Back in February
I hosted a fund-raising raffle for this site, and did so again
in June with a couple other generous members of the community helping with prize donations. The June fundraiser should have raised us enough funds to cover the site's costs through the autumn. But now the autumn is well and truly here, and the next fund-raiser which I had planned to organize is definitely past due! I am here now to rectify that.
Giving Thanks A Fundraising Effort and Raffle for BC.org
For this raffle, I'm trying something different! First thing to know is that I'm going to host a winter raffle in January that will be more similar to the previous two raffles, in which there will be a large variety of prizes including in-game credits, in-game items, as well as a newly added category of Cartel Market items purchased to order. But considering some of November has already passed, and that folks in November may already be saving up for Christmas shopping, this
Giving Thanks raffle is organized differently, and designed to make small increment donations really count!
But first, the basics, for those who may not have participated in the previous raffles...
Why This Fundraiser? This website is a home for a great community, and many of us frequent it daily. It is a home that further provides all sorts of wonderful amenities, beyond just that of a community forum - such as the HoloNet wiki, the Strongholds listing, the GuildNet features, and the Chatroom we use both for our RP events and for socializing. With the server merge, now more than ever this place is a home for the community. The month of November is Thanksgiving month for our U.S. based folks (and it wasn't so long ago in October when it was Thanksgiving for our Canadian folks), so it seems like an opportune time for people to give thanks, and maybe get some prizes for doing so!
Goal of the Fundraiser: To raise as many donation funds for the site as we can in what remains of the month of November! Those funds roll over into subsequent months, so we can potentially help the site for additional months to come. This fundraising effort will take the form of a raffle, in which anyone who donates to the site in November is entered for a chance to win in-game prizes, which will be enumerated below.
The fundraiser is 100% organized and funded by me, and though I have permission from the site admins to hold these raffles it's important that no one take this to mean that I am speaking on their behalf, or that they are pressuring the community to donate. The admins have funded and maintained this site for us through dry spells and good spells, and never put the burden on the community in any way. This is just an opportunity for us to reward that generosity by sharing the load!
How it Works: Below I will outline how the raffle works. It's a little different from the previous two times, so be sure to read all the way through!
Raffle entries will be accepted
only in increments of $5. One $5 donation to the site gets you one raffle entry. Make your donations through the
site's donation page. The max number of entries that will count toward the raffle is
TWO. If you are feeling generous you can certainly donate more than $10, but no matter how much you donate in $ you will receive only two entries into the raffle. The idea here is to try to encourage
more people to participate by making small donations more evenly weighted in terms of your winning chances. This is different from the previous raffles, and as an experiment it may backfire, but it doesn't hurt to give it a try!
There will be five winning draws. If you have two entries in the raffle, it is possible for you to win two draws. The five winners will be assigned a winning order based on the draw (first winner drawn is first, second winner drawn is second, and so forth), and will get to pick prizes from the pool based on that priority order.
If you have already made donations in the month of November, I am automatically going to count those as entries in the raffle (up to the maximum of two entries). Unexpected reward for your generosity! :)
Participants would need to pick the option, when donating, for their name to be publicly shown. This is entirely so that I, as a normal site user, can have access to see how many entries into the raffle people will be getting.
The window for donations starts right now (and retroactively includes any donations already made in November), and will end on Tuesday November 28th.
One Wednesday 11/29 at 7:30 PM PST I will be in the BC.org chat room to do the prize drawing in real time. (Need to do it on the 29th rather than the 30th as I will be out of town on the 30th.) Each person will be assigned numbers equal in quantity to the number of their entries, and then I'll use the /roll function to see what numbers win! For example: If the contest gets a total of 20 entries, and you are entitled to two of them, you might be assigned numbers 11 and 12, and if either of those are the result on a /roll 1d20 then you win! (You don't have to be present in the chat room in order to win; I'll post the winners on the forums too of course.)
Prizes: This part is a little different form previous fundraisers too. While the previous two fundraisers offered a wide variety of prize items, this time, with the more limited time window and the smaller-increment experiment, I am offering up only
stronghold decorations. Given that we are a RP community and have a lot of avid decorators, my hope is that this will actually be a decent incentive!
All of the below decorations are ones I had hoarded up for giving to RP guilds. They are all drops from Flashpoints, Operations, and open world play. None are from the Cartel Market, and as such they can only be donated to guilds by physically donating the actual copy of the deco (with the sole exception of the Planetary Displays). They range in rarity, so if you aren't familiar with any of them by name I recommend checking the in game UI or TOR Decorating.
Below is the list of decos that will be offered, and the number of copies of each. If there is more than one copy of a deco being offered it is
not a lot deal; the number just indicates how many of that deco are available to choose from.
Each of the winners will get to choose 5 individual decorations from this list - so that's 1 deco for each $1 you've donated!
1 Ancient Burial Urn
1 Armor Stand Zakuul Knight
2 Bazaar Lantern
1 Canister of Isotope-9
1 Center-Mounted Monitor Display
1 Computer Desk (Republic)
1 Dark Datacron (Strength)
1 Decorative Gear Arrangement
1 Dreadful Altar
1 Dreadful Throne
1 Factory Welding Droid
2 Flag: Dangerous Hutt
1 Framed Skytrooper Chassis Remains
2 Holo Sign: Hovering Rishi Dancer
2 Holocron of Fear
2 Hypergate Irregularity
1 Incomplete Skytrooper Chassis
1 Krayt Dragon Skull
1 Large Field Generator
1 Left-Mounted Monitor Display
1 Light Datacron (Presence)
3 Light Datacron (Strength)
3 Mine Cart (Asteroid Rocks)
2 Mine Cart (Baradium)
1 Multi-state Mainframe Terminal
1 Orbital Power Monitor
1 Planetary Display: Alderaan
1 Planetary Display: Belsavis
1 Planetary Display: Hoth
1 Planetary Display: Nar Shaddaa
4 Power Condenser Tube
2 Rakata Energy Pylon
1 Rakata Herald Statue
1 Replica Sacrificial Sphere
1 Science Station (Field)
1 Selkath Solar Sculpture
2 Shady Merchant's Banner
1 Shattered Sith Artifact
2 Star Fortress Stasis Bunk
2 Statue of Cowled Man
1 Storm Carrier Rocket
1 Stormcaller Tank
1 Wall-Mounted Power Converter
1 Yavin Temple Chandelier
1 Zakuulan Chair
1 Zakuulan Computer Console Type A
1 Zakuulan Computer Console Type B
1 Zakuulan Hanging Monitor Array
1 Zakuulan Medical Bed
1 Zakuulan Meta Computation Machine
1 Zakuulan Shield and Force Pikes
2 Zakuulan Standing Floor Lamp
2 Zakuulan Tech Wall Panel
Giving Thanks So this time, with the cap on donations, it's
especially true that every little bit counts! Throw in your $5 before November 28th and help out our home! Now more than ever, as we are swallowed up by Harbinger, we need to support our home!
