A Successful House Raffle
I spoke to the National Wheelchair Basketball Association, and they completed their house raffle with a grand prize winner of the home. In other words, they successfully sold enough tickets to award the grand prize. My congratulations to them–yeah!
I also took some time to check out their house raffle website, and it was very well done. The viewer could easily click on a variety of topics to get all their questions answered. And all the rules were available for ticket buyers to read. In my opinion, the Better Business Bureau was over the top, too picky with this nonprofit. It was obvious that the BBB does not know the basics of a house raffle. If they had known the basics, they would not have complained that the grand prize might not be awarded.
Basics of a house raffle:
Nonprofit sells tickets to raise money for their cause and out of the proceeds, they will pay the owner of the grand prize home, for the home. In the contract between the nonprofit and the homeowner it will state that if not enough tickets are sold, they will not purchase the home, and the ticket buyers will get their money refunded.
OR , they may have an alternative action which is to split the money that came in with the winner. This is normal, basic 101 house raffle stuff. So for the BBB to complain that the prize might not be awarded is absurd.
In some instances, a homeowner will donate their home to the nonprofit–that is an exception. In some instances, the nonprofit has enough funds to purchase the home outright before the start of ticket sales–that is an exception.