Online raffle an option for teams

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This article was published 04/12/2017 (2863 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Hockey season means sharpening skates, picking up jerseys and for most players — a bit of fundraising.

Funding Change founder Ian Smith says that fundraising is usually everyone’s least favourite part of the sport, but a necessary one.

“Every coach is meeting and saying what will we do to pay for ice time, and that’s when parents look at their feet and no one wants to volunteer,” Smith said.

The Charleswood resident and his colleagues Nicholas Tenszen (St. Boniface) and Dan Major (River Heights) currently run an online platform for local raffles. They realized that people might find it easier to take part in raffles if they were able to do it online, so they created Funding Change: a website that helps businesses and now, hockey teams, raise money by signing up for the program.

“The way our platform works is every hockey team in the province gets a unique link, so you share it with people and they can buy tickets to a very large raffle, and teams get 40 per cent, so it’s an easy fundraising tool,” Smith said.

He says so far between 50 and 60 teams have signed up from around the province and they’re expecting to see plenty more this year.

“I think it’s the ease of it,” Smith said of the system. “Hockey is expensive these days so most teams are looking for fundraising options. Hockey Manitoba has done all the work to apply for the raffle and basically all the team parent or manager has to do is go to our registration page and sign up, two-minute sign up, they end up getting a link to sell tickets.”

He added that there’s no cost to the team, and therefore no risk. Hockey Manitoba is also offering incentives for top-raising teams in the form of hoodies and other merchandise.

And for those buying tickets, Smith says there’s a pretty good incentive as well.

“The raffle pot could grow quite large so the general public has a chance to support local hockey, but also have the opportunity to win cash,” he said. “Last year, the combined pot was close to $7,000 or $8,000, but we’re expecting a lot more than that… This year the jackpot is $5,000 and it continues to grow.”

He says there are monthly pots as well as one final jackpot at the end, which has been accumulating all season.

“We’re super excited… there’s no other program like this in Canada,” Smith said. “Raffle and hockey kind of seem to go hand in hand.”

For more information, visit fundingchange.ca