 So, welcome everybody. Welcome to TechSoup Connect. I am Sandra Amar and I'm the local TechSoup Connect host for our Ontario chapter. And for those of you who might be new to TechSoup, we are a global network of tech for good meetups and we basically try to help bridge the gap between technology and non-profit so we can help you better implement and use technology effectively. I've been working in technology for many years and I came across TechSoup when I myself was looking for resources for a non-profit that I am the president for the Lampere Families Association. They were looking for a Toronto host so here I am and I've been lucky enough to find you quite a few great presenters. I'm always looking for more just to quickly go over our community values. We welcome everybody. We put our community first and we're all here for each other. Our goal is ultimately to help build stronger non-profits using technology and we love it when people participate and Rebecca's really great at getting you involved in these presentations as well but if you do have something else to contribute or want to learn can help guide the types of events that we're going to have please reach out and let me know and of course always treat each other with kindness and respect. As I mentioned, if you're interested in getting involved please let me know. I'm always looking for speakers. Hopefully as things start to open up we can hopefully start moving some of these events in person. If you have any ideas of venues that are available please feel free to let me know. A little bit more about TechSoup. It connects you with donated and discounted products. All different types hardware, software, hotspots and so much more. These are a few of the examples of the technology that you can get. TechSoup is also what you would use if you were validating your Google for non-profit account which is free for everybody. You get that through here. This is an example of how much you could save using TechSoup as a non-profit just to give you an idea and to make you all aware if you aren't already if you do need any tech help TechSoup has at the forum online that you can go to and ask your questions and get help from experts as well. You likely come across this presentation webinar by visiting our event page already. You are able to go on here and you are actually able even you're also able to attend other webinars in other chapters as well especially when we have them all available online. It's a great resource to have and I will hand that over to you Rebecca and teach us about raffles. Thanks so much. Like I said I'm super excited to be here today but before we get started I actually wanted to make a promise to all of you. My promise is that by the time that this call ends I'm guaranteeing that you're going to write down at least three notes in your notebook from my talk and if you don't I need you to message me and let me know because I really want to make it really valuable for you. Keep throwing tips at you guys until you've all written down at least okay a little bit nervous about that promise I just made but actually hold me accountable. You guys have all just given up one hour of your day so my goal is to make this so valuable for you and I'm really excited because I think we've got some really effective tactics to help you grow your raffles by 15 percent more than last year and regardless of if you're new to raffles or if you've been doing them per years we've designed this session for you guys but before we get started I wanted to share a quick story with you about an organization that completely shifted their approach to raffles and saw the benefit. One of the organizations we recently worked with had done raffles in the past and they actually had a great success. Their first year they hit their fundraising goals and they wanted to see the same success again but this year was different. Last year they didn't know a lot of the people that were participating in their raffle and they didn't have easy touch points to connect to them afterwards and they feared a lot of people were actually just coming for the raffle and not necessarily to support them which at the end of the day that meant they hit their goals but it didn't solve their need to grow their donor base and educate more people about their cause so as they looked at their winter raffle this past December they knew that they needed to make some changes and so they did and they raised 50% more by incorporating three specific elements one that they talked about their why and what their dollars raised would support for their organization two they highlighted their sponsors giving them recognition and encouraging them to share the word and three and most importantly they added an additional donation ask when ticket purchasers were checking out and they raised an additional $36,000 for their organization that's 1600 new donors that they're now going to be building relationships with and they'll turn into longtime supporters for their calls. Now I'm telling you guys this story so you can think about what's possible for your organization. You might not have a massive fundraising team or a big donor base but with the five steps that I'm going to share with you guys today you will be able to raise 15% more than that you had in the past for your organization and if this is all new to you no worries because we've also got some super actionable steps for you to take along the way. To help me make sure I'm giving you guys the best possible information I always love to know who's joining us so thank you so much for just put throwing in the chat there about organizations you're with but another quick question before we go any further have you run any online raffles before for your organization and if you could just throw a quick yes or no in the chat that would be amazing. Let's see never no and I haven't yet okay amazing awesome it's so funny because sometimes we come into these talks and everybody's done these a million times and other times people are like I have not yet done this okay awesome glad that we're all starting at the same starting point so as I'm going if there's anything I say that you're like slow down what does that mean or what does that actually look like let me know because like I said this is an hour for you guys but yeah why don't we jump in and get started so what I want to do today is just briefly review how you can streamline your application process if you haven't applied for a raffle before assuming none of you have just based on the responses you just gave then we'll talk about how can you streamline that and how can you make that easier next I wanted to dive into ticket strategy and then designing a raffle page to help you sell we also want to get into marketing and talk about your raffle and how you can make the most of it and then also end it by talking about how to set your ticket purchasers up for success throughout this session I'll share some real life examples and ideas from organizations that have succeeded so like you just said their data if you have done this in the past and it didn't work well let's dig into what these organizations did that worked and see what you can learn and in addition to all of that our teams also put together a guide with 25 marketing tactics to help your raffle stand out and so in this talk we're going to cover some of my favorite marketing tactics but the guide has so many more and I'm just going to throw a link into the chat right now as well that you guys can use to download the guide and check it out you can think about this talk like step one and then the guide is going to be more like a step two so we cover the same talk topics about raffles in the talk as well as in the guide here but the guide just has way more steps some quick ideas to implement into your raffle if you've got one that's currently running or if you're just about to launch one and we've also got more guides and templates and insights that I think you're going to find really helpful all from our raffle experts but first maybe we should start with a little bit about who we are I'm from trellis and we help building fundraising software for raffles 50 50s events auctions and we work exclusively with charities and nonprofits we build tools to help charities with all of their events from gallows to golf tournaments and standalone campaigns and raffle and fundraisers like a raffle or 50 50 as well hundreds of charities have run fundraisers on trellis and we have learned a ton from their successes and failures so I'm going to be sharing some of my favorite ideas with you around how you can make sure that your raffle is a success I'm Rebecca and I'm part of the team here at trellis so if you have any questions as I'm talking feel free to throw it in the chat what we're going to do is I'll just hold on to all of your questions as you're asking them and at the very end we'll leave tons of time for us to do Q&A we're joining you or I'm joining you and the trellis team from the unsee the territory of the seal of people and we wanted to just take a moment to recognize the line that we all get to live and work okay let's get started now our first step really here is to set the stage so hold on because we are going to fly through this first one but first let's just talk all about setting streamlining your application process and again because we are going to go so quick if you have any questions at all throw them in the chat right away and we will definitely come back to all of them at the end so first to make your application process a breeze that you need to understand the rules in your area each province has its own rules and regulations that you're going to have to adhere to but once you know the rules you can apply for your community you can plan the best raffle for your organization and some questions that I tend to ask before getting started are do I qualify for a raffle in my province because a lot of you have never done a raffle before that would be step one is figuring out what does your organization even apply and then I would look at what are the different raffle license types and requirements for each each one slightly different just depending on first of all where you live Ontario has a few different classes that you can choose from but depending on where you live the restrictions and regulations will look slightly different and then I would also take a look at how long does it take to apply for a license again if this is all new to you we encourage asking for help platforms like ours at trellis here we help charities with setting up their raffles and so we can also help you make sure you're applying for the right license we're currently building a resource to help you decide which raffle type is right for you when it's done if you want to throw your emails in the chat then I will gladly send it your way to to just help you identify what's the best option based on where you live your organization type and some of the goals that you have but in the meantime if you do want to chat with somebody or connect with somebody about raffle rules would love to help and I can throw a link into my email address at the end here so you guys can chat with me and I can help direct you in the right direction but before I move on if you do have any questions at all please throw them in the chat and we would love to answer them at the end and Ian just while we're here and we're talking about it uh really depends on if your rule if Ontario lets non-profits do raffles depending on their rules and regulations sometimes it does have to be a registered charity so I would start by looking at that if you guys are supported to do raffles then absolutely we will definitely work and so once you know what your raffle license type is the next big question is picking the right type of raffle and building out a foolproof typing strategy so we're going to start with the basics here and talk about the three types of raffles that we're going to focus on first the first one is what we call the 5050 okay here are a couple reasons why we love it you don't need to secure a big prize for this one your ticket money is your prize and as you're raffling off money it appeals to a very it's also ideal for organizations that are doing a standalone fundraiser the next one would be a multi prize which is a raffle with multiple prizes as you probably guessed by the title and it's a great way to engage others like your sponsors with your organization as you can create a handful of really exciting prizes for people to win it's ideal for organizations that are incorporating a raffle into a larger fundraiser like an event and it also works really well when you can push to a last call to buying tickets during your event really building the hype and increasing the amount of ticket sales you're able and then finally I wanted to mention the single prize raffle where you only have one prize available to win with this raffle type you're attracting people around a very specific prize and as you're only focusing on one thing you can sometimes put together something really amazing for your attendees I was chatting with a firefighting charity organization yesterday they're doing a standalone single prize raffle and they've got a fire truck filled with wine like the amount of people that are going to want to get into that it's going to be pretty high but they went really big on how can we make a really attractive prize because we've only got one so we've got to put our best effort we find that this raffle type works really well for both standalone fundraisers or if it's part of a larger fundraiser for your organization but the key to success like I just mentioned would be figuring out and putting a lot of effort on getting the right prize for the best chances to engage your ideal audience with the fundraiser once we've decided what raffle to run the next question we always get asked is about timeframes so again you're probably going to want to write this down for raffles that are a standalone fundraiser I would try a six-week window for people to buy tickets and if your raffle is part of an existing fundraiser then I would aim to have your raffle open for about four weeks leading up to the event both of these timeframes will give you enough time to promote the raffle give your purchasers multiple touch points and reminders to engage and encourage repeat ticket purchasing and so that's really the goal is like how can you engage people how can you promote it and how can you really build up that network of people that can go back and having these kinds of timeframes allows you to do that really so now that we know what our different raffle types look like and how long we should run them for how can you strategically sell more ticket and here are my five top tips to sell out first start by deciding how many tickets you actually think you can sell to start think about past experiences with this group how much do you do they like to spend or donate at a time to you how much do you think people will be interested in giving to a raffle ticket and if you've never done a raffle before no worries at all I would take a look at what other organizations in your area are charging for raffle tickets and use that as a bit of a benchmark of where to get started from our second tip would be to encourage people to buy larger ticket packages with discounts everybody loves a really good deal and so think about how you can incentivize people to buy more tickets by getting a discount in this example that you can see on my screen the organization had three different ticket packages their first one is one for twenty dollars their next is three for fifty and their last one is ten tickets for a hundred bucks so with that last package the value of a ticket is worth ten dollars this tactic helps your purchaser save a few dollars and increase their chances of winning but ultimately it's going to help you get closer to hitting your fundraising goals next up think about incorporating early bird prizes for your ticket sales or for early sales so without a doubt early bird prizes help lead to early sales and I would explore what kind of prizes or incentives can you give your ticket purchasers to increase the number of people buying tickets early on in your campaign and as an added bonus it's always much easier to sell tickets when you've got an established pop so you can always so use this to your advantage to encourage more people to keep buying tickets even after the early bird prizes are finished another great way to encourage more ticket sales is to limit the amount of best value packages available to encourage quick sales to increase your pod size actually I'd encourage you to take a screenshot now so you can remember this the next time you guys do go to run a raffle with your ticketing strategy one of the keys to success will be building excitement and a sense of urgency to get people to participate quickly only offer a limited quantity for the best package option to incentivize people to get it on the action early and really start to drive up those ticket sales and then finally and probably my favorite idea when it comes to increasing your fundraising success with your raffle is adding an additional donation upsell to your raffle or if you're running other elements to your fundraiser seamlessly incorporating other fundraising drivers all in one place just as a side note it is crazy to me that more organizations aren't doing this but you guys could be the start of this trend and to really make it happen but great question Ian let's talk about donation upsells and what that actually means so when your raffle ticket purchasers are buying their tickets ask them if they want to make an additional donation to your cause it's actually that not including a donation upsell when people are checking out from buying raffle tickets is a missed opportunity let's think about it this way that organization I mentioned at the very beginning burn fund they raised $500,000 with their raffle let's say that was about 10,000 ticket purchasers now imagine what it would look like if 15% or 2,000 of them also made a donation or maybe your raffle typically raises $75,000 from 750 donors now if 15% of those donors that would be 20 250 people if you had 250 new donors what would that mean for your organization that's 250 more people to reach out to you during your annual campaigns 250 more relationships you can build and 250 more donors with an unending fundraising potential if you're just doing a raffle for this fundraiser adding the donation upsell will give your donors the opportunity and chance to continue supporting your organization and just as a little ps uh don't forget to thank your donors after the fundraiser too because that's really step one of building that relationship to secure these purchasers as ongoing donors for your calls and maybe you've got some more fundraising elements included in your campaign that could be a silent and live auction selling items or ticket sales again I would aim to seamlessly incorporate all of the fundraising elements into one place to make it easy for your donors to participate your donors will be much more likely to add multiple things to their cart when it's all in one place from raffle tickets to event tickets and option items I would really encourage you to think about what are some other ways that you can incorporate donation upsells or donation augmented fundraising into your organization even if you're not doing raffles I know some of you guys as nonprofits there may be some complications that we need to work through again more than happy to have those conversations with you guys offline and and figure out what the best options are for your individual organizations but if you're doing other things too then I would just press the question of can you do and how can you add that donation upsell after people buy tickets for an event or with their auction items whatever it is to really increase your fundraising potential that is how you raise 50% okay I know we covered a lot of different best practices there so if you have any questions before we move on please throw them in the chat and we'll definitely answer those for you in our Q&A that's at the very end of this session and now let's move on to step number three which is all about designing your raffle fundraising page to someone we all strive to make really great first impressions and we think it should be no different when it comes to your fundraising events and campaigns and your branding and your fundraising page is that first impression now as you start to think about fundraising pages and hopefully come in with that lens how can you make your first impression or your fundraising page design amazing to ultimately help you sell more and so again I've come up with my three top ideas to share with you first I would start with catchy and engaging images use images that encourage people to keep scrolling and inspire them to learn more about the organization like this one Lake City Works their image gets people excited about their fundraiser and with a title of the campaign right next to the picture I personally am curious to keep scrolling and learning more next talk about your why we've done a lot of research on the donors that are participating in fundraising events and a common trend we continue hearing across the board is that donors choose to support charities and causes that they care about and the causes that resonate with them makes perfect sense so use your fundraising page as an opportunity to educate potential donors about your cause talk about what you do and the impact of donations or funds for your cause and share success stories from those who have benefited from your cause to inspire your donors to keep giving next highlight your sponsors this has two benefits for you first your sponsors are generously supporting your cause but usually sponsors are looking for some value in return promotion of their involvement is the easiest way to do this and you can use your fundraising page to highlight your sponsors and secondly secondly when your sponsors logos and links to their website are on your fundraising page they are so much more likely to share their involvement with your raffle too and when they share with their involvement with they share their involvement with your raffle they're also sharing it with their networks which again just opens you up to way more potential donors and ticket purchasers that you maybe didn't have access to hopefully that gives you a great place to start with your page design and again I know we are moving quick so as I'm talking if you have any questions at all please use the chat because we will come back to anything that you guys throw in there at the very end and while you guys are typing in any questions that you have into the chat right now let's move on to step number four step number four is all around marketing but so far we've covered how to streamline your application process ticketing strategy to sell more the importance of page design and some ideas to get you started and our last two sections are all about marketing your raffle and setting your ticket purchasers up for success so let's dive into the marketing piece we have some really cool ideas around event marketing 25 to be exact that you can all find in our guide I'm just going to throw the link for the guide into the chat again one more time so if you haven't had a chance yet I would highly encourage you to grab it now and while you're doing that why don't we get started so first let's start by separating out your donors let's talk about the different people that are going to be worthy of marketing to you for your raffle and make sure that you're attracting them in the best possible way first you've got your current donors and organization supporters now you are already doing some marketing and promotion to get the word out to this group so I'm not going to tell you about other strategies that I'm sure you all know about instead I'm just going to say keep doing what's already working but here's one small idea that you might want and that would be celebrating your milestones 10,000 25,000 or 100,000 when you hit big milestone numbers in your raffle send an email blast to all of your current donors and encourage them to buy more tickets and share it with their friends this is a great way to remind people that haven't bought tickets yet to get in on the action and also encourage people to buy more tickets and while you're at it they may also expand your network when they start sharing it with their friends and hey at the same time don't forget to highlight your donation up self which again can help you guys bring in a couple more dollars for the organization and then the next group that you're going to want to focus on getting in front of is new ticket purchasers this is where you'll have to start expanding beyond your usual circles to get the word out start with your board members volunteers staff prize sponsors and key donors or as we like to call this group your event partners what I would do is I would make it so painfully easy for them that they have no choice but to participate in support when you guys give them a dropbox with ready to post social media graphics and suggest captions to make it easy for them to promote your raffle or encourage them to reshare your social media posts with their followings too or I would even look at some third-party marketing platforms we particularly love home watering news to share the word or maybe you've got a sister or apartment organization I would look at collaborating with them encourage them to send it to their email list or social networks and tell them to do the same with their next fundraisers too and with all of your ticket purchasers the ultimate key to success will be learning from what's working this will be important so you can focus on marketing strategies and channels that are working best for you and the best way to do this is to track where your direct sales are coming from and ask where your donors came from as well first let's talk about asking our donors to do this add a custom link to the checkout process to ask them how they heard about their event use this information to watch which channels are working and put more effort there and to get a better idea of where your ticket purchasers are coming from add affiliate links so that you can see where people are coming from and how much money is being raised through each channel like the future we have on trellis you can create a different link for each channel one for social media a new link specifically for your email signature maybe one for your board members to use in their emails and to share with their raffle network but having those links in different places will allow you to figure out which channels are converting and how can we use those channels more and more in the future so we can continue to increase the amount of raffle sales we're doing I would even encourage you to take this a step further and create a little competition amongst your volunteers and board members giving each of them a unique link to track who helped bring in the most sales at the end you can give a prize to the person who had the most sales tied to their custom link once you've collected this information you can now use all of this data to make better marketing decisions at your next fundraiser by focusing more time and energy on the potential of what's actually working again don't be afraid to make changes as you go if right at the beginning you notice everybody is coming from social media use that information early to steer how you continue to promote your raffle you don't have to wait until the end of your fundraiser to learn from the data that's being collected again make sure you learn from what is working for your organization I would love to know does anybody else have any other great marketing tips for raffles or otherwise that you've tried in the past why don't you throw them in the chat so we can share them as a community as well and while you're doing that let's move on to our last section but let's talk about how to set your donors up for success successful raffles will have a lot of transactions and that means a lot of website traffic and awareness but with all of your fundraising page traffic you want to make sure that your potential purchasers and donors aren't quitting because they can get easily because they can't easily get through their purchase and there may even be some challenges donors bring to your attention so don't be alarmed if this happens and that's going to be no different for any form of online fundraising you're doing raffles or otherwise but to help mitigate any ticket purchaser raffle issues talk to your software platforms and find out what kind of support they can provide to your raffle purchasers and again not necessarily just raffles but all of your software platforms talk to them about what kind of support they offer and how they can help you benefit or how they can help you make sure that you give your donors the best support possible another way to increase donor support is to send your ticket purchases all the details they need right away so I would look at itemized receipts of their purchases sending them official raffle tickets that may even include a donation tax receipt if they've made a donation at the same time as their ticket purchasing again communicating upfront is going to really help set your donors also you shouldn't have to worry about this again I would look at what platforms are able to do all of this for you and I would also figure out how you can create some instructional videos or some other resources that may support your donors that maybe aren't as technology savvy so that they can feel really confident using your raffle buying tickets and doing all that entire process themselves okay that was quite the fire hose of information we talked about a ton of people there are a ton of different things there so hope you are all doing okay and sticking with me so far what I'd love to do is do a really quick review of everything we just talked about but there is one kind of key piece that I haven't mentioned yet that might actually be the most important so let's also talk about that but as I'm doing this and doing a quick review if any questions come to mind please throw them in the chat we do have a lot of time here for Q&A and I want to make the most of it for you guys and if you have questions about things that aren't raffle related but just fundraising in general we can gladly talk about that but this is what we've reviewed so far but we talked about the the following we talked about streamlining your application process knowing the rules to run a raffle and the questions to ask and finding software partners or raffle experts to ask your questions to then we talked about building a full proof ticketing strategy planning your sales goals from past experience or lube or tickets incentives and limited quality quantity value-based practice and then by far my favorite idea adding a donation upsell tearing more donations and really achieving that extra 15 percent we talked about you can use this to also encourage ticket purchasers to become the long-time donors for your cause which again the opportunities to grow your donor base are truly endless here and hey even better if you have a platform that can automate tax receiving too just one less thing you guys have to deal with next we'll talk to all about designing your event page to help you sell out using engaging images sharing the why behind your cause and highlighting your sponsors then marketing your raffle engaging current and past donors to your cause and using an extended network through event partners to find new ticket purchasers and again the key from here is learning from what is actually working and setting up tools like custom questions and checkout or affiliate marketing links to learn what is working for you and then we ended by talking about setting your donors up for success creating resources to help ticket purchasers through their entire experience but ultimately finding a trusted raffle platform that can help with everything from support supporting your donors and also the entire ticket purchasing process sending over all the key details like receipts and tickets as well as soon as purchaser now if you have done raffles many times before or if this is your first time ever you can see that there is a ton to running a successful raffle especially if you want to raise 15% more than you had in the past but with the right technology or software partner you can accomplish these things easily and Dana to your question there and I really hope I'm saying your name right because I have a feeling I'm not so sorry please correct me if I'm wrong um at trellis we have built a platform to help you do all of these things so really hopefully this addresses your question first we have a team of raffle experts that you can rely on to assist with applying for your raffles and identifying the best options for your fund raise and then adding donation upsells or incorporating other fundraising elements into your page to raise more than you have in the past trust me when I say that this is your number one way to raise more money for your organization and you have in the past and you can engage donors unlike ever before and again you may think that this is just one piece but it alone has helped other organizations raise more and I truly want you guys to do the same and then creating engaging fundraising adding custom questions and affiliate links to your page to track your success and supporting your ticket purchasers throughout the entire process as well so at this point you've probably downloaded our guide which has 25 more ideas to raise more for your raffle and make it a success hopefully you've written down at least three notes in your notebook from this talk and maybe you've already sent a text to one of your colleagues saying hey I think we should actually talk about our raffles and figure out a new strategy based on some of the new ideas you've already learned but we also know that everything I presented was a little bit like drinking from a fire hose so I wanted to give you some more actionable steps before we end here and maybe you can identify with one of these three buckets one you're already running a raffle fundraiser if that's you and you're currently selling tickets that's amazing make sure to download our guide if you haven't already so you can figure out some more ways to sell more tickets for you or maybe you're about to run your first online raffle but you're a first timer so maybe you're brand new to raffles or you've never done them before so this is all feeling pretty new if that is you then we would love to connect I'm just going to throw my email in the chat here so you can connect with me directly and we would love to help you through the process we can talk about what are some of your options and how can you make sure that you're set up for or maybe you're ready to take these tactics and raise 15% more for your raffle if that's you amazing again I just threw that link in the chat to my email you can show me a message and I would love to chat with you about what are your options for doing raffles and how can you make sure that you get the most success out of it and raise 15% more and if you have any other questions about raffle ticketing strategy too we're just fundraising in general I would love to help and answer those for you again reach out to me directly and we can definitely chat about next steps from here and with all of that why don't we open up the floor to some questions here I know some questions trickled in as we were going but again if you have any more questions this next 20 minutes is for you guys so let's throw them in here and if you're like this sounds great but I don't know if I can do raffles let's talk about other fundraising like this fundraising in general is my wheelhouse so let's dive into it hopefully I answered the question though around donation upsells and just that idea of that additional donation ask when you're doing any fundraising not just raffle specific and how you can use that as an avenue to raise more donations yeah we're seeing about 15% more 15 to 20% that number is increasing actually right now which is really amazing to see but even with ticket purchasing and all of those other elements to fundraising we're seeing that yeah they're on the 15% mark is how much more organizations are are raising because of a donation ask and then just going back to your question here about how does trellis support the process I would yeah I would be happy to go into more detail with you about that but everything from helping you pick what's the right raffle type that you need to get figuring out what's the right process for you helping you figure out your ticketing strategy so if you have any questions around what's the best ticket options for me we can help with that we'll support you through the whole application process but that's really done with agco for you but whatever province you're in and then after that it would be all about helping you make sure you set up your page you're set up for success for your raffle so you can launch as soon as you're approved with all of the payment processing side of things to make sure that again that's all set up through our platform you don't have to worry about it we would do random number generators for you so your each raffle ticket would have unique numbers all in um adherence with gaming rules for your province and then we can also do a random number generator so for your winner selection at the end we support with all of that as well we are an online platform so raffles is only a portion of what we do also doing a lot of other fundraising elements which ties really nicely into your question there blenda if you don't have charity status first i would check um every single province and sorry blenda i didn't catch what province you're in um every single province does have slightly different rules and regulations so some will let nonprofits do raffles others won't and i would still check into it because raffles are a really great way the other thing we've seen be really successful is silent options so if you are looking to do fundraising and yeah raffles aren't a great option for you just because of your structure then i would take a look at a silent auction we're seeing a ton of organizations do just an online auction similar to a raffle having it open for six to four weeks before to six weeks before your event as well or if it's a standalone fundraiser keeping it open for that time so people can buy uh bid on items and engage in that way and it's a really fun and easy way for people to participate in a purely online method but also take a look at what you've been doing in the past if fundraising is something you guys have been doing for a long time see what's working was ticketed events or events working really well for you if not then yeah let's look at some online methods if that's a raffle or if that's a silent auction things like that or if events have been working really well i would dig into what pieces were actually the most successful was it ticketing or was it the other elements of that were actually driving more dollars for your organization kevin i see that you just jumped in here i have a feeling we connected like two weeks ago to different talks so if this is the same kevin it's great to see you again perfect yeah i was like we taught i tried it at the texas one florida somewhere i can't remember that's okay uh does trellis bring the viewer to a different website other than our own if so some people may be suspicious of that have you has that been taken into consideration yes so trellis is we our whole site is based on our own domain so the trellis dot org slash the name of your fundraiser and we have not had any issues with that in terms of suspicion from ticket purchasers the whole goal with our platform is to really brand it to you guys so page design and like i was talking about of like step three all around setting it up for success in that regard is really crucial to to helping to illustrate that ensure the right story hasn't been an issue to date what most people will do is they will do a redirect from their website so there'll be a picture or banner that says click here to buy raffle ticket to just shoot people over to their trellis and then yeah because that messaging is consistent the branding is the same a lot of the same imagery or types of imagery hasn't been an issue to date and based on how our platform is set up and platforms in general are set up embedding it into a website isn't the best option in terms of user experience for you as the organization or actually for your donors and so that's why we've decided to that was my attempt at not getting too technical but hopefully still answering your question what else what other questions do you guys have at this point you feel free to come off mute as well if you guys wanted to ask in person i think you did a great job of covering it all i guess perfect i was just going to say common question that we do get asked is how do you encourage people to buy tickets earlier i know i did mention a few ways but again not specific to just raffles as you think about your organizations this also works for all types of fundraising so hopefully some good takeaways you can have but two ideas to help with early ticket sales or early engagement with a fundraiser one it's all about promotion so in the the raffle guide we do talk a lot about promotion and marketing and some ways to spread the word but yeah really spending time on on sharing the story of the why and getting that promotion out equally as high as what exactly people are participating in but they go so hand in hand so sharing those stories simultaneously will help you sell tickets earlier and then i would look at influencers or other people in your network or community that can help share resource or share the word about what you're doing having a third party say hey i'm supporting this fundraiser and this is why i'm choosing to do that always go so much further and that voice resonates so much louder with your donors or potential donors then you talking about why you're so great yourself and not just with raffles and fundraising but just in general so think about who's that in your network who can you start tapping on the shoulder before you even start promotion to get their buy-in so right from day one they can really engage with you and help you spread the word when will the recording be available i feel like that's a really great question for sanadra yeah it's usually available pretty quickly so if it's not there by the end of the day i'd be surprised usually Eli gets it there it might even do it automatically right at the end i think it might even be that quick and you should also be able to see it right on the event page so wherever you went to register you'll see it there as well amazing excellent thank you so much rebecca i guess that's thank you here and i think that was a great way to wrap up so thanks so much for coming back and it was great to learn