Donation Raffle and Boat Loan Initiative Drafts

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Donation Raffle

My new donation raffle uses some principles of gambling in order to generate interest, and income. Instead of being run at certain intervals, it's dependent on a pool of 20 £5 tickets being bought out (by donation to TH), and a predetermined prize will be paid to 75% of participating tickets, based on a drawing. Here's the winnings spread:

1st place: 25% of the pool, or £25.00
2nd place: 10% of the pool, or £10.00
3rd place: 5% of the pool, or £5.00
And then secondary prizes: 3 prizes of £2.00 each (6% of the pool in total), and 9 prizes of £1.00 each (9% of the pool in total).

All this amounts to 25%+10%+5%+6%+9%, or a total 55% payout in 15 prizes, where the other £45.00 is kept by the Town Hall. This makes it so that 15 out of 20 entries actually win something, and encourages people to play. Needless to say, putting up to 5 tickets in and winning the grand prize will pay for itself, so that's a pretty attractive choice.

If the raffle drawing occurs too often, this spread can be expanded to, say, 40 tickets, where the ratio of 75% wins can be kept, by keeping 3 main prizes and doubling their value, and then just adding £2 and £1 prizes in proportion to keep the 75% win rate.

The raffle would be open to anyone: if someone traveled out of town after putting in their ticket and that ticket won, they would then have 30 days to claim it - either through the County by grant, or an inter-County arrangement, or simply, travel. Otherwise, the TH would absorb the winnings to its benefit.

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Boat Loan Initiative

Upon request, the TH could grant a boat free of charge in exchange for 6 fish valued at £16.50 each being returned with the grant within 30 days of issue. If extra cash is needed for transfer, the number of fish can be higher voluntarily, because the grant then would have to hold both fish and cash. Prerequisite is 19+ str and 90 intel, or fishing partner vouching to help if intel lacking, terms flexible. Since the boat allows a proficient fisherman an extra fish every 4 days, after 24 days (4 days x 6 fish) it's possible to sell or eat a fish every day and STILL pay off the boat, thus the 30 day term. Another plus is that someone may just opt to pay it off within a week. The biggest thing is that people will be fishing, and selling their fish on the market, AND giving some to the Town Hall, which the TH can then turn around and trade for wood to provide for the town.

It's important, too, that whoever it is requesting to loan a boat is at least an established level 1, as this IS a long term loan, and we don't want people losing interest and dying off before following through with it. Judging loan worthiness would be up to the discretion of the Mayor (or Mayor and Town Council, if they seeks counsel).

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What I initially started with were the Fish Lottery and Donation Lottery, but both ideas were unfortunately flawed and either generated heavy losses or people lost interest in. After thinking long and hard, then bouncing it off a good friend of mine, he came up with, and I simply polished up a very different approach to both:

Donation Raffle

My new donation raffle uses some principles of gambling in order to generate interest, and income. Instead of being run at certain intervals, it's dependent on a pool of 20 £5 tickets being bought out (by donation to TH), and a predetermined prize will be paid to 75% of participating tickets, based on a drawing. Here's the winnings spread:

1st place: 25% of the pool, or £25.00
2nd place: 10% of the pool, or £10.00
3rd place: 5% of the pool, or £5.00
And then secondary prizes: 3 prizes of £2.00 each (6% of the pool in total), and 9 prizes of £1.00 each (9% of the pool in total).

All this amounts to 25%+10%+5%+6%+9%, or a total 55% payout in 15 prizes, where the other £45.00 is kept by the Town Hall. This makes it so that 15 out of 20 entries actually win something, and encourages people to play. Needless to say, putting up to 5 tickets in and winning the grand prize will pay for itself, so that's a pretty attractive choice.

If the raffle drawing occurs too often, this spread can be expanded to, say, 40 tickets, where the ratio of 75% wins can be kept, by keeping 3 main prizes and doubling their value, and then just adding £2 and £1 prizes in proportion to keep the 75% win rate.

The raffle would be open to anyone: if someone traveled out of town after putting in their ticket and that ticket won, they would then have 30 days to claim it - either through the County by grant, or an inter-County arrangement, or simply, travel. Otherwise, the TH would absorb the winnings to its benefit. The £5 entry fee ensures people feel that it's affordable - it's essentially more or less pocket change.

Boat Loan Initiative

Upon request, the TH could grant a boat free of charge in exchange for 6 fish valued at £16.50 each being returned with the grant within 30 days of issue. If extra cash is needed for transfer, the number of fish can be higher voluntarily, because the grant then would have to hold both fish and cash. Prerequisite is 19+ str and 90 intel, or fishing partner vouching to help if intel lacking, terms flexible. Since the boat allows a proficient fisherman an extra fish every 4 days, after 24 days (4 days x 6 fish) it's possible to sell or eat a fish every day and STILL pay off the boat, thus the 30 day term. Another plus is that someone may just opt to pay it off within a week. The biggest thing is that people will be fishing, and selling their fish on the market, AND giving some to the Town Hall, which the TH can then turn around and trade for wood to provide for the town.

It's important, too, that whoever it is requesting to loan a boat is at least an established level 1, as this IS a long term loan, and we don't want people losing interest and dying off before following through with it. Judging loan worthiness would be up to the discretion of the Mayor (or Mayor and Town Council, if they seeks counsel). Also, grant terms would also list the conditions to be met, so anyone trying to outsmart this would be met with prosecution for grant fraud (and public humiliation, as deterrent), so there's some risk mitigation.

Your thoughts on this would be most welcome