Refund Raffles: How We DO It!

Orders for raffle tickets come in on our website interspersed among orders for NCG products, and supporters receive an automatically generated receipt for their purchase by email.  After matching up orders to our PayPal account or processing credit card purchases on our secure server, we mark the order paid, write the order number on the appropriate number of tickets and drop them in the raffle box. Ticket purchases are separately tracked in a handwritten ledger, as well, so that progress can be easily monitored throughout the raffle's three week run.  

It's Zinnia's job to stay nearby and provide encouragement.

Three weeks and three days from the raffle's launch, we're joined by local friends and relied-upon volunteers, Carol Lawrence and Tom Cockle, for the ceremonial drawing of the winning ticket. I should mention they're also our highly valued and greyhound-experienced dog sitters - can you tell?

When the dogs have been thoroughly greeted and treated, we settle in to the task at hand by spreading all the tickets on the table for mixing - assuring that none are stuck together.  They're then transferred to the big basket and we take turns shaking before each of us draws ten tickets and drops those "finalists" into the raffle box to extend the excitement a little longer!

More shaking, and then, finally the winning ticket is drawn from the forty previously pulled. The handwritten ledger allows us to identify the winner on the spot, but, of course, the original order provides everything we need to place an immediate phone call (the fun part!) and mail the prize the following day.

Scroll through the raffles on the REFUND RAFFLE page to see all the prizes we've mailed since December of 2006, and what each earned for the beneficiary adoption group.  And then visualize Carol and Tom and Jerry and me (and a whole bunch of greyhounds) being entertained by the process for each one of them!

If you've purchased tickets in any of our raffles, don't forget to save your receipts so that when you can add them up to $250, you can advise us to mail a $50 "refund" check to the adoption group of your choice. And when you've done that, pat yourself on the back for having helped one more greyhound find a home. Just look at how many $50 checks we've mailed out already!