I just thought I'd throw this idea out to the list...
At the latest Toronto DML meet, we went to a car show, and some of us
noticed that there were quite a few clubs and organizations there who were
raffling off cars. I think it may have been Jason who first made the
connection to the DML raffling off a Dak, but the rest of us caught on
pretty quick. :-) I'm not sure if anyone was speaking in jest or not, but
I took it seriously; I had never even considered this before. Unfortunately,
I don't have any experience with this sort of thing, so I don't know what
sort of pitfalls to watch out for, or if it is even worthwhile trying.
So... I was wondering what everyone thought of the idea of raffling off
a Dakota to bring in money for the DML? I'm not sure how many tickets
are usually sold for these things, or what the price is, but if we were
to sell 10,000 tickets at $5 each or 5,000 at $10 each, that'd bring in
$50,000; enough money to cover the cost of a Dak and keep the DML running
for a loooooong time! Of course, we would probably really only need
about $30,000 to be safe, $40,000 might be a better number to shoot for.
That might net $5-15K. Still a big chunk of change.
In order to keep the initial cost to the DML low ($0) my idea would be
to raffle off a brand new Dak. That way, nobody has to put any money down
initially to buy a vehicle, and the winner can have the Dak optioned out
any way they want (4x4, R/T, QC, whatever!), since it wouldn't actually be
ordered until the raffle was over. Also, that might be a convenient way
to get around local emissions standards and equipment laws. For example,
if we already had a US Dak and a Canadian won, there would be the hassle of
installing DRLs, the owner would have to put up with miles vs kilometers,
etc. If we order after the raffle, we could just order the Dak through a
dealer which is local to the winner.
I don't know what sort of time limit there should be, but obviously if
we don't sell enough tickets to cover the cost of a Dak, we couldn't do it;
in that case, I thought perhaps everyone's money could be returned. (Though
that's going to involve some postage expense, so that is definitely not a
good option.) Maybe it should just run until all of the tickets are sold,
or we hit a certain dollar figure, however long it takes? Obviously, unless
every DML were to spend $60/ticket, this isn't going to be restricted to
just the DML, either. I thought perhaps tickets could be sold via the web
site, E-bay, auto shows across the country, etc.
I don't know that this would happen anytime soon, right now I'm just
putting out some feelers and getting opinions. If anyone has any first
hand experience with running a raffle of this type, I'd especially like to
hear from you. Are there any federal/state laws regarding raffles? (Is
it considered gambling?) Is it legal to raffle off something you don't
actually have? :-)
-Jon-
.--- jon@dakota-truck.net -- or -- stei0302@cs.fredonia.edu ------------.
| Jon Steiger * AOPA, DoD, EAA, MP Race Team, NMA, SPA, USUA * RP-SEL |
| '92 Ram 150 4x4 V8, '96 Dakota V8, '96 Intruder 1400, '96 FireFly 447 |
`---------------------------- http://www.cs.fredonia.edu/~stei0302/ ---'
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