The Rotary Club of Stow-Munroe Falls, like many other clubs, has been adversely affected by the COVID-19 virus. We went from in person meetings to virtual meeting in March as the pandemic gripped our nation. We had to cancel our golf outing scheduled for June due to the virus. We have two main fundraisers that fund all the great things our club does. The golf outing and our reverse raffle. After cancelling the golf outing we were wondering how we would do the reverse raffle that usually has over 250 people in attendance.
Our board met virtually as we discussed our options for the reverse raffle. We began talking about holding it virtually, but had no idea how we would do it. It came to us that we may be able to do it by Zoom. With the proper license with Zoom, we could have virtually an unlimited amount of participants. While our traditional reverse raffle had side board betting and a Silent Auction, we had to limit what we could do. We decided to sell 150 tickets at $100 per ticket and have three prizes. First place would be $2,000, 2nd and 3rd place would be $500. We wouldn’t be able to pool the last five into sharing, as that would have been too difficult. Now we had to figure out how we would sell the tickets.
We decided we would do it word of mouth. If a person was interested, we would mail them a ticket with a self-addressed envelope included to mail back the stub and the money. The stub would include their name, phone number and email address. The latter is important as that is when we need to do the virtual raffle. We started by selling the first 125 tickets as we did not know how it would be received. We found out quickly that people are still quite generous and want to help clubs that do good things.
One thing that our club has that made this event a success is great members who care. One member; Dick Hall, was very impressive. Dick sold over 55 tickets himself! Virtually all our member stepped up and bought and sold tickets. In a little over one month we were completely sold out. We have collected over half of the money, and each day more comes in. We also collected gift cards donated by our members for prizes. The first person out, every 10th ticket and the last two tickets out before the prize winner all would get a gift certificate. Those were donated as well.
As far as the actual drawing, our club has a reverse raffle board. We will stage this at the community center in Stow, where we will have 5 members, socially distanced, who will draw the numbers. We have not quite figured out what we will broadcast the Zoom meeting with, but my daughter has volunteered to do it by her phone!
So that is our story. We have all had our lives turned upside down by the pandemic. Rotarians are a special breed. We find ways to help in any situation. Although this raffle will be way different, we will still be able to fund all our projects. I hope our event goes smoothly, I am sure there will be glitches. But in the end, we continue to give back due to the generous hearts of our participants.
Yours in Rotary Service -
Bob Oborn
Rotary Club of Stow-Munroe Falls, Fundraising Chair
Rotary District 6630 Assistant Governor and Rotaract Chair