Westport Sunrise Rotary Super Bowl Raffle

Rotary’s purpose is Service Above Self — hands on volunteering in our communities and running events to raise money we donate to a list of area non-profit organizations.

For many years Sunrise has run two great fundraisers — the Great Duck Race in June and Westport Uncorked, a pre-holiday wine tasting.

COVID eliminated both. But not the reason behind them, the need to continue supporting our community organizations. This was no time to stop.

Enter the Super Bowl Raffle.

Buy a ticket, take a chance. Maybe win some money? A great idea all around. You didn’t need to know thing one about football to win. You didn’t even have to watch the game.

So who did win?

• 500 tickets sold by Sunrise Rotary at $50 each — $25,000 in just two weeks!
• 15 Lucky ticket holders won half — five were double winners.
• 30+ Sunrise supported non-profits won the other half.

Then a surprise. A few winners gave back $5,500. Our $12,500 planned donations became $18,000. A bonus for our non-profits, a thank you to our benefactors.

Success well beyond our plan — the Raffle was a winner!

Here’s how it worked. Every ticket came with two randomly assigned numbers. Match both, one to the second digit of each team’s score at the end of the first three quarters, win $500 per quarter, and $1,000 for the final score.

Five people won at the end of each of the first three quarters. Neither team scored during the last quarter, so the third quarter winners won twice:

• First quarter winners were Charlie Haberstroh, Marshall Kiev, Sheila Weiss, Lucia Fiaschetti, and Emily Watson;
• Second quarter winners were Jocelyn Barandiaran, Kathleen Digiovanna, John Videler, Ted Freedman and Arne Lewertoff;
• Third quarter — and final score winners — were William Lloyd, Chris Wallen, Ed Horne, Emily Watson, and Don Cummings;

Congrats to our winners, congrats to our ticket sellers, congrats to club members for their great support for our new venture, congrats to all who supported us. And congrats to the real beneficiaries — our non-profit community service organizations.

What’s next? Perhaps a Kentucky Derby Raffle? Perhaps a raffle or two alongside our Great Duck Race and Westport Uncorked next year?

Raffle Master Bruce Paul commented “The raffle was an enormous return on the time everyone invested, and a great success for Westport Sunrise Rotary.”