Last June, my department at work decided they were going to have an office picnic. My boss and I thought it would be a good idea if we used this as an opportunity to raise some money for a local non-profit.
I was in charge of organizing the picnic and I also ended up being in charge of the fundraiser. My boss and I decided to do a raffle.
One half of the raffle money would go to the “winner” drawn from the lot of raffle tickets and the other half would go to our charity, People In Need.
We knew in order to make money, we would need to give money away. We also knew that our company would match any money we raised dollar for dollar.
I made signs and posted them on the bulletin boards around the department and also sent around three emails to everyone in the department telling them about the raffle and the charity, reminding them of it a few weeks later, and finally telling them the deadline for buying their raffle tickets right before our picnic.
At the picnic, we drew a raffle ticket out and picked the winner of half of the pot. We were able to sell over 100 raffle tickets at a $1.00 each in our little department. We ended up donating $50.00 to our charity.
Our company did not match it, as we found out that the charity we decided on was not an approved charity; however, we were still proud of our contribution. It really felt good to be doing something for someone else!
