Buying Prizes
Do not rely solely on donations! You may have to spend some money to make money, so look for the sales. Save up your Air Miles, PC Points, or credit card points and purchase prizes BBQ's, TV's, iPads, concert tickets, sporting event tickets, gift cards, or even gift baskets are great prizes and they are things that you can usually find on sale. Never pay full price for prizes... there are deals everywhere. Keep your eyes and ears open and ask around for some sales. But really do your best to focus on donations so that you are not spending hundreds or event thousands on prizes. Free is better for Fundraisers!
How Many Prizes Should I Get
Be weary of one thing – sometimes people think the more prizes, the better. It always looks impressive when the prize tables are absolutely loaded with loot. Consider that it takes time to draw a ticket for a prize, so more prizes mean more time drawing, and guests can become agitated. If you have a lot of smaller prizes, consider consolidating them into "Prize Packs" or letting the DJ give some away for spot dances - a great way to get your guests up dancing and enjoying themselves. A good problem to have, is that you have TOO many prizes to give away. If this is your case, then use these prizes for games, rather than giving away money. Plan to have 1 huge Grand Prize, 2-3 smaller but still big prizes, and then a Raffle Table of about 20 -30 prizes.  You can consolidate some of them into baskets as we mentioned before.  Too many, and it will take too long to coordinate.  Too little, and nobody will want to buy tickets! Consider renting our Raffle Containers as you see pictured above. Keeps things neat and tidy!
Carrie (owner of Jack of all Spades) just had her own Stag & Doe in June 2018, and 99.9% of her prizes were donated so pretty much....  All.  Of.  Them.  She bought an LCBO gift card for the toonie toss, but besides that, she was not out of pocket for anything.  She worked hard, and worked for months getting prizes, she got a quadrillion "NO's", but her persistence paid off.  Definitely get help though, as its a huge undertaking.  Good luck with requesting Donations for Fundraisers - see our other pages to help with Writing your Donation Request Letters and how to ask!