[wireties]

I've had several PM inquiries into the process of setting up the raffle so I thought I'd post...

... we got lucky with the legal stuff. Texas has a statute called the Charity Raffles Act of 1999 and my son is a both an EE (and former FIRST team member) and a lawyer. So we didn't have to pay for legal advice. There were many requirements:

1 - You had to have 3 years of records as a charitable organization.

2 - You had to be 501(c)(3).

3 - No more than 2 raffles per year.

4 - No paid advertising and no state-wide advertising. But the use of social media was explicitly allowed.

5 - $50,000 prize limit

6 - You have to own or possess the prize. This necessitated a legal relationship with the sponsoring car dealer.

7 - The tickets had to have specific information on them.

8 - The drawing is a hard date, must be advertised, and can only be extended once for no more that thirty days and only because you are unable to award the prize on that day.

9 - We chose to engage a CPA firm to track the tickets and draw the prize. This allowed all team members and their families to participate.

Then we had to make sure we were not running afoul of any school system regulations since we are a school-based team.

These are the points that I remember, no doubt there are more. If I can help anyone, please let me know.

HTH