In November of 2024, I ran a contest to raise funds for a local wildlife rescue organization. The prizes were two, limited edition prints of Vietnamese orchids. It was easy and quite successful, so I thought I’d document the process in case your orchid society would like to do something similar.
Chances were sold via my online shop, but that certainly can be accommodated other ways. Once the campaign ended, I ended up with 36 being sold for one print and 44 for the other. The winners were selected using Microsoft Excel’s RAND (random) function using the folowing methodology to ensure fairness.
- The RAND() function returns an evenly distributed random real number between 0 and 1.
- By multiplying it by the number of chances and rounding, it returns a number corresponding to a winning chance.
- To further randomize it, the function returns a new random number each time the spreadsheet is recalculated, so I had my wife pick a number between 1 and 10, and that’s how many times I did so.
- The order numbers were placed in a spreadsheet.
- If two chances had been purchased, it was added twice, three chances, three times, and so on, until all 80 were captured.
- They were sorted numerically for each print.
- The RAND() function was entered and recalculated seven times, per my wife’s selection.
- After that seventh recalculation, the corresponding order number was indicated sequentially. For example, if a “16” came up, the 16th order number from the list of 36 was selected.