When the pandemic handed them lemons, fundraisers at Sarnia-Lambton Rebound decided to make them into lemonade in the form of a raffle with a twist.
Tickets go on sale online beginning Wednesday for a series of 12 weekday raffles offering a total prize package of more than $23,000.
The prizes were collected for the youth agency’s 22nd Annual Hearts for Youth Gala planned for February but canceled because of the return of pandemic restrictions.
Anita Minielly, fund development and marketing co-ordinator for Rebound, said they looked at options and came upon the raffle that sells limited numbers of tickets for daily prize packages.
“We thought, ‘That’s a brilliant idea,’” Minielly said. “My colleagues said, ‘We need to do this.’”
Ticket sales, online at www.reboundonline.comopen at 9 am on the weekday before each raffle draw.
There is a limit of between 50 and 250 tickets available for the individual daily draws. Tickets are $20, except for the final day when they are $50 for the prize of a $10,000 all-inclusive trip for two to Young Island, St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Details of each of the daily prize packages can be found on the Rebound website.
“We’re excited to see how it unfolds,” Minielly said. “We’re really hoping it, every day, sells out.”
Proceeds from the raffle will help Rebound reach its annual fundraising goal of $350,000 to $400,000 to support programs that don’t receive government funding.
Rebound was founded in Sarnia in 1984 and runs 20 programs serving about 500 youth a year. It’s also the lead agency for The Hub, a support service for youth ages 16 to 24 operated with community partners.
Based at the Dow Center for Youth in Sarnia, Rebound also has offices in Forest and Petrolia, and the agency’s programs have spread to 17 communities across Ontario. It has won a dozen Donner Canadian Foundation Awards for excellence in the delivery of social services.
Like other charities, Rebound has had to work through pandemic restrictions that changed or halted traditional in-person fundraising.
“It is getting a little easier,” Minielly said. “We are actually planning our Hearts and Handbags fundraiser for October.”
She said it has been encouraging to see other local charities go ahead with gala events and be successful now that restrictions have been lifted.
“People are eager and anxious to get out,” Minielly said.
Rebound has also begun returning to in-person programming.
She said they are hoping to create “a lot of buzz and excitement” for the daily raffles running between Wednesday and June 17.
The prizes are designed to attract a wide range of interest from golf and theater packages to a limo “crop tour” of craft brewers around Lambton, Minielly said.