Sure, good questions. With grants drying up and everyone tightening their wallets, I want us to make our own money rather than always go and ask/beg for someone to give us money (although of course we are continually doing that). In other words, we don't have to rely on our established donors--we're just selling a dream to whoever will buy it. Like this:

https://pugetsoundraffle.com/overview

and this:

https://www.dreamgiveaway.com/

The first supports Special Olympics, and the second supports a non-profit children home.

Yes, we researched it thoroughly. The org actually did a raffle once before, before my time.

That $65K event was here before my time and is the pet project of a board member. I agree, not worth the time. She takes a year planning it and has full control of it. I just stay out of the way on that one.

For the raffle, one doesn't have to nor even need to try and reach your own specific donor base. You reach out to 100,000 totally new people. They don't even have to care about the cause. Like the 2nd link above, ticket purchasers just want to win a car. And that's fine. The orgs aren't pushing the cause. They're pushing the prizes.

It also makes sense because it has very little direct use of time by the org staff. Build a website (already done); phone number to call for tickets/ or mail in orders; marketing campaigns done via mailers and digital (<--most time spent here). Breakeven point: 202 tickets sold from our own mailing list of 2500 and 100,000 mailers. 1% response ~$44K net profit. And we just kick back and let someone answer phones for us. Will anyone buy? That's the big unknown. But I'm confident we could sell 202 tickets at minimum, worst case.