Re: Door Prize "Fairness"
Re: Door Prize "Fairness"
- Subject: Re: Door Prize "Fairness"
- From: Jim Foster <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 18:27:46 -0400
On 12-Oct-04, at 4:21 PM, Elsa Travisano wrote:
Is there any good way to help get door prizes into the hands of those
members most likely to want/need them, while keeping things fair?
Great comments from Deborah Shadovitz ...
For the most part, the raffles which we hold at our MUG meetings are
the kind where every paid up member gets a free ticket, not tickets
which they pay for. Sometimes we are even in a generous mood and give
raffle tickets out to everyone who attends the meeting, even
non-members, although frankly that sometimes happens because we got
lazy and failed to check for membership ID's at the door! The point is
that we have yet to hold a raffle where tickets are sold. I think if we
did that it would be for a specific prize of some high value.
We do most often use the "first drawn gets first choice at the table"
approach. Most of our prizes are of limited value so the most frequent
cause for delay at the table will be from someone wanting to know if
they can run a certain software package or some such compatibility
issue. We do see the phenomenon of choosing the most expensive item
even if the person cannot use it, though.
In response to the problem of "the Harley-Davidson is always won by the
non-rider.", which is particularly problematic when the prize is worth
several hundred dollars, we often look for some other way to handle
these kinds of gifts from vendors. Recently, the Total Training folks
gave our group a collection of training DVD's which was quite
expensive. We decided NOT to make that a raffle prize, because we felt
there were very few members who would truly make use of it. With
Total's permission, we instead elected to put the package into our MUG
Resource Library and allow members to borrow it. This I think was
perceived by the membership as a much fairer way to handle it, although
frankly I think we may still be waiting for the first person to
actually request to borrow it.
This solution would obviously not work for software, due to licensing
issues.
Another approach for expensive items, I think, would be to hold a
raffle where tickets are sold rather than free. Our local PC club does
this, and depending on the value of the item they may continue selling
tickets for several months before they actually hold the draw.
So long as the raffle prize values are nominal, and so long as you can
make the raffles fun, I think either the "first drawn first choice"
method or the method of picking a specific prize before each draw, can
work.
Having said all that, we do have a lot of well meaning members who, if
they win something specific that they realize they cannot use, will
offer to have their ticket put back in the hat and to draw again in
hopes that someone else who CAN use the item will be drawn. I guess
that's the sort of thing that leads people to say, "You Canadians are
just so N-I-C-E!"
Jim Foster
President
Macintosh Users East [MaUsE]
http://www.mause.ca
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