Written by: Divya Palasamudram
Saveena Ratnasinghe and Roshni Daruvuri led a virtual raffle fundraiser for SPCA of Wake County. SPCA of Wake County is a nonprofit animal shelter. Their mission, as stated by their website, is “to transform the lives of pets and people through protection, care, education, and adoption.” With the setting of the COVID-19 pandemic, animal shelters globally have taken a hit, facing challenges like food shortages, high pet abandonment rates, overcrowding and more. It turns out, people and animals are facing obstacles that come with COVID-19. Seeing that animal shelters need support, General Services created the virtual raffle fundraiser.
What is a virtual raffle?
An online fundraising page was created, each donation of $5 was the equivalent to one raffle ticket. After all donations were collected, raffle tickets were drawn randomly, and three winners were chosen. The winner received $15 and $10 gift cards! Our winners for this year's virtual raffle were Srinivasa Daruvuri and Apoorva Iyengar.
Promotion and tips from the team
A team of General Services members promoted this page through posting about it on neighborhood group chats, and sharing the page with friends and family. As a tip, Roshni Darvuri mentioned that considering your audience is an important factor in promoting and choosing an organization to fundraise for. If your friends and family are passionate about the cause you are supporting, they will be that much more excited to donate to your fundraiser.
Tips from the winner, Saveena Ratnasinghe
Saveena Ratnasinghe raised the most money through the virtual raffle at an impressive $135! Saveena was drawn to participate in this fundraiser as she never saw a virtual raffle before, and she was interested in seeing how everything would be executed. Some insightful tips from Saveena are to be passionate and to promote to friends and family, because along with supporting the cause, friends and family also want to support you as a person.
What about this project was special?
After interviewing the team, Saveena Ratnasinghe and Roshni Daruvuri, the team mentioned that the concept of a virtual raffle appealed to them, they liked how this project was completely virtual and they found the raffle aspect of the project to be interesting. Roshni mentioned that she was curious about the process and zero risk of COVID-19 was a plus as well.
If this has inspired you to start a fundraiser of your own, that is awesome! The General Services board is always here to assist you with starting your own service project.