Raffle Results - Publishing Online
24 November 2009 at 11:14 am
A retired banking executive has come up with an online resource that allows charities to post their raffle results and their raffle opportunities for free.
Geoff Carrel, a former state manager of the French Banking Group BNDP says the costly practice of publishing raffle results in newspapers owes itself more to longstanding custom rather than actual need.
Recent research reveals that currently only South Australia and the Northern territory require Not for Profits to publish results of major raffles in newspapers.
Carel says for the South Australian based Bedford Group, which offers 750 prizes and must publish individual winning ticket numbers in the newspaper, it is a very expensive exercise.
He says information from the FIA suggests that Australians spend in excess of $2billion a year on charitable gaming which is buying raffle tickets.
He believes only a small percentage of ticket holders, perhaps as few at 2%, actually buy a newspaper for the specific purpose of checking raffle results while charities are estimated to be spending hundreds of thousands of dollars each year on newspaper advertising in the 'Public Notices'.
As well, he says many smaller charities don't even promote their own raffles on their websites or offer any results.
He says simply charity raffle tickets can be printed with the raffleresults.com.au website in place of the newspaper publication date.
Carrel says since setting up the online resource earlier this year a number of charities have begun to use the website to either replace newspaper advertising or in addition to newspaper advertising.
Currently some 50 organisations are using raffleresults.com.au to promote their fundraisers on the 'Raffles On Sale' page.
The website keeps results of raffles online for 12 months meaning ticket holders don't have to buy a newspaper on a specific day to find out the winners.
Geoff Carrel has made a submission to the Productivity Commission Draft Report saying legislation governing charitable gaming differs in each state and territory and as part of any process to simplify the regulations relating to the publication of results, a consolidated online database like raffleresults.com.au is indispensable.
Some of the charities currently using the site are Able Australia, Baker IDI Heart & Diabetes Institute, Cancer Support Association of WA, Diabetes Tasmania, Epilepsy Foundation of Victoria, Multiple Sclerosis Australia (Vic, NSW & ACT), Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre Appeal and Yooralla.
