Prize Draw for Animal Charities

My daughter thought that it would be a great opportunity to do a prize draw for animal charities at my book signing. It means such alot as her love and respect for all animals especially those who are particularly vulnerable has grown since she was unwell and her cat became a major comfort.
  

I have never organised a prize draw before, but thought that it would be a great platform to raise money for some worthy charities. I also thought that it would be a good way to raise some funds towards the next book in the series of Hollie and Figgs.

I researched some worthy charities and to be honest they are all worthwhile. I chose two, one being a larger organisation for wild animals, the Born Free Foundation Registered Charity No. 1070906, and another more local charity to us, The Leicester Animal Rescue Registered Charity No. 509784.

Organising events like this is a challenge and i have learnt alot along the way.

I approached many companies to ask if they would be willing to support our fund raising and i have been blown away by their generosity. I haven't had any negative experiences at all.

The prize draw had to be organised as a `Free Prize Draw` to make it legal. This meant that there must be an element of skill involved, alongside a donation as we couldn't just take money.

We came up with the idea of asking questions about domestic cats,staying with the theme of our book and the charities we were fundraising for. The questions had to be challenging, but i didnt want to scare anyone off from entering. So i decided on a multiple choice question. The donation for entering was only £1 per attempt.

I also hoped that it would generate some interest in cats as a species, as there is alot we take for granted about our domestic cuties.

We were pledged some amazing prizes ranging from our local football teams stadium tour for four people, Rugby tickets for two, Costa coffee vouchers, cinema tickets,beauty and toiletry products and more.

I thought that these prizes would definitely attract people and i would make alot of money for our chosen charities. I promised that any prizes would be delivered before Christmas.

The forums i used was word of mouth, so family and friends, facebook, the book signing and Christmas fairs. 

I gave plenty of time so it ran for around four weeks, as i had several Christmas fairs booked in. I decided not to advertise world wide and on the internet as it would have cost alot on postage to send the prizes.

The weeks before Christmas was extremely busy and i thoroughly enjoyed the book signing, reading our story at Christmas fairs and the fund raising.

We would have loved to raise more for our worthy charities. 

I do feel like i have let these charities down, by not raising as much as we thought. As we did not raise as much as we hoped, i will not take any for my next publication and will add some money myself to make it an equal amount for both our chosen charities.

I have sent off all the prizes now and i know that the recipients will be very happy.
I am in the process of sending a cheque to each charity.
On reflection i am still not sure why i wasn't able to raise more. Maybe if i did the prize draw independently to selling our books so i could have concentrated on just one thing, that may have helped. Or was it because it was animal charities that people were not drawn to it as much. It couldn't have been the prizes as they were all amazing.

Nevertheless i want to thank everyone who entered and the generous companies who donated some amazing prizes.