Submission #22079 by New City Jewish Center Men'S Club - New City, NY (1850)
I have read the 2021 Torch Awards Program Guidelines.
Online Fundraising
Fundraising
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New City Jewish Center Men's Club has supported its self with a Football Pool for well over 40 years. Our pool has changed over time as the way people changed. Originally most of the tickets were sold face to face by some dedicated sellers who worked in large workplaces were they had access to friends who liked taking a chance. As our members got older and less were going to work we focused more and more of sending the tickets by mail to our members who returned them with a check.
More recently the expenses and effort to do a large mailing made it unreasonable to do large mailing. We again changed to converting from paper to email. Took a lot less effort and cost.
More recently the expenses and effort to do a large mailing made it unreasonable to do large mailing. We again changed to converting from paper to email. Took a lot less effort and cost.
Our members are used to receiving raffle or all kinds of tickets in the mail. This represents a paradigm shift. Now they will get an email with a link to register and a way to pay. In younger congregations it is much closer to what your members expect. My congregation is more mature and in general less computer savvy so we lost a few participants. Some could even say people like to feel the real ticket, easily write a check and mail it.
When we do the contest electronically, we save expenses of $0.75 to a dollar when you include the envelopes, printing and mailing cost. Also with Covid we can’t arrange a large enough group to quickly complete a mailing to 500 members. We have noticed a reduction in the number of tickets sold but we found the reduction in income is close to the money saved in the cost of the mailing.
Our clubs have been doing news letters and fliers for many years. The skills required are generally the use of a word processor to print the needed documents are just like officer skills are often passed down. Skills to do online fundraising are more complicated, besides all the old skills you need members with technical skills. For our project we needed Excel, Word and email skills. The skills are had to find and even once you identify the people it is harder to get them involved.
I have been a member of my club for almost 40 years. When I arrived the Football Pool was developed and managed by an old time IBM person. The pool was written in a language called APL. Unfortunately, few people knew how to work the code. As time went on, we were losing our salesman and the developer lost interest. We were unable to move it forward.
I took up the responsibility of building the pool using the concept of for each week of the football season each ticket lists 2 teams for each week. A spreadsheet was developed with each of the 32 teams matched up with the other 31 opponents on a total of 496 unique tickets. The 2 teams are shown for the 17 weeks of the football season.
Assuming all tickets are sold we have 496 tickets @ $36 = $17856
Assume we pay out based on the score for that week by combining the score for both teams $300(150 for first, $75 for second place,$50 for third place and $25 for the lowest score that week) a week for all 17 weeks maximum payout $5100 which gives a profit of $12756. Your club can adjust the weekly payout and the price of the ticket. Most clubs will not sell all 496 tickets, but that is not a problem. If you only sell 100 tickets which is about 20%. We only pay if a ticket is sold. Unsold tickets are considered owned by the club. You should pay on approximately 20% of the tickets, about $1020. The smaller number of tickets sold the bigger chance of paying mor or less of the expected payout. If you sold the 20 % of the tickets you can expect paying out from $765 to $1275. I have over 30 years of history running these pools, I have seen groups paying out almost nothing to paying out a lot of the income.
If your club wants to run a Football Pool consider the need for technical people to bring this project together. A number of technical skills are needed, If you can find more than one person it can become a fun project.
• Webmaster
• Word
• Excel
• Paypal
Consider the marketing and communication skills required for any project.
As with any new project the first year is the hardest, in addition to the normal skills required to develop the communications and concepts you need the technical team to implement and test the application. After the first year the effort is very small, just change the date and send the emails out.
When we do the contest electronically, we save expenses of $0.75 to a dollar when you include the envelopes, printing and mailing cost. Also with Covid we can’t arrange a large enough group to quickly complete a mailing to 500 members. We have noticed a reduction in the number of tickets sold but we found the reduction in income is close to the money saved in the cost of the mailing.
Our clubs have been doing news letters and fliers for many years. The skills required are generally the use of a word processor to print the needed documents are just like officer skills are often passed down. Skills to do online fundraising are more complicated, besides all the old skills you need members with technical skills. For our project we needed Excel, Word and email skills. The skills are had to find and even once you identify the people it is harder to get them involved.
I have been a member of my club for almost 40 years. When I arrived the Football Pool was developed and managed by an old time IBM person. The pool was written in a language called APL. Unfortunately, few people knew how to work the code. As time went on, we were losing our salesman and the developer lost interest. We were unable to move it forward.
I took up the responsibility of building the pool using the concept of for each week of the football season each ticket lists 2 teams for each week. A spreadsheet was developed with each of the 32 teams matched up with the other 31 opponents on a total of 496 unique tickets. The 2 teams are shown for the 17 weeks of the football season.
Assuming all tickets are sold we have 496 tickets @ $36 = $17856
Assume we pay out based on the score for that week by combining the score for both teams $300(150 for first, $75 for second place,$50 for third place and $25 for the lowest score that week) a week for all 17 weeks maximum payout $5100 which gives a profit of $12756. Your club can adjust the weekly payout and the price of the ticket. Most clubs will not sell all 496 tickets, but that is not a problem. If you only sell 100 tickets which is about 20%. We only pay if a ticket is sold. Unsold tickets are considered owned by the club. You should pay on approximately 20% of the tickets, about $1020. The smaller number of tickets sold the bigger chance of paying mor or less of the expected payout. If you sold the 20 % of the tickets you can expect paying out from $765 to $1275. I have over 30 years of history running these pools, I have seen groups paying out almost nothing to paying out a lot of the income.
If your club wants to run a Football Pool consider the need for technical people to bring this project together. A number of technical skills are needed, If you can find more than one person it can become a fun project.
• Webmaster
• Word
• Excel
• Paypal
Consider the marketing and communication skills required for any project.
As with any new project the first year is the hardest, in addition to the normal skills required to develop the communications and concepts you need the technical team to implement and test the application. After the first year the effort is very small, just change the date and send the emails out.
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Original Program