In NJ children under 18 are allowed to attend tricky trays and also place tickets in containers and WIN! They can not put tickets and/or win items which contain alcohol. Kids are NOT allowed to participate and/or win a 50/50.
Kids are also not allowed to sell tickets or be runners but they can participate in other aspects of your tricky tray---such as a bake sale-hand out goody bags--
Checked this out myself with the state when we did our tricky tray this April.
But every state is different so please check.
In NJ you are also not allowed to have any kind of lotery tickets as prices....but I see this all the time.
I know another school in our community lets the kids into the Tricky Tray raffle they have but it is against the gaming laws in our state of NJ. I am sure in most states minors are not allowed into game of chance events like raffles,auctions anything that is gambling like. I may not be using the right term but be careful when allowing minors into your event..it is probably not lawful to do so. They can help out before the scheduled start up time and when the numbers/tickets are called but not during the auction raffle run time.
For all the time and effort that is put into these events getting into trouble with the state gaming authorities (or the law officials of any capacity) is not worth it.
I'm just beginning to add to our potential donor list again and thought I'd pass on something I just started working on. As part of our live auction we have a special time set aside for just kids to bid on items. Parents set their bidding limits and the amount is put on the back of their bidding numbers and volunteers make sure they don't overbid. It's fun to see how high the kids bid on some items!
In an effort to have more items that attract their attention I first started searching out donor info. on some major toy companies. Some of these companies have very specific qualifications for donations. I then went to the Toy R Us site and clicked on the "shop by brand" . . . of course there are MANY companies represented amidst their stock. This provides you with a lot of company names that you can then google with "company name donation request" and see what comes up. I'm still in the companies that begin with "A" and it's yielded some leads already and sometimes the google search also has led me to some other possibilities. This does all take time but will hopefully prove fruitful.
You could apply this type of technique to other websites (WalMart etc.) to garner other leads as well. Hope this helps!
@Gwen - am hoping beyond hope you read this..please email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. I would like to discuss your successes with church silent auctions
Also, everyone, I suggested that the thread still keep going but as a seperate thread that was set up by school year example Utilmate Donations 2012-2013
You all have wonderful information to pass on and reading 396 pages is a task ion itself!
I heard back from American Girl the day after I sent my email request. Unfortunately my request was declined, as our fundraiser was for a high school and they only donate to organizations benefitting girls up to 12 years of age.
