Model 3 in Tesla raffle

[PeterK]

Here's what I did on the back of my X P90D. Figured I'll have lots of people behind me to read it.

 

[Pollux]

The way you change lanes? I don't know many people brave enough to try to pass you.

 

[Jason Bourne]

Wait a minute, mailing an advertisement for a raffle is a federal felony?

 

[bcsteeve]

As for Canadian carbon pricing... what about all the activity in British Columbia?! Carbon pricing work done there a number of years ago has been influential on our work here.

Sorry, I missed that there was a reply. I didn't mean to ignore that question.

Here in BC (and Canada in general, I believe), it is a marketing and perception issue. I believe you're going about things the right way... you're avoiding the word "tax". Here it is called a Carbon Tax, and it is something perceived as a burden to families, not a positive for the environment. It ends up being a campaign promise (elect us and we'll eliminate the evil Carbon Tax, etc). There's also no general trust that it is being used for anything appropriate. On the one hand, they charge a carbon tax... but that goes into General Revenue and on the other hand they spend millions promoting a (so far unrealized) Liquid Natural Gas industry that will provide thousands of jobs (and eliminate millions of trees).

I personally feel that there needs to be a cost recognized in dollars for the environmental costs that are very real. Too few people think in those terms. When I speak about EV to someone, undoubtedly their first question is "but do you really save money?". My answer is usually, "probably, but that's not the point". Most don't get it. I save fuel for the sake of saving fuel, not what it does or doesn't do for my wallet - in the same way that I don't smoke because smoking harms my body. Not spending money on cigarettes is just a bonus.

 

[Pollux]

Hey, @bcsteeve,

There are legal and perceptual reasons to use the word "fee" instead of "tax". But in the larger picture, I think regular people don't care. There's a lot of cynicism about how the money gets spent. So to me, the key is "dividend" or "revenue-neutral", as in, money going back to the people and businesses.

Apparently, this is a controversial position in the environmental community at large. The groups we've encountered generally want "revenue-positive", which in this context means, some / much / most / all of the money raised is used for environmental projects that typically are quite worthy but have a hard time getting funded under their own power.

There's also a "social justice" component of the environmental community that worries about the impact on the less fortunate. I'm glad to say that the modeling we've done of the impact of a revenue-neutral carbon fee-and-dividend plan in Massachusetts -- all the money returned to households and businesses -- suggests that the impact will be positive on household income at the lower end of the scale and will have the largest effect at the higher end of the income scale.

Alan

 

[Pollux]

Wait a minute, mailing an advertisement for a raffle is a federal felony?

Hi @Jason Bourne,

Apologies that I overlooked your post.

Yes, there is a piece of federal law, 18 U.S.C. Title 18 Part I Chapter 61 Section 1302, that makes it a felony to use the US Mail for raffle materials. Further clarification may be found in United States Postal Service Customer Support Ruling PS-307 (updated July, 2014). In that ruling, the USPS observed, "the Department of Justice notified Congress that it will no longer enforce the criminal lottery statute (18 U.S.C. Section 1302) against gambling advertisement mailers, so long as the activity advertised is legal and the mailing does not provide any entry materials." So what are entry materials? Could that be, say, a tear-off postcard that is mailed back to the sponsoring organization? Could that be, say... a URL? We're not willing to litigate the matter, so we simply say, "don't do it".

Note that the same sources (18 U.S.C. 1302, USPS PS-307) still forbid the mailing of raffle tickets, letters, periodicals, etc., "that facilitate" a raffle.

All this is why the MA Attorney General's regulations, 940 CMR 12.00-12.06, specify in part that an MA raffle must put a warning on the ticket that the ticket can't be sent through the mail. In this case, the goal of the AG's regulation is to protect a nonprofit / charity from stumbling into a situation where it violates federal law.

This is also why we accept checks but only delivered in person to a Climate XChange representative. Same for money orders and cash. No sending the check or money order (or cash?!) through the mail.

We did recently add PayPal support, though. Can't find anything that forbids PayPal!

Alan

 

[PeterK]

Hi all, Zac Cataldo of Now You Know / Tesla Time News did an interview with the founder and executive director of Climate XChange at the CXC offices yesterday, and posted it today. Please take a look - and share it, because while we want to sell raffle tickets and raise funds, more important is raising awareness about and support of carbon pricing, in MA and beyond. Needed more than ever in the post-Paris Climate Agreement age, unfortunately.

Get your tickets at Climate XChange Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle

 

[tashtibet]

when she said switching bulb, driving Prius- it moves me a lot. We all can do little things to make big differences in the long run. I admire the founder & executive director and thank NOW YOU KNOW for doing the video.

 

[Siciliano]

Forgive me if this has already been answered... full disclosure, I didn't want to read through all the pages on this thread.

Is there somewhere we can see a breakdown of where/how exactly all the "leftover" funds will be spent?

If my math is correct, the total value of all prizes is $186,666. If all tickets sell, the total funds collected will be $625,000. Where could we see how that extra ~$438k is spent? Will there be proof of the expenditures?

I never win these sort of raffles, so I want to be sure my money is *actually* being spent appropriately.

 

[Siciliano]

Also, there's no limit per person?

Edit: I just bought two tickets. It's for a great cause.. I'll put my cynicism aside!

One more question: after I win the grand prize, do we meet at the nearest Tesla dealer for the pics? There's one only 40 minutes from me, so that'd be great.
(I know I said I never win raffles, but this will be my first time!)

 

[Pollux]

Also, there's no limit per person?

Edit: I just bought two tickets. It's for a great cause.. I'll put my cynicism aside!

One more question: after I win the grand prize, do we meet at the nearest Tesla dealer for the pics? There's one only 40 minutes from me, so that'd be great.
(I know I said I never win raffles, but this will be my first time!)

Hi, @Siciliano! Thank you so much for suspending your concerns and taking a leap to help the cause of carbon pricing in Massachusetts, and Climate XChange, and of course getting not one but TWO chances to win a tasty Tesla treat! Someone else was asking me about this in an email thread the other night, so let me also point out that EACH ticket can win a prize, so in theory you can now win TWO of the six prizes.

YES, one of the conditions of winning a prize is that we get to use your picture. And for the Grand Prize, we will probably send either Jessica (co-founder) or Michael (Executive Director) to be there when you actually take delivery. If you look at the raffle website, carbonraffle.org (or climatexchangeraffle.org, they are the same thing, please note that both URLs I just supplied contain a referral that indicates that the source of the link was me), you can pull down on the Raffle Details menu and select 2015. That page memorializes what happened in the last raffle and includes pictures of the Grand Prize winner.

Also, please note that we stand ready to be involved with the entire ordering and configuration process. At a minimum, with the payment part! For instance, we will first pay for your deposit on the Grand Prize vehicle and later, about a week before you take delivery, we'll pay off the balance (up to that $120K total).

Now, as for your question about how we spend the funds, I think it's a perfectly reasonable question. As you note, the odds are against any particular ticket winning a prize. Otherwise, there'd be no way we could afford to run a raffle. Everyone gets an equal chance and -- at least in MY opinion -- the odds are quite, quite good for a car raffle, e.g., 2499:1 for the Grand Prize, 832:1 to win one of the three prizes that have a Tesla component (Grand, 2nd and 3rd) and 416:1 to win one of the total of six prizes. (I'm comparing with other vehicle raffles that I've observed over the past 2.5 years.)

I am NOT authorized to speak in detail about Climate XChange's spending, that "privilege" belongs to our Executive Director, but I feel that I can say some things in general and am happy to try to respond to any further questions you may have.

First, it's worth noting that CXC raises funds from four sources: (1) large donations, (2) small donations, (3) foundation grants and (4) non-traditional sources, which boils down right now to the Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle. One example: for the first time this year, we built in a mini-fundraiser BEFORE the Raffle to defray part or all of the cost of the prize pool. As you note, the prize pool totals $187,000 and paying for it is the single biggest expense for the Raffle. In our mini-fundraiser, we raised $50,000 in cash and $2,000 in "in-kind" donations, totaling $52,000. You can find some details about this on the Raffle website, at 2017 Raffle | Climate XChange Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle by scrolling somewhat down the page and clicking on the blue "Prize Pool Underwriters" toggle on the right-hand side of the page.

Second, and perhaps most directly relevant to your question, the funds CXC raises from ALL sources are generally but not always unrestricted, and deliberately so. We highly prize the flexibility of such funds because that means we can change our minds about what to do with the money in response to current events. So we can, for example, spend money on preparing for and teaching people how to engage with their legislators (as in the upcoming Grassroots Summit and Lobby Day events we are holding over the next few days) or getting people out to make a huge impact at the upcoming hearing on the carbon pricing bills in front of the MA legislature's Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy joint committee hearing at the MA State House, 24 Beacon Street, Boston, this coming June 20 at 1 p.m., Room 437. (See how I snuck that in? Incidentally, more about these upcoming dates can be found here on TMC at Help Make Carbon Pricing Happen in MA on Tue, June 20 @ 1 PM, enjoy.)

Third, general areas of our expenditures include, such as: staff salaries, funding of tiny grassroots organizations -- and it's quite important that all such groups understand that the funds we provide in these situations are conditional upon visible, verifiable results! -- and the general, customary expenses for a small nonprofit. For example, we have a large printing budget because there are always fliers, posters, etc., to be printed up and distributed. But we have a travel budget that is very small, because the only person who does any traveling on behalf of the organization is the Executive Director. Well, that's not entirely true, as Jessica and other Board members are known to travel, but those are volunteers and they bear their own expenses. Our Policy Director, the guy who designed one of the two carbon pricing bills and wrote the other one, commutes several blocks between CXC HQ and the State House. I would also like you to know that we are cheap-ass people, which is what nonprofit people should be, in my opinion, since they are spending other people's money. One example: Michael Green, the Executive Director, found space in Old West Church by doing some kind of deal with the pastor there that I think involves a lot of heavy lifting whenever she wants, and maybe weeding, but doesn't seem to involve any cash for the next couple of years. The flip side is that there are steep stairs between floors, no elevators, and the private "telephone conference room" is a belfry -- I kid you not -- that freezes in the winter and roasts in the summer.

I probably should mention at this point that I'm a member of CXC but derive no income from CXC, from the Raffle, or anything else related to these activities. The money flows in one direction between CXC and Jessica and myself, and I'll leave it to the reader's imagination as to which direction that is. I believe the general expenditures of Climate XChange are reported in Commonwealth and US filings (see fifth point below).

Fourth, I'd like to particularly note that I view many of the expenses directly associated with the Raffle as doing massive double-duty. On the one hand, there's the obvious: you have to spend money to raise money. Costs of doing business. No one likes that, and so there's a large incentive to keep expenses down. But there's a second angle: the money we spend on, say, advertising and website construction has a second and arguably more important purpose: getting attention for carbon pricing in general and the efforts in Massachusetts in particular. Have you noticed the ads that we run on Tesla Motors Club? We can tell from the tracking that way more people view the ads than click on them, and that way more people skip quickly through our website than browse at their leisure. So our ads and front page of the website may be the ONLY shot we get at putting the phrase "carbon pricing" into the consciousness of many people. But we've got to plant the seeds!

I've noticed for both the last raffle and this one that the entire raffle period drives an enormous uptick in conversations, questions, arguments around carbon pricing. I'll take it! We see this across all of our engagement paths both online and offline. For instance, I drive around with large decals on my Model S front doors and bumper advertising (provided by @PeterK, thanks Peter!) and I'll be darned if I don't see heads swiveling... and people come up to me in stores having seen the car outside... or on the street...

Now, to be complete, I'm not saying that I view all raffle expenses as hitting this double-duty sweet spot! As much as I appreciate our raffle attorney and his expertise, I see every dollar spent on legal fees as pure overhead. Same for the accounting firm that audits us.

Speaking of which, that brings me to a fifth point. Who watches over us? All states are NOT equal when it comes to raffle regulation and I suspect that's why so many big-scale raffles are based in Florida. That said, Climate XChange Education and Research, Inc., is a 501c3 nonprofit recognized by the Internal Revenue Service and incorporated in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As such, we are governed by laws and regulations administered by the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office and by the Secretary of State. We are registered with both entities and fully compliant in our filings with both. For the Raffle in particular, we are governed by Massachusetts General Laws (MGL) section 271 as further interpreted by MA AG regulations 940 CMR 12.00-12.06. You can find out additional details on our website, at Legal Details | Climate XChange Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle. As part of these filings, I believe we report our expenditures. Many filings can be found through the Secretary of State and MA AG's websites, which can be found through our Legal Details web page or through Google.

Whew! I've really got to master those one-line replies, e.g., "we spend all your money on those things that align with pushing the carbon pricing issue forward in MA, please come visit us at Old West Church and see for yourself". I hope this helps.

Regards,
Alan

P.S. Since money is a very important topic and the Raffle is a large fundraiser, I should also include these disclosures:
+ Climate XChange was founded in 2013, first as Committee for a Green Economy, then re-named as Environmental Tax Reform-MA, then finally re-named as Climate XChange Education and Research, Inc.
+ Jessica Langerman co-founded CXC
+ Within a segment of the MA political and environmental community -- Representatives & Senators, various groups -- Jessica is known as, "oh! hi, Jessica!" and I'm known as "wait, wait... don't tell me... / I'm Jessica's husband / why, yes you are! Please tell her hi for me."
+ Within the context of our family finances, Jessica and I have made non-trivial contributions to Climate XChange. We can hardly ask others to contribute without also having skin in the game ourselves.
+ Jessica also sits on the board of Citizens Climate Lobby, a 50,000+ organization of national scope pursing carbon pricing legislation at the Federal level. That's part of a dual-track strategy: national (CCL) and state-by-state (CXC).

 

[Pollux]

Darn it, finished my masterpiece response and realized I hadn't responded to one of your questions:

Also, there's no limit per person?

Not sure what limit you're referring to.

Here are the limits I know about:

+ We only allow purchasing a maximum of 20 tickets in a single transaction. We implemented this restriction midway through the first raffle, when someone from Las Vegas tried to purchase something like 30 tickets late at night. I wasn't sure whether this was legit so I called him. I wasn't convinced that he was entirely compos mentis so we unwound the transaction. Ultimately, he purchased a much smaller number of tickets.

If you want to buy more than 20 tickets, you can either make multiple transactions or you can call us. I'm pretty sure we can find someone to totally drop whatever they are doing to assist you.

+ There are no limits on how many tickets you can ultimately purchase except that the maximum number of tickets for this raffle is 2500. We do have people who have bought 2, 4, 5, 8 tickets... with outliers much higher than that.

+ Each ticket may be drawn at most once from the raffle drum. It is in fact theoretically possible that someone could win more than one prize if they have purchased more than one ticket. In a recent email exchange, an MIT grad(*) corrected my arithmetic and computed that the chances of winning all six prizes work out to something like:

6/2500 * 5/2499 * 4/2498 * 3/2497 * 2/2496 * 1/2495 = 720 / 2.4268x10^20 ~= 2.967 x 10^-18​

That's yotta- territory, right? Some would say that the chance of winning all six prizes is pretty small, so don't stay up at night worrying about it. I would argue that that chance is WAY WAY bigger than the Planck constant, and that the odds become even more favorable the more tickets you purchase, so I'd advocate for people buying AT LEAST six tickets apiece, if not hundreds more.

Alan

(*)This is an example of an ad hominem argument, albeit favorably so. Did I check his work? No. I just saw the phrase "MIT grad", thought shamefully of the number of college math classes I failed, and immediately capitulated. And then used the same phrase in my post to you, thus wrapping it all up in that mantle of "MIT-ness". If somebody from Cal Tech pops up with a counter-argument, I shall be lost. My trusty coin will tell me which one of them is correct.

 

[ThisIsTrue]

If somebody from Cal Tech pops up with a counter-argument, I shall be lost. My trusty coin will tell me which one of them is correct.

The Caltech guy, of course!

 

[PAULL]

Who gets the approximately $500,000.00 that is left over??

 

[Runt8]

Who gets the approximately $500,000.00 that is left over??

Seems pretty clear if you bothered to read his responses that this is a fundraiser for a non-profit.

 

[Pollux]

Who gets the approximately $500,000.00 that is left over??

Hi, @PAULL,

Just to be crystal clear: we get the money left over. Climate XChange, a Massachusetts nonprofit. Read on for details.

(1) Climate XChange Education and Research, Inc., a 501c3 nonprofit recognized by the Internal Revenue Service, incorporated in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, registered with and in compliance with its filings with the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office and the Secretary of State's Office, operates the Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle, which is governed by Massachusetts General Laws Section 271(*) and further clarified by Massachusetts Attorney General's Office regulations 940 CMR 12.00-12.06, and therefore receives all the gross proceeds of the Raffle from which it deducts the Raffle's expenses such as the prize pool ($187,000), MA state tax (5% of gross), credit card and PayPal fees (averaging 3% of gross), advertising, marketing, legal and accounting, resulting in net proceeds that are in the 50-60% range. We view the advertising and marketing expenses in particular as doing valuable work for our mission to generate support for carbon pricing in addition to fundraising.

ALL of this information can be found on our website, at:

• Legal Details - Legal Details | Climate XChange Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle
• Expenses - 2017 Raffle | Climate XChange Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle
  • scroll down to the Expenses toggle on the right-hand side
  • also includes a snapshot of our budget in April
• Prizes - Prize Details | Climate XChange Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle
  • Note that prize expenses include the federal tax payments CXC makes on behalf of the Winner for Grand, 2nd and 3rd prizes. Otherwise, Winners would have to come up with those amounts (e.g., $30K for the Winner of the Grand Prize) in advance before being able to claim their Prizes. Is this a very uncommon move in a raffle? Absolutely. But we would be royally PO'd if somebody had to decline a Model S or Model X or Model 3 because they couldn't afford the federal taxes, so we decided we had to do it. This withholding tax, by the way, is 25% for a Winner who pays the tax him/herself but 33.33% for us because the tax we pay on your behalf is treated as a gift by the IRS and therefore there are taxes to pay on the taxes! This recurring series converges at 33.33%.
• Raffle main page - Climate XChange Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle

(2) THAT net is used (along with funds we raise from large donations, small donations, and foundation grants) to further the organization's mission, which is education and advocacy for enacting carbon pricing legislation in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We believe that carbon pricing is an essential component to re-pricing the marketplace to take into account a tragedy of the commons, to wit, anthropogenic global warming. Once demonstrated in Massachusetts, the example will (we hope) inspire other states and eventually the nation to follow. We are already working through our State Carbon Pricing Network to accelerate efforts in up to 17 other states.

(3) We will only realize the maximum gross and net if we sell all 2,500 tickets, which obviously we are trying very hard to do. Current ticket sales count is ~1460. Progress can be tracked on our website through a "speedometer"; interested parties may embed that speedometer into other websites.

Please let me know if you have any other questions!

Thanks,
Alan

(*)In Massachusetts, only nonprofits and charities may conduct raffles. It is not legal in Massachusetts for a raffle to be run by a for-profit business.

 

[PAULL]

Hi, @PAULL,

Just to be crystal clear: we get the money left over. Climate XChange, a Massachusetts nonprofit. Read on for details.

Thank You for that!

 

[Pollux]

Thank You for that!

Imagine what I'm like on a verbose day.

 

[boaterva]

Imagine what I'm like on a verbose day.

Lol. I hope it was mostly copy and paste.

I got around to watching the interview with Zac of Now You Know (highly recommended for this and in general) and went in on a second ticket (since my Powerball investments haven't been doing too well... j/k).

Hope you have the ability to repeat this excellent idea more often in the future!

 

[Pollux]

Lol. I hope it was mostly copy and paste.

I got around to watching the interview with Zac of Now You Know (highly recommended for this and in general) and went in on a second ticket (since my Powerball investments haven't been doing too well... j/k).

Hope you have the ability to repeat this excellent idea more often in the future!

I'm embarrassed to report that everything I've posted has been written from scratch. I'm trying to get in the habit of re-using previously-developed text but finding it difficult to do for the raffle in specific. That's because I hate using canned text in interactive dialogs. It always feels weird and lifeless to me. So I wind up just starting over from scratch, which means that the answers sometimes come out a little differently, and sometimes I even surprise myself by coming up with something I hadn't previously thought to share.

Powerball - 1 winner - $400+M - wow! Couldn't pick a better example to show off just how GOOD our raffle's odds are... but on the other hand, our prizes, as great as I think they are, come in just a tad under $400M. :-(

We took a year and a half between raffles because we were busy doing carbon stuff and didn't really need more money yet. I'm not at all sure whether we'll do more of them (although I think it's more likely than not), and if so whether to do it regularly or just when we specifically need to raise more funds. If we do it annually, can we responsibly spend any additional funds we raise? Alternately, should we build up a war chest, maybe raise and spend dollars through our 501c4 so fewer restrictions on use of funds for lobbying? Current raffle is via our 501c3.

And it's not just a financial issue. We work like hell on this thing, and I can see again with this second raffle how we've aligned our messaging goals and financial goals and how they reinforce each other. The Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle has turned into this... this... BEAST that trundles along with its own momentum and before you know it people start popping out of the woodwork... with encouragement... with suggestions... with help... connecting us to other opportunities for carbon pricing... a whole new set of conversations at two in the morning... surprising things happen...

For instance, just this evening around 11 pm I get a message from a woman who is attending Citizen Climate Lobby's annual four-day summit and lobbying meeting in Washington, DC. (CCL is a national organization of roughly 50,000+ members that lobbies Congress for carbon pricing. CCL has a hard job.) She has seen a red Model S P100D (mine) stationed in a primo location outside the front lobby. It has decals on the sides and rear bumper advertising Climate XChange's Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle. She wants to know if we'd like her to bring her Model X to show alongside the S... to attract more attention! Even CCL, an organization specializing in carbon pricing, doesn't appreciate the energy that is going on at the state level! And this despite my wife, Jessica, sitting on the CCL board! Suddenly, new connections and opportunities...

I don't actually expect that a ton of CCL members will purchase tickets -- their membership has a very high percentage of people who don't feel as if they can afford a raffle ticket. But that's really not the point: we want them to be thinking about state level efforts and energy there.

Incidentally, Jessica and I feel strongly that we need a dual-track strategy: national and state-level. So CCL is the national play and CXC is the state-level play(*). CXC also coordinates a State Carbon Pricing Network (it's on the CXC website, you can get there via the raffle website) to help bootstrap other state-level efforts.

In another example of serendipity, someone approached Jessica earlier today at the CCL conference to thank her for helping them connect with and then afford their own Regional Economics Model, Inc. (REMI) study of the impact carbon pricing would have on... get this... Arkansas. That traces to CXC (and the State Carbon Pricing Network) operating as part of that dual-track strategy and this example potentially helps motivate why people would want to support CXC which brings us back to the raffle which in turn generates more attention. I think of it as a virtuous circle.

Alan

(*)Disclosures:
+ Jessica sits on CCL Board
+ Jessica co-founded CXC in 2013
+ We have donated to both organizations at various times
+ I do what I'm told