PTA raffle-all 4 of the Chair’s kids won the top prizes

[PTAcoincidence]

There was a PTA raffle at school this week to win Easter egg baskets. There were 4 huge baskets with around 10-12 eggs in each along with about 30 smaller baskets with a variety of eggs in them. Some had more eggs than others so between 3 and 6 eggs per basket. Lots of prizes, lots of happy kids at the Easter Fayre.
The raffle was drawn out of sight before the Fayre began with the dad of the 4 winning kids removing one huge basket from school before the rest of the baskets were even made up. Eyebrows were raised but you don’t cross the PTA mums I’m told.
Tickets were £2 each and approx 500 tickets purchased in total so a great fundraiser for the PTA. The chocolate was donated by the kids in exchange for wearing their own clothes as is the norm.
It is usually the PTA kids who win competitions, get chosen for the main
parts in plays etc and lots of parents roll their eyes and accept that’s the way it happens.
All 4 kids winning the top 4 prizes though? Surely that’s highly unlikely to be random and takes the biscuit? Or the Easter eggs in this case!
My dc won something and is very happy about winning so it’s not a case of sore loser before anyone accuses me of jealousy.

If this happened at your school would you think it was fixed or just luck?

YANBU = Fixed
YABU = Luck

I suspect the quickest way to a resolution is to put up a prize for nexts years Robert Mugabe memorial raffle.

Yes I'm on the PTA and I can confirm it's a thankless bloody task. I also agree the raffle should be in public but it does seem a pretty convoluted way to get some Easter eggs if that is what's going on. I organised the Easter raffle this year and I was sick of the bloody hampers. I was very glad to offload them.

Re Mean girls it's the same as people who sneer at class reps, someone has to do these things and it's rarely for their own benefit.

Sounds off to me.

The worst I've witnessed was on a tombola stall. The top prize was won early, and the winner was persuaded to collect it at the end of the day - so everybody else buying a ticket thought they had a chance of winning the top prize. Oops!

I also agree that PTA sneering seems to be a national sport. There are some undoubtedly some nasty people who join the PTA jsut as there are nasty people who don't join the PTA.

In my direct experience though of about 10 years volunteering on the PTA and similar, there is a hard core of parents who never ever lift a finger to get involved and just sit back and criticise. We used to run a really successful annual fair in the school on a Saturday, we used to ask parents to sign up for a 30 minute slot over the course of the 3 hour fair to help. Or if they couldn't do that, there were loads of other jobs which needed to be done like emailing for raffle prizes, posting on social media, organising the let with the council, etc etc. We had a hard core of volunteers and the rest never bothered.

Some of the ones who didn't ever step forward just moaned and moaned. Some memorable moans (which all took considerable time to resolve)

• It's not fair that only children who attend X school are allowed to go to the school disco. It should be open to my child's cousins/friends who go to another school. Legal capacity of the room are irrelevant here.
• I didn't like the veggie burgers on sale at the fair. You need to sort another supplier for next year. No I wouldn't like to help you with that.
• I think pony rides in the playground are unsanitary and inappropriate. I don't want to see your risk assessment and just want it banned.
• I don't think it's fair that your meetings are on a weekday evening in school. I can't attend. I don't want to dial in to a conference call or do it on Zoom. I don't want the meetings changed to a weekday or weekend and meeting in the supermarket community room doesn't work for me either.
• I don't want the school to spend the money raised on planetarium or opera experiences. My child is not interested in those.
• You should have professional paramedics at events, or at the least St John's volunteers. No, the fact you have multiple members on the PTA who are doctors, midwives and nurses is entirely irrelevant.

And that's just off the top of my head.

Raffles should never be drawn out of sight.

Any event I've ever been to, the raffles are drawn in public either during the interval or end of the event.

Somebody has to say something or this nonsense will continue.

Well scratchcards are the same. They can still be on sale for weeks after all the big prizes have gone.

Tombola's don't usually have a main prize though.
Whoever organised that did it wrong.

I was doing a bottle stall with a local bigwig. He deliberately kept the ticket for the best prize in his wallet tge added it later.

Is that an actual rule?! I won a couple of decent prizes in the school raffle once, not PTA, but I did buy a fair few tickets as I wanted to support the school - it didn't even cross my mind that I was expected to give one of them up.

Yeah, this. I worked in a school and we held our raffle in the community room and invited parents to come to watch the draw. They were also invited, one by one, to take turns drawing the tickets.

It's definitely a thing where I live. If it happens in our quiz team we'd either ask them to draw it again or give it to another member of our team.

Fixed, indubitably, but other than not buying more raffle tickets if they were ever involved, I wouldn't do anything

How was the online raffle conducted? Does your school use something like Classlist, which does the random draw automatically at a set time and emails a notification to each winner? My PTA did this one year and I don't know whether each participant received a list of winners as well, but one was certainly made available to the organisers. There should be some sort of paper trail, even if done online. OP's situation does sound dodgy but I wonder whether a system like this could explain it.

The odds of all 4 of one person's children winning the top prize seems very slim. The fact they weren't drawn in public makes it feel even more likely it wasn't just random.

When dd was in school the raffle was drawn by staff, in front of whoever was in the hall. I remember the one we were inside at the time.

DC had one of the first tickets pulled out. There were prizes of giftcards, vouchers for soft play etc, but DC chose a prize we had donated, that happened to cost less. ( I think we paid £6 but was on offer, full price was £10). The staff laughed because they knew it was a prize we had donated, but DC was firm in their decision that was what they wanted.

If we are at the church fete and our name is drawn on the raffle too many times ( especially quick together)I say to put them back in. I allow more than one because I buy tickets for family but they are all in my name. Who het which prize depends on what the prize is.

This was a great post because it made me laugh out loud when I read it! The second you saw the raffle tickets being pulled out of sight that was your clue it was fixed. Next year, 2 options, 1) you take over the raffle and the oversight and organization of it, or 2) stay away from games of chance.

It doesn’t really matter if it is kosher or not - it looks as if it stinks, and appearance is everything. If this had happened to us when our kids were at school we would have unobtrusively given the prizes back and organised a redraw, preferably without public knowledge. This is disgusting.

Was always the same at our school.

Oooh this sounds so very dodgy to me. What else are they making off with? Is all of the money accounted for? Can another raffle be held to 'Catch them out'. It would be interesting to see an account of all monies recieved, and all raffles won by this family. I don't think I could stay quiet - You could maybe have a word with the local education authority, or the Head. What else are they defrauding children and parents out of?

I remember when my DD was in primary that the chair of the PTA won first prize in the raffle, a brand new bike of choice from the local bike shop. She insisted on a redraw. Her DH was furious!
I don't think I would buy any more raffle tickets if I were you, OP. One prize, maybe. Four, no. And the draw should be done by the Head/Deputy in public.

Obviously fixed.

Why not draw in front of everyone - and have an independent person there to select the tickets/verify the winners.

If nobody speaks up, they will keep doing this. Do the school staff know the PTA is a bunch of thieving cunts?

Mine have left school now but our PTA was the same, I was on it and our kids never got preferential treatment or won prizes. Just because we knew how it would look if they did. As for front row seats not me
as I was invariably running in st the last minute to assembly having just managed to get away from work!

Sounds fishy to me.

I don't think this is an actual rule. I once saw a winner do this (he said, "that's me, draw again"). The organiser said, "are you sure?" then, "well, that's very kind of you". Everyone gave the guy a round of applause!

It might depend on whether tickets for the big prizes are drawn first. Surely, no one would be expected to give up a spa weekend because they'd already won a box of Milk Tray?

Definitely fixed. I wouldn't buy any more raffle tickets in the future.

Ask the Year 6 teachers if they can do a lesson on probability of winning all the prizes two years in a row?!