Raffle for The Perl Foundation?

[pjf]

G'day Monks,

Last night Melbourne Perl Mongers was blessed by TheDamian's presence. Damian gave an insightful and inspiring talk into What's New in Perl 6. During the evening refreshments were served, and to help pay for the refreshments a small raffle was held.

First prize in the raffle was a copy of Object Oriented Perl, to be signed by TheDamian himself. The winner of the raffle ended up being yours truly. Rather than hording the prize, I discussed with Damian the possibility of insteading auctioning or raffling the book on a larger scale, with the proceeds to be donated to The Perl Foundation (TPF).

The conversation was late at night, and after Damian had presented a five hour talk, but I'm sure there was a public declaration that the winner could request Damian to write anything the winner wanted inside the cover of the book. I'm hoping that will help increase its value further.

So, why this node? Well, I'm interested in everyone's suggestions as to the best way to run with this. I suspect that a raffle is better than an auction, as an auction is usually capped at the price of the winning bid, whereas a raffle is not.

For me, the ideal running of the raffle would be in close co-ordination with TPF. If TPF accepts all the payments, then we know the money is going where it's supposed to, and any thorny tax or other issues can be avoided. I'm hoping the raffle ticket purchases could be as simple as a checkbox on the donation form. No, I haven't spoken to anyone at TPF about this yet.

I imagine the hardest step of the process will not be the technical side of the raffle, but rather the publicity side. Running a raffle that nobody is aware of will not be a great success. Running a raffle which receives a lot of publicity will almost certainly raise a lot of funding. Being mentioned at various Perl Mongers meetings, having links on websites, and any other publicity is obviously a Good Thing.

So, having explained the situation, I'd like to ask for suggestions, ideas, and comments. If this happens to get too big for a perlmonks node, then I'm happy to establish a mailing list and other services for the project.

Cheers,

Paul Fenwick
Perl Training Australia

[Louis_Wu]

I like your idea. Can we expand on it? Get some more stuff, "add value" to it (1), and put it in the raffle. Raffles with many prizes seem to go better than single-prize-raffles.

Ideas for prizes.:

• Some more books similarly signed (merlyn, are you interested in signing some books?).
• Some T-shirts from past events, optionally signed by speakers at those events.
• Some ThinkGeek products. "No, I will not fix your computer."
I'm out of ideas. But work has fried my brain today, so that isn't saying much. Can we make this a big event, something that the whole Perl community will hear about and participate in?

(1) - Get someone to sign it, or the like. I told you, work has fried my brain. :)

[Elian]

Well, there are always Parrot T-shirts if you want one. (And we can get them signed to raffle off for more than the comission the foundation gets for normal sales)

We ought to get mugs and mousepads one of these days...

[Louis_Wu]

We could get a birdcage, put a Parrot inside, nail the Parrot to the perch, get someone to sign it, and see how much we get for it.

. . .

Or I could go home and get some sleep. Yeah, sleep is probably better for me.

[theorbtwo]

More importantly, vroom, are you interested in signing somthing? ;)

Oh, and as far as places to publicise go, the LiveJournal perl community is undertrafficed, but perhaps a mention here will help them, and a mention there would help your cause -- LJers seem to be fairly giving people, even where money is concerned.

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[BigLug]

I work with a couple of Charity Orgs here in Melbourne and at fundraising evenings we run an aution with a 'difference'. The deal is this: Everyone who bids MUST pay their top bid. So if I bid $70 but (someone else) bids $80, then they get the book, but I still pay my $70. Surely we're all happy to donate to the foundation in this 'fun' auction.

P.S. Excellent talk last night, despite arriving 10 mins late and leaving at 9pm ... I want my Perl 6 and I want it NOW!

[BUU]

Question: Can i get TheDamian to inscribe the camel code on the inside cover?

Or better yet, selfGOL!

[Louis_Wu]

Question: Can he do it from memory? ;)

[VSarkiss]

I get the joke, but just to set the record straight: TheDamian didn't write Camel Code; Erudil did. Along with find-a-func, There can be only one!, and most of the other highest-rated obfu of all time.

[hsmyers]

Seems like 'a way' (don't know if this is easiest) for this to be done for one or more items, is for TPF to open up a vendor account on eBay and let the good times roll. It is trivial to cut and paste the necessary URL as a link and this would also solve the money gather/transfer problem...

--hsm

"Never try to teach a pig to sing...it wastes your time and it annoys the pig."

[pjf]

I did think of eBay, after some thinking I figured that it probably doesn't have the same earning power as a raffle. I'll try to explain by example.

Let's let's pretend that we place the book on eBay, and it fetches the arbitary price of $500. That's $500 for TPF, minus any fees charged by eBay. There are plenty of people who want the book, but none of them are willing to pay more than $500 for it.

Now let's pretend that every dollar donated to TPF gives you a ticket to win the coveted book. Now someone can still donate $500 to TPF. However, even though that large donation has been made, others can continue to make donations, and still have a chance of winning. I suspect the number of people making donations of just a few dollars will be far greater than the top-sale price at auction.

The other big advantage is that a raffle makes it easier for local Perl Mongers groups to get involved. Let's say at the next Melb.PM meeting we raise $200 in raffle tickets. That can be made as one big donation to TPF (saving on things like currency conversion fees). If Melb.PM wins the raffle, we can then haul out the little tickets they sold to decide who gets it. None of this requires any sort of interaction with whatever the current "top bid" happens to be.

If we want to encourage competition (which is how auctions operate), then perhaps there can be a second prize (we've had lots of good suggestions) which goes to the individual or group that makes the largest donation. This is like the "every bidder pays" auction suggested above, except that every participant has a chance of winning the raffled prize (which I imagine will be a motiviation for many individuals and groups).

As always, I'm very happy to be swayed by counter-arguments, so please don't hesitate to make them.

Cheers,

Paul Fenwick
Perl Training Australia

[MZSanford]

A wise man once said to me ... "If it is good, they will not come ... but, if you SlashDot it, and it is good, they will have no choice."

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