Brickpicker Raffle Fundraiser for a Great Cause!!

[Ed Mack]

10 minutes ago, Phil B said:

Ed, don't forget the Dark Side of the Force ... it's called Procastination Keep hammering these messages at folks and more importantly, put up a "Only X days left" banner everywhere. I'm sure that will entice some ....

Yes, I am hoping that has something to do with it.

[lego rules]

16 minutes ago, Ed Mack said:

To the BrickPicker Community...

We are about half way through this charity raffle for my son's school and there have been a lot of very generous people that have helped out and donated to a wonderful cause.  I thank you from the bottom of my heart.   That being said, I am a little disappointed with the amount of people who have bought tickets for some great LEGO sets.  It's not like these are just your regular LEGO sets.  We have been seeing tremendous traffic on the site over the past two months, with easily 10,000 to 20,000 unique people on the site on any given day and we have gotten 317 supporters as of this writing.  A little underwhelming in my opinion.  We can do much better.  

I am looking for suggestions.  Are people looking for different types of sets, maybe some Friends, CITY, Ninjago, Legends of Chima, Super Heroes or other more common sets.  Should I make the "Mystery Box" a "Grab Bag" sort of deal, where winners can pick 5 to 10 sets from a large list of varied themes and set types?  Should tickets be lowered for some of the lesser packages?  I am planning on adding some more options, but I would appreciate some feedback to maximize donations.   

Thanks...Ed Mack

 

I might be wrong but I believe many people don't care to help.  They come to site and get info they need to make a quick buck. This is not uncommon, or surprising to me.  The internet is full of people expecting to pay nothing for something.

I know this cause is near and dear to your heart and by no means am I saying to stop pushing for support.  I just think you will have a hard time getting the amount you need from all the users here.  There is a lot of very generous people here that share their time, knowledge and money; however, they are such a small percentage.

I hope everything works out for the school, I really do.

 

[redghostx]

33 minutes ago, Ed Mack said:

To the BrickPicker Community...

I am looking for suggestions.  Are people looking for different types of sets, maybe some Friends, CITY, Ninjago, Legends of Chima, Super Heroes or other more common sets.  Should I make the "Mystery Box" a "Grab Bag" sort of deal, where winners can pick 5 to 10 sets from a large list of varied themes and set types?  Should tickets be lowered for some of the lesser packages?  I am planning on adding some more options, but I would appreciate some feedback to maximize donations.   

Thanks...Ed Mack

 

I don't know if this will really drive up sales but you could have a prize that is X amount of sets of the winner's choice - valued at $X dollars.  Only sets that [Ed] has in stock may be claimed.

Perhaps somebody wants a Tumbler and Jokerland combo or a Ferris Wheel and Fairground Mixer, or maybe someone wants an Arkham Asylum and Batcave combo or 10 Funhouses.  Might be difficult to pull off but it's just a thought. 

[ISO8T0]

I agree. It's nothing personal, but I don't think that a lot of members on BP care about St. Paul.

Quite honestly if you raise $20k here on BP I would be impressed. It falls way short of the needed $200k, but it's still something to be proud of. If just 10 people from the entire school's community were able to put together fundraisers and each one achieved the $20k benchmark you would be all set.

I think that the fundraiser you have set up right now is working, albeit not as much or quickly as you might have hoped, but it's still working.

Just remember that in only 20 days you've raised almost $14,000. That's impressive in my mind.

 

 

Edited January 11, 2016 by pstebbing

[Ed Mack]

9 minutes ago, lego rules said:

I might be wrong but I believe many people don't care to help.  They come to site and get info they need to make a quick buck. This is not uncommon, or surprising to me.  The internet is full of people expecting to pay nothing for something.

I know this cause is near and dear to your heart and by no means am I saying to stop pushing for support.  I just think you will have a hard time getting the amount you need from all the users here.  There is a lot of very generous people here that share their time, knowledge and money; however, they are such a small percentage.

I hope everything works out for the school, I really do.

 

I hope you are wrong.  I figure if they have money to buy a Tumbler, they should have money to buy a raffle ticket for top notch LEGO set.  I am trying to remain positive.  

11 minutes ago, redghostx said:

I don't know if this will really drive up sales but you could have a prize that is X amount of sets of the winner's choice - valued at $X dollars.  Only sets that [Ed] has in stock may be claimed.

Perhaps somebody wants a Tumbler and Jokerland combo or a Ferris Wheel and Fairground Mixer, or maybe someone wants an Arkham Asylum and Batcave combo or 10 Funhouses.  Might be difficult to pull off but it's just a thought. 

I will be adding a Tumbler & Arkham Asylum combo.  I am really giving sets that I have, so every set is not an option, even though I have a lot.  

[Cravacor]

Threaten us with making this site ad-supported unless X amount of tickets are sold.

Really, I think for people to care enough about your cause they probably have to be members in longer standing on BP and/or have young kids and be familiar with schools/scouting and the need to raise funds, based on the membership demos, a lot of BPs probably don't have school age kids.

I understand there is a lot of new traffic, but like Rules says above most are here just to glean the quick info, or were driven here by recent media talk about Lego investing. 

I think 300+ takers is a great response to date regardless of overall traffic. Definitely something to be pleased with. Keep pushing,  more tickets will sell. 

You are one of, I presume,  hundreds of parents at this school, the whole fundraiser isn't on you alone. 

It's awesome you have BP as a way to cast a wide net. 

Also, the no PayPal thing is a bit of a deal killer for some, even though there is a work around. 

I appreciate what you are doing.

[Jeff Mack]

13 minutes ago, lego rules said:

I might be wrong but I believe many people don't care to help.  They come to site and get info they need to make a quick buck. This is not uncommon, or surprising to me.  The internet is full of people expecting to pay nothing for something.

I know this cause is near and dear to your heart and by no means am I saying to stop pushing for support.  I just think you will have a hard time getting the amount you need from all the users here.  There is a lot of very generous people here that share their time, knowledge and money; however, they are such a small percentage.

I hope everything works out for the school, I really do.

 

Unfortunately I have to agree with you.  I really didn't think it would be this hard to get to 500 or 1000 supporters.  I really thought we would have hit 500 in the first couple of days. The 300+ that have donated have done a fantastic job.  Ed is a much kinder person than me with things like this.  Somehow I always take it personally and I know I shouldn't.

[thoroakenfelder]

6 minutes ago, Ed Mack said:

I hope you are wrong.  I figure if they have money to buy a Tumbler, they should have money to buy a raffle ticket for top notch LEGO set.  I am trying to remain positive.

I have to admit that I don't really have the money to buy a Tumbler for investment. My investments are very modest. I took all of the profit that I made in 2016 so far and bought tickets. It was a decision that I made gladly, but for others in my situation, I don't expect the same decision. I'd just love if everyone bought one ticket. It would be a pleasant surprise, IMO.

[Jeff Mack]

7 minutes ago, Cravacor said:

Threaten us with making this site ad-supported unless X amount of tickets are sold.

Well the site already does have ads, so that wouldn't change people's thoughts on the matter, but maybe it could finally become subscription based. Sure that will kill off a lot of the lurkers/traffic/etc, but it would make for a more serious tight community.  At this time there is no intention to do that, so don't turn this into a discussion, I am just replying to that thought about the ads.

[lego rules]

15 minutes ago, Jeff Mack said:

Unfortunately I have to agree with you.  I really didn't think it would be this hard to get to 500 or 1000 supporters.  I really thought we would have hit 500 in the first couple of days. The 300+ that have donated have done a fantastic job.  Ed is a much kinder person than me with things like this.  Somehow I always take it personally and I know I shouldn't.

It is easy to take it personally.  The amount raised so far is quite a lot for the short amount of time involved.  As others have pointed out, Ed has really done a lot and likely far beyond what others have done to save the school.

 

[Thumper]

Can't count the community out just yet, there's still time to go...  I bought 7 tickets & I'm not even in the same country, have no school age children & have no direct interest in alternative schools at all... didn't even bother to ask for the little flag thingy, but more just to support the founders of this site who do have such interests & continue to provide us a common platform for our interests.  I'm sure there others who just haven't gotten around to it yet or have it so very ingrained in us not to press the buy button till the last 30 seconds! will be interesting to find out what the final tally is.  :-)

[Grynn]

1 hour ago, Ed Mack said:

To the BrickPicker Community...

We are about half way through this charity raffle for my son's school and there have been a lot of very generous people that have helped out and donated to a wonderful cause.  I thank you from the bottom of my heart.   That being said, I am a little disappointed with the amount of people who have bought tickets for some great LEGO sets.  It's not like these are just your regular LEGO sets.  We have been seeing tremendous traffic on the site over the past two months, with easily 10,000 to 20,000 unique people on the site on any given day and we have gotten 317 supporters as of this writing.  A little underwhelming in my opinion.  We can do much better.  

I am looking for suggestions.  Are people looking for different types of sets, maybe some Friends, CITY, Ninjago, Legends of Chima, Super Heroes or other more common sets.  Should I make the "Mystery Box" a "Grab Bag" sort of deal, where winners can pick 5 to 10 sets from a large list of varied themes and set types?  Should tickets be lowered for some of the lesser packages?  I am planning on adding some more options, but I would appreciate some feedback to maximize donations.   

Thanks...Ed Mack

 

A mix and match your own that type of prize is a nice idea, but probably won't do too much to help. 

Let's face it, a huge portion of the membership here is driven solely by greed. We knew that already, but the ratio is unfortunately quite surprising at the moment.

Tap into that greed is my suggestion. Transform the mystery box or make a new prize above and beyond the rest that is conditional on meeting a threshold of donations that you are satisfied with.

If that doesn't do it, I would just accept reality and move forward from here knowing better the type of people you two have done SO much to help out.

Edited January 11, 2016 by Grynn

[Alpinemaps]

Guys, I'd appreciate it if you upvoted this on Reddit.com/r/LEGO. It's getting downvoted right now. It certainly helps the cause if you take a minute to upvote it for more exposure.

[HandyHand]

@Ed Mack and @Jeff Mack, I guess for the large majority here they don't care about the cause for this raffle: a Catholic school. Maybe they even dislike the cause because they have a different religion, or no religion, and don't want their money to go to that cause. I'm just guessing here, mind you. 

Others may think that the chance to win is so small, it's a 'waste' of their money which they could easier spend on something more tangible with a direct return.

Maybe .... it would be an incentive to create a locked 'elite' section on the forum here where only people who bought at least one raffle ticket get access to? And in that section we could get the best tips/advice first, or something else that people visiting the BP forum really look for. So it will be highly desirable for forum regulars to get access to that section too. Buying a ticket will buy access to that privileged private part of the forum that keeps non-supporters out. But it should be worth it, or else people won't care.

Just an idea... I know it's not playing on people's generosity in general like you do with the Raffle now, but using people's curiosity and wish to be included instead. But it would definitely draw more regular Brickpickers into buying at least a raffle ticket. 

[Jeff Mack]

6 minutes ago, Haay said:

Maybe .... it would be an incentive to create a locked 'elite' section on the forum here where only people who bought at least one raffle ticket get access to? And in that section we could get the best tips/advice first, or something else that people visiting the BP forum really look for. So it will be highly desirable for forum regulars to get access to that section too. Buying a ticket will buy access to that privileged private part of the forum that keeps non-supporters out. But it should be worth it, or else people won't care.

I did suggest this to Ed and I personally like it.  Ed is still quite optimistic about the greater good of people and there is still time.

[glucapg]

1 hour ago, Ed Mack said:

To the BrickPicker Community...

We are about half way through this charity raffle for my son's school and there have been a lot of very generous people that have helped out and donated to a wonderful cause.  I thank you from the bottom of my heart.   That being said, I am a little disappointed with the amount of people who have bought tickets for some great LEGO sets.  It's not like these are just your regular LEGO sets.  We have been seeing tremendous traffic on the site over the past two months, with easily 10,000 to 20,000 unique people on the site on any given day and we have gotten 317 supporters as of this writing.  A little underwhelming in my opinion.  We can do much better.  

I am looking for suggestions.  Are people looking for different types of sets, maybe some Friends, CITY, Ninjago, Legends of Chima, Super Heroes or other more common sets.  Should I make the "Mystery Box" a "Grab Bag" sort of deal, where winners can pick 5 to 10 sets from a large list of varied themes and set types?  Should tickets be lowered for some of the lesser packages?  I am planning on adding some more options, but I would appreciate some feedback to maximize donations.   

Thanks...Ed Mack

 

There is an easy way.... 

Any member HAVE TO buy a ticket at least 

Is your site, embrace  the dark side of the Force 

[Sfcommando14]

Or maybe some of us are cash poor (in our Lego kitty) from the clearance sales and get paid on the 15th

[nolanfan34]

My 2 cents to the Mack's. You are asking a very fair question. And yeah it's weird to see threads with people buying multiple Tumblers at a drop of a hat but potentially not participating.

Some thoughts to consider though. Giving is a very personal thing to a lot of people. Someone else mentioned it, but due to religion, cultural differences, etc, you're going to have a portion of the audience who won't participate to begin with. People are also inundated with these sorts of requests these days - whether it's GoFundMe campaigns, school raffles, various walks/runs, etc, etc, I probably get asked to fund multiple similar things per month. I think our family donates pretty generously across a number of places (company matching also helps) but there are still things I have to say no to.

The purely analytic-minded will also calculate the cost of a ticket versus chances of winning (which is unknown as we don't know the number of tickets in each drawing I don't think, unless I missed it) and may decide that it's a "negative EV bet". If you post the number of entries that could then spur some action. 

Lastly, some people may feel like they are already contributing to you guys through using affiliate links, etc. 

Just a few thoughts, not judging or justifying anyone's decision either way. 

 

[Val-E]

33 minutes ago, Haay said:

@Ed Mack and @Jeff Mack, I guess for the large majority here they don't care about the cause for this raffle: a Catholic school. Maybe they even dislike the cause because they have a different religion, or no religion, and don't want their money to go to that cause. I'm just guessing here, mind you. 

Others may think that the chance to win is so small, it's a 'waste' of their money which they could easier spend on something more tangible with a direct return.

Maybe .... it would be an incentive to create a locked 'elite' section on the forum here where only people who bought at least one raffle ticket get access to? And in that section we could get the best tips/advice first, or something else that people visiting the BP forum really look for. So it will be highly desirable for forum regulars to get access to that section too. Buying a ticket will buy access to that privileged private part of the forum that keeps non-supporters out. But it should be worth it, or else people won't care.

Just an idea... I know it's not playing on people's generosity in general like you do with the Raffle now, but using people's curiosity and wish to be included instead. But it would definitely draw more regular Brickpickers into buying at least a raffle ticket. 

I´m not sure, but I think that the majority of donations/raffle purchases have come from  regular forum/site contributors who wish to give something back to the Macks for this site. The actual cause is probably not what motivated them to contribute. The problem is that if the site, or part of it,becomes pay per view then  it will probably only be supported by  that same number of people - there are enough free alternative sites and forums out there to cater for the rest.

In any case, i´d suggest not mixing both issues and giving the raffle its opportunity - there will be plenty of time to debate the second subject afterwards and not have it take the spotlight from the primary one.

[ISO8T0]

I agree about the comment regarding "the regulars" being the main contributors although I have seen several new members report donating which is fantastic.

Quite honestly, you could have raffled off a Benny's spaceship, a Dolphin cruiser or something else...Meh and I still would have bought a ticket for it. I could care less if I win or not. I've donated and I like that I was able to help out the Macks. Not everyone shares this sentiment and that's ok, but it sure would be nice if they did.

As Jeff said there's still time.

[HandyHand]

My post on Google+ got 12 direct likes (plus 1s), 2 reshares and at least 1 person who said to also buy a raffle ticket. So that's a win. 

[Ed Mack]

1 hour ago, Haay said:

@Ed Mack and @Jeff Mack, I guess for the large majority here they don't care about the cause for this raffle: a Catholic school. Maybe they even dislike the cause because they have a different religion, or no religion, and don't want their money to go to that cause. I'm just guessing here, mind you. 

Others may think that the chance to win is so small, it's a 'waste' of their money which they could easier spend on something more tangible with a direct return.

Maybe .... it would be an incentive to create a locked 'elite' section on the forum here where only people who bought at least one raffle ticket get access to? And in that section we could get the best tips/advice first, or something else that people visiting the BP forum really look for. So it will be highly desirable for forum regulars to get access to that section too. Buying a ticket will buy access to that privileged private part of the forum that keeps non-supporters out. But it should be worth it, or else people won't care.

Just an idea... I know it's not playing on people's generosity in general like you do with the Raffle now, but using people's curiosity and wish to be included instead. But it would definitely draw more regular Brickpickers into buying at least a raffle ticket. 

Some good comments...A couple of points...

Yes, St.Paul is a Catholic school.  Jeff and I were raised Roman Catholic and by no means are we some religious quacks or pushing that on people.  I am respectful of all religions and don't want that to affect this discussion and raffle.  We are products of public schools and they were great.  St. Paul is a great school.  Period.  It has kids from all religions and races in it.  They teach respect and morals and if that is part of the religious aspect of it, then more schools should include it in my opinion.  I am really the last person to preach about religion, so please don't let this deter you from giving.

The chances of winning are pretty good, especially for a few of the sets.  When I go to a charity event and a person asks me to buy a 50/50, I don't ask the odds, I just buy some tickets.  That's how I roll.  

As for the "elite" section, I am going to be completely honest here.  For years, we have discussed charging people to use this site.  Many members have requested "elite" forums.  I have always been the advocate to keep the site FREE.  I have always wanted to give people MORE, for nothing.  This site is not Brickset or Eurobricks.  This site discusses LEGO bricks, but it has deep ties to MONEY.  People MAKE MONEY from this site, yet we have kept it free.  We ask for a few links to be clicked on to help support the site at no real cost to members.  Nothing more.  Go try to discuss these topics on the other sites and you will be banned from the site in time.  They don't want to focus on such tacky topics.  It's just the way that it is and I respect their views on the subject.  Countless times I have defended the community here, saying that is was more than a bunch of hack resellers who took LEGO sets from Little Timmy, only to sell them for double the MSRP.  I might be a sap for not making the site a pay site, but I am a giver.  

That being said, Jeff and I don't support ourselves with this site in any way, shape or form.  We have real jobs.  This site is a passion of ours and the thousands of hour we put into each year is not about money, because if it was, we would have shut it down years ago.  The book we wrote was hundreds of hours of work for little return amounting to less than minimum wage returns.  So what keeps the site going, growing and improving?  Our loyalty and responsibility to YOU and the people that do support us, silly as it seems.  I believe in Karma and Kismet (my two dead dogs) and believe that if I help people, it will come back to me.  So far, I have been blessed by good fortune.  

So I ask the community of thousands to dig a little deeper to help some kids and teachers.  I will add some more sets from our personal collections.  I will also add some sets from generous members.  I really appreciate those who have given so far and I look forward to thanking more people in the future....

[ISO8T0]

In about 20 minutes I'll be raising my glass to you both.

Thanks!

[Mos_Eisley]

Alright, I'm selling likes!

I've already bought some raffle tickets, but just for fun, for every "like" this post gets from members who joined before the time of this posting, I'll spend an equal amount on more tickets, up to $250.  If it gets beyond that, I'll figure out how much more I'll spend.

 

Let's set a like record!

[HandyHand]

Your reply moved me, @Ed Mack. It really did! You're a good person and it really shows in your attitude, which I find highly commendable. Makes me even more glad I did what I think is the right thing by showing my support in buying tickets for the raffle. The cause is worth it. You and Jeff and giving back for the free Brickpicker website are worth it!