Charity 50/50 Drawings
Filed Under: Aaron's EnvironMental Corner Site News, Do It Yourself on July 10, 2009
This is somewhat off the main course of this blog, but most of you are probably aware that I’m the Director of a local animal rescue called Gateway’s Needy Animals. One of the things that we do to raise money is hold a 50/50 drawing/raffle. I was discussion fund raising with someone who runs another shelter and she’d never heard of these before.
So I thought that there’s a good chance that other charitable organizations haven’t heard of these either.
A 50/50 drawing is basically a raffle wherein you sell tickets at a set price (we’re doing one now at $1/ticket). The raffle/drawing is held on a specific day–usually an event associated with the charity or the community it serves; for us that’s the annual town parade called Bluffs Days.
At the time of the drawing, the total take (number of tickets sold x $/ticket) is tallied and a public drawing is held where a random ticket is pulled from a bin, as in any raffle. This is where the 50/50 comes in.
The winner of the drawing gets half (50%) of the total take and the charity keeps the other half.
Best of all, most winners will tell the charity to “keep it” and not claim their winnings. Often, this is written right on the ticket itself. Here’s why: first, it’s out of the goodness of their heart, of course; second, the tickets purchased are not a tax write off, but donating the winnings is!
Even better than that is that in areas where gambling is illegal, there are often exceptions to this rule (though types of gambling are usually restricted) for charities. In fact, when you fill out the 501(3)c paperwork with the IRS to become a charity, one of the questions you’ll have to answer is whether a significant portion of your income will be from gambling activities.
Because of the myriad of rules, however, selling 50/50 raffle tickets online is generally not a good idea. Which is why I’m not soliciting you to purchase any from our shelter.
Hopefully this information is helpful. If you would like to know more about it, leave a comment or ask me directly. I’ll answer to the best of my ability. I’m not familiar with the laws of every state or locality, so you’ll need an attorney’s advice before you proceed with a 50/50 raffle, but ours is usually a good success as it allows everyone to chip in $1, $10, or more, so they don’t break the bank getting involved.
