Question about fund raising and cruising

[Joe_Antonelli]

My daughter-in-law works for a charity and they are thinking of ideas for a fund raiser (it's a cancer related charity). Anyhow, I suggested that they find a really appealing cruise and put it up for auction. Well, my daughter-in-law and her staff LOVE the idea. The problem is they don't know what to price the tickets at - so I said I would turn to the people of cruise critics, especially since we have such a wide range of people from all over to seek answers. What would you pay for a lottery ticket for a cruise valued at $7500 including round trip air? They want to keep it within reason but, they want to raise enough money to cover the cost of the trip AND make the fund raiser worthwhile. My suggestion is to sell only 500 at $100 per ticket, that way they'll make out nicely, but, she thinks that's steep. So, let's hear it folks. What do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? Suggetions? Ideas? All comments are welcome!

 

Joe

[serene56]

Guess it would depend on the cruise lines and what category the cabin was in. Do you think that the people in the community may be interested in stuff like that? Does it include air- or just the cruise and the person pay for port and taxes?

 

Its for a charity- I would buy at 100 chance.

[Joe_Antonelli]

Well, the raffle would be held in the greater Washington, DC area. It is going to be for a Caribbean Cruise in February, during President's week - balcony cabin (actually a suite) including air from the city of your choice within the lower 48 - plus they are including $50 onboard credit and $200 cash for other expenses (total outlay is $7500 for this cruise for 2). The people in the area have $$ - most have $$ to burn. The only question is do they keep the price high and tickets limited or do they lower the price and go for a broader audience. BTW - it is on Celebrity but, I am posting this question on all the boards to get the biggest and best response from a variety of people.

[babylene]

First...are you talking about an auction or a raffle? Second, she should contact local travel agents and try to find one to donate all or part of the prize. And she could approach some businesses or individual potentially generous contributors to underwrite all or part of the prize. Good luck to her. It will be an exciting venture!

[babylene]

Sorry...I didn't answer the question! $100 for a raffle should be fine. An auction could bring in more than the actual value.

[new_cruiser]

You said auction, but it sounds more like a raffle.

 

The right price really depends more on how the tickets will be sold. The raffles I know that work with that ticket price have people out there making personal contacts to sell the tickets. I'd pay $100 for a raffle ticket if I was willing to donate $100 to the organization without the raffle.

[Joe_Antonelli]

Yes! I did mean raffle!

[Boo's Mom]

Joe...... what a great idea.

 

I say you could get the whole prize (or most of it) donated...... charge less for the tickets (as to not exclude anyone) (give folks the opportunity to buy several tickets..@ a low price....and they will feel better about their odds) ..

 

Contact sponsors who may not be travel related...but who can contribute say $1000. to help fund the prize. In turn, they receive advertisement.

 

Contact an airline early, early, early ...... their "donation" funds get solicited quickly in the fiscal year.

 

Have a distribution team set up ...and their only job is to drop groups of 100 - 200 tickets into the hands of organization/people who will commit to sell them.

[CJHouston]

It sort of late for this, but I work with several charities, and I just wanted to make you all aware of a couple of things.

 

Seabourn has, or did at least have 2 years ago, a program where they will donate a cruise to a 501 © certified charity for 25% of the cost. In exchange, they can ask for your mailing list (which they did not), or use their literature to advertise. It cannot be a raffle however, it has to be a auction circumstance, and they also require that at least 2 tickets be offered to them, if someone from the cruiseline chooses to attend. In this particular case, the cruise was valued at $10,000, so we paid $2,500 and it was purchased for $12,000. Everyone had a wonderful time.

 

Also, both Carnival and RCCL have a wonderful group sales charity fund raising offer, where part of your cruise fare goes to the designated charity, and they match it with up to $100 per cabin, depending on itinerary/cabins chosen. Then depending on how many are traveling in your group, you can "auction" or "raffle" or "sell" the free cabins you earn for even more money. Or you can use your "free" cabins to take your clergy or reward other hard working individuals in your group, or even keep them for yourself. Again, everybody wins. Everybody gets a great vacation. I have seen over $10,000 raised from this.

[high seas gal]

Having worked to raise funds for a school for over 20 years, I had never even considered raffling a cruise. This spring we raffled a new GMC pickup. Our goal was to sell 300 tickets at $200 each. (We figured low odds would encourage ticket sales.) In the end, we did make about $17,500 on the truck, but in retrospect I think we would have done better with a lower ticket price. Obviously we didn't even come close to selling all our tickets. So, even with a cruise, I'd go for lower ticket prices and selling more tickets. Get all your members/constituents should be encouraged to sell at least one or two books of tickets (10 to 20 tickets per member.)

[Guest alexMD]

With respect to pricing your tickets, I'm sure the question has been asked before, and there is probably a formula out there that is used by professional fundraisers to calculate the optimal price for a ticket. It's one of those old maxima/minima problems from highschool algebra.

 

You know that the lower the price of the ticket, the more you are likely to sell, but you make less on each ticket. The higher the price of each ticket, the more you make on each sale, but the less tickets you sell.

 

Most raffle schemes that I have seen do not have a simple pricing structure.

 

For example, a raffle might sell one chance for $1, but 6 chances for $5 and 15 chances for $10. In this way, you can promote buying more chances and increase your sales without locking out people who are only able to afford a small amount.

 

If you price your tickets at $10 a chance, you also optimize your sales because, as any marketer will tell you, items under $20 are "impulse buys". Just about anyone has a $10 bill in their pocket they're not using at the moment, but very few people will plonk down a $100 bill. In addition, if you charge $100, you will have a lot of people paying by check, which may pose an additional problem.

 

Charging $10 to $20 a ticket will not prevent an affluent or generous person from participating to the tune of $100, (especially if you use the graduated scheme outlined above). However, charing $100 a ticket will surely prevent those with fewer disposable dollars from helping out.

[winediva]

I have consulted to the ACS for fundraiser events and they have very strict rules regarding return on investments of this nature. You basically can't spend more than 10 cents to raise a dollar. Most charities have rules like this, so make sure they allow you to spend any money at all on a cruise up front - even at a discount.

 

Some cruise lines, like the programs mentioned by an earlier post, will allow a charity to buy a cruise at 25% of its value or auction it at a reserve price of 25% of its value. You then pay the cruise line the starting bid or reserve price and the charity keeps the rest. They do usually expect access to the events mailing list and/ or major recognition at the event. We had problems with this type of arrangement with an ACS event as they have rules against "consignment" type arrangements like this.

 

Anyway, just something to be aware of...

[BCHappyGal]

Great Idea for a Wonderful cause however I think you would be better to charge less for the tickets and sell more!

 

Personnally I would not buy a raffel ticket for $100 even with low odds but I would support your cause for about $10. a ticket.