just feels a bit uncomfortable, but people were were really kind and um some people said oh you know, I'm sorry, I just forgot to reply to your email, or other people said, Oh, I had to wait for my boss to get back to me, or something like that. So if you wanted to give anyone a nudge, I would highly recommend it. So if you are offered a prize, there are some important things you need to do and to make sure all your volunteer prize hunters know about as well. And I'm passing this on to you as um something that I've learnt through trial and error myself. Um and basically if a prize is offered, there are I think three key things that that would be good if you did. Um so, first of all, get back to the prize donator and just be really clear about what the prize actually is, what it consists of. That's the first thing. The second thing is to make sure you understand what format the prize will be issued in. So we have had, for example, tickets to museums or something. Sometimes it is an actual ticket, sometimes it is a code to go in the website to get a free ticket, um, sometimes it is a voucher. So just be really clear what you're getting and what form it will take. And then the final thing, very important as well, is to find out how you actually collect your prize. Um so some people, if it was a voucher or a code for a website, obviously they could just email that to us, that was really easy. Um, but other places had a physical prize that we had to go and collect. So um just be really clear what it is you're getting. And listeners, I can tell you that a few years ago uh my PTA and I had a very bad experience where we were donated an astounding prize, the the the kind of prize that you dream of getting. Um only we thought it was one thing and it turned out to be something a little bit different, um, which led to well, some problems. And uh following on from that experience, um I have been quite careful about uh checking very carefully what it is you're being donated. Um I might tell you about that uh horror story sometime, but but for now just take it from me. It's a really good idea to check what you're getting. So everybody's clear, and then when you advertise it in the raffle, you're advertising it accurately, um, and then the person winning is is okay about what they've got. Anyway, that's the story for another time. So the sourcing of the prizes can be very time consuming, but it can also be quite protracted. Um, and if you get a lot of no's from businesses, then you might want to ask other places or you might think of other places later on. Um so in our organisation we found it helpful to have a cut-off date where we didn't ask for anything new after that date, and we just wait for replies to come in, um, and we decided to run with whatever we'd got up to that date. So we did get a couple of prizes sort of dribbling in afterwards, um, but we were still working on our raffled publicity at that point, so we just added them in um to our list of prizes, so it wasn't um a big problem. Once you have established what your prizes are, it's nearly ready to actually start the raffle. Um, the text raffle system we used meant that the dates um of starting the raffle and finishing the raffle are pretty flexible because we were in complete control of that. So we sort of prepared our parents that a raffle was coming and we sent out some, you know, like teaser emails with some examples of prizes on um just to kind of get them ready for the announcement that the raffle was going to start. Um, and when we actually launched it, uh we you know advertised that text number and the keyword and um decided on the draw date and the time, which I've already talked about. Uh we thought about two to three weeks for ticket purchases would be about the right amount of time, not too long that people would forget about it, but but also not too short that um people wouldn't actually be able to take part. And uh basically once we pressed the button on the website to launch the text raffle, we were off and and the raffle was open and you could buy tickets. It was it was actually really exciting. Um and obviously you can do the same thing if you're sending physical tickets home for people to buy, that you would have a clear time when you would decide to send those tickets home and then your clear draw date. So once you have opened Inverticommas, opened your raffle, um you have a phase where the raffle is live, and the main focus of your PTA now needs to be to publicise the raffle. You basically have to constantly remind people that the raffle is open and they need to be buying tickets. So, as is usual, we used a variety of methods to remind people. Um, we have a school Facebook page that we can put posts on. Um, we uh get the school to email parents directly, and we also have a parents' WhatsApp group, so we send out little nudges every so often just to remind people don't forget to get your tickets. Um in the last week of the raffle, we kind of did a little countdown saying only five days left, only three days left to get your tickets, that kind of thing. And we cycled through those methods over the the live phase of the raffle and had a couple of days gaps in between each of those things. So basically people didn't get too sick of us asking them to get raffle tickets. Um but the beauty of this online text raffle system, which I didn't know beforehand and I absolutely love now I found it, is that you can see how many tickets have been sold. Uh so the text raffle website emailed us an update on the number of tickets sold in each 24-hour period so we could keep track of what was going on. Now we were doing a lot of publicity, and in the first week or so I was wondering to myself, this is pretty time consuming, I wonder if it's even working. And then I realized that the website was emailing us every day uh with this information about ticket sales. So I thought I would have a look and see when I posted a message or when the school sent out an email, did that actually increase ticket sales? Because I could then see on the information the website was sending. So I uh being a trained scientist at heart, I created a graph in Excel, put in my data to see whether it was true, and it was. Uh, and what I saw in front of my eyes was each time we promoted the raffle, there was a spike in ticket sales, which was really exciting. So even though it felt like nothing was happening, we were just sending out all this publicity. In fact, it was really reassuring to know that our efforts um weren't going to waste and it was really making a difference. So I'll try and share my graph um on the PTA podcast website so you can see the evidence for yourself. Um and it was it was pretty strong evidence. So if you ever feel like you're talking talking to a brick wall, which you know in the PTA sometimes we do feel like that, don't we? Um parents do listen and they are sharing and they are buying tickets and and it was great to see. And of course, when the ticket purchasing phase is over, it's time to draw the raffle. Uh I always think it's a sensible idea to try and do this publicly if you can, but if that's not possible, then uh do make sure whoever is drawing the raffle has at least one other PTA person present with you. Um, and you could video the process or take photos or screenshots to show exactly what has happened. At the end of the day, we are all volunteers, and I think it's important to have a backup like this, just some sort of evidence as to what has happened, but to protect yourself just in case there is a dispute. Um I'm very lucky to say that I've never encountered a situation with one of our PTA raffles where there has been a dispute with any of the winners, but I do think it's good to just have your back and to have um a witness there as well so you can protect each other really. Um the first text raffle we did it was COVID, that's why we picked a text raffle, and so I had to have my friend who's on the PTA. I zoom called her on my phone and I had to sort of show her my laptop, what I was um when I was drawing the raffle on my laptop, so she could sort of be a witness through my phone, which is a bit complicated, but um it worked. And again, because it was the first time I'd done this text raffle thing, it made me feel a bit better that somebody else was watching as well and understood what was happening. So um yeah, or have at least two people doing the raffle draw if it's not a public one, I would say. And of course, you have to decide how to allocate your prizes. Um the raffles that I've run or the raffles that I've been to, I think have two main methods really. One is that people choose their own prize. Um, so that obviously would work. The raffles that we used to run, as I said before, were at our summer fate, so we would have a table full of the prizes, the raffles drawn in public at the summer fate. If your ticket's called out, you just go to the table and you can pick any prize. It doesn't matter, we didn't rank them from like first prize to last prize or anything like that. You picked which prize you actually wanted. Um so that's one method where somebody will pick their own prize, and the second method which I've seen and which we have done with the text raffle is that you allocate the prizes. So you can say the first number drawn out wins this prize, the second number this prize, and then um then there's kind of no arguing. Um I I did realise that with the text raffle, there was there was basically no way I could figure out where um the winner could choose their own prize, it would just get hideously complicated, and I wasn't prepared to even to even try that. Um so yeah, we just went with allocated prizes and everyone was really happy with that, but nobody nobody said anything bad about it. And then the final part of raffle, or indeed any fundraising event, is to publicise how much you've raised for the school. And I think it's also really important to feed this back to any person who donated a prize so they can see that their donation has made a positive difference to the school. And of course, as PTA volunteers, we all know how it feels to have someone say thank you for helping. So, of course, saying another big thank you to the donors at this stage is also really essential. And there you have it, really. Those have been my experiences with raffles. Um, I would say the most time-consuming part of a raffle is sorting out the prizes, but if all your prizes are donated, then you can potentially make a hundred percent profit on your raffle, which is a fantastic fundraising event for your school. So that's all from episode 4, All About Raffles. I hope you enjoyed hearing about my experiences with them and about how we used the text raffle last year. I'm certainly not claiming to be an expert or say that I know everything there is to know about raffles. I just hope that by sharing my experiences that there is something that you might find useful too. So I'll catch you next time when I will be talking to my friend Lisa about a special event that she organises for her PTA. If you'd like to join in the discussion or want to contact me, please drop me a line using hello at PTApodcast.com or have a look at my website and Facebook page. I would love to hear from you. Good luck with whatever your PTA is working on at the moment, and I look forward to chatting with you next time. Bye.