Advice on holding a Raffle?

[brantwijn]

Hi, everyone!

I originally posted this in For Sale / For Auction but maybe that was the wrong place.... sorry for double-posting, if that's a problem.

I am thinking of hosting a raffle to help me raise some funds for the Southern California Writer's Convention.  I'm trying to break into the world of writing professionally and this convention would be an AMAZING opportunity for me to meet agents, editors and publishers, and be able to have my novel read and critiqued by professionals in the field.  I have been wanting to go to this con for years, but it is always too expensive.  This year, I thought perhaps I could earn some extra cash with my customs!

I've never done a raffle before, so I'd appreciate any thoughts on it?  I was thinking of raffling three commission vouchers and running the raffle from sometime this week through July or August (the con is in September).  Would anyone be interested?  Any suggestions or thoughts?

Here are some examples of my past customs, for reference.

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[Sarahlacewing]

The biggest problem with raffles is accepting funds. PayPal does not allow raffles so if anyone says anything even remotely to make them suspect you are using them to host a raffle your account will be penalized and the activity shut down. That is the biggest issue. If one person forgets and says custom raffel or ticket or something of the sort it's a PayPal game over.

Otherwise I like the idea of raffles. Most people use a random number generator to choose the winner and screen shot the results just so everyone in the world knows they are legit. We are trusting pony people it's just to safeguard yourself.

Good luck with your raffle!

[Maniah]

You just have to hope that people do not mention raffle. For my raffle, which is ending in a week or so, I made sure that the Chipin widget I used did not contain the word "Raffle" at all. And I asked people to please NOT leave any comments with their entry, since the Chipin widget tracked everyone who entered anyway.

If you are very worried, I think maybe you could set up a second paypal account for it, with a different email, and a different bank account tied to it perhaps.