Contest musings.
A while back, Sars at Tomato Nation did a contest in which she asked her readers to donate to Donors Choose in exchange for a feeling of well being… and goodies, too. I thought it was a great idea. I contacted her a few weeks ago to ask her for tips, and she was very helpful.
So, coming up in the knitting channel in LJ, I’m going to sponsor a charity raffle-type thing. People will donate to a knitting-related proposal on Donors Choose and I will offer up some nice things from my stash for donors to potentially win. I’ve got a good range of things to appeal to folks, from Jaggerspun Zephyr wool/silk laceweight yarn to Lamb’s Pride Burlyspun. Donors will forward to me the e-mail they received confirming their donation, and I will enter the donors into an Excel spreadsheet, later to pick randomly from them to see who all gets the various bits of loot. (Possible glitch – I just donated a small amount to be sure things were working as expected. When I donated for tomatonation’s contest I never got the confirmation e-mail from Donors Choose. Once again, just now, I got no confirmation e-mail. Ugh.)
I’m trying to decide what the best way to do this is. Some possibilities would include
a) donate and you are entered, no minimum required.
b) every donation of $10 or more enters you again, like purchasing raffle tickets. I could be beholden to people’s honesty, as I can’t recall offhand whether the e-mail they receive mentions the amount. However, I am a trusting person.
c) (and Sars recommends against this one because it’s a bookkeeping headache), go with a) and also let people without credit cards PayPal me and I forward the cash to Donors Choose.
I dunno. I want Donors Choose to get the most money, but there’s really something to be said for “keep it simple, stupid.” I’m mulling it over.
Thoughts on the process? If you’re a knitter, thoughts on what you might like to get? I’m assuming most people will do it because it’s a fun thing to do, and a nice way to help people – but let’s face it, swag never hurts.
The next challenge: write the challenge up in a very short way, because nobody wants to wade through a hella long post.
Maybe as a nicer prize you could give more of a reasonably decent yarn instead of less of a swanky one. Not that I don’t like swanky yarn, but there are only so many things I can do with a single skein of something (that awesome nature wool excepted!). Then people could make, say, a pair of sleeves instead of half a scarf.
Maybe as a nicer prize you could give more of a reasonably decent yarn instead of less of a swanky one. Not that I don’t like swanky yarn, but there are only so many things I can do with a single skein of something (that awesome nature wool excepted!). Then people could make, say, a pair of sleeves instead of half a scarf.
Good point. I took a few pics last night, and here’s what I’m thinking about as prizes:
http://www.tvini.com/images/DonorContest1images/
It’s definitely a mixed bag, but the only thing that really falls under the “useless” category is the cotton, I think, of which there’s only 108 yards. The multicolored alpaca has 225 yards, so that’s still enough to do something with. However, I’m thinking about kicking in another seven skein batch of Cotton Ease in light blue, because that seems to be the yarn of the moment.
Good point. I took a few pics last night, and here’s what I’m thinking about as prizes:
http://www.tvini.com/images/DonorContest1images/
It’s definitely a mixed bag, but the only thing that really falls under the “useless” category is the cotton, I think, of which there’s only 108 yards. The multicolored alpaca has 225 yards, so that’s still enough to do something with. However, I’m thinking about kicking in another seven skein batch of Cotton Ease in light blue, because that seems to be the yarn of the moment.