Raffling Three (3!) Teslas (+ Taxes!) New Year's Day (Climate XChange)

[Pollux]

[It's a long post. I do have a tendency to go on. You can also just hop to the website, which is here: 3rd Carbon Pricing Raffle: Win a Tesla. Make a Difference. or Climate XChange's home website, which is here: Climate-XChange. Wondering what holiday gift says to the recipient, "here's a gift that supports the environment in your honor AND gives you a chance to win a Tesla plus tax payments" and can be printed at home just-in-time? Just sayin'.]

Hello out there in TMC-land,

Come heck or high H2O, at approximately 3 p.m. New Year's Day, 2019, Climate XChange is raffling off three (3!) Brand-New Teslas + the Federal and Massachusetts tax payments each winner would otherwise owe on each Prize (very important, the exclamation mark is used to denote excitement, not taking the factorial, which would be way more Teslas than we can afford)!!!!!! (Again, excitement and most certainly NOT factorials.)

[By the way, why IS CXC doing this?! (1) Attention on Carbon Pricing. Really. The 30 seconds someone looks at one of our posts or ads or car door stickers or postcard-sized handouts or what have you may be the only 30 seconds that person spends on the phrase "Carbon Pricing" all year. And guess what? We need to build public awareness and support. It's why the raffle is called "Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle". (2) It's a fundraiser. We spend the money raised on the mission.]

Yes. THREE!

The winners all win.... (say it along with me)... Teslas! There are no 4th, 5th or 6th prizes. There are no prizes consisting of some amount of cash, or a test drive, or an electric lawn care kit, or electric bikes, or what have you. Winners will not be driving an electric bike. Winners will be driving brand-new Teslas PLUS Climate XChange will pay the Federal and Massachusetts taxes on these Prizes which are a metric boat-load of money on top of the prize itself.

I've noticed some people somehow think that we're only giving away Model 3s or even just giving away one Model 3. That couldn't be more wrong. The Prizes are:

• Grand - (pick one) Model S or Model X or Model 3 Performance+ PLUS Federal & MA tax payments
• Second - Model 3 mid-range PLUS Federal & MA tax payments
• Third - Model 3 base PLUS Federal & MA tax payments

If you win -- and three winners absolutely will! -- you can ONLY win a Tesla + tax payments!

Perhaps I should put it in dollar terms. Here's what Climate XChange will pay Tesla; the Feds; and Massachusetts; all on each Winner's behalf.

Each Ticket is Eligible for any of these Prizes. Therefore, each Ticket has Three Chances to Win a Brand-New Tesla Plus Tax Payments.

Well... just in case anyone has missed the point about how many Teslas CXC is raffling off all at once (three) consider this:

First shalt thou purchaseth the Holy Ticket. Then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then thou shall knowest the number of Teslas to be Raffled. [With apologies to you-know-who.]​

Curious about how many tickets we've sold so far, against our target? At the bottom of our main raffle web page, you'll find this ticket "speedometer" (snapshot from tonight):

In case you're wondering, the money raised by the Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle goes to an excellent cause, namely, education and research in pursuit of carbon pricing at the State-level across the United States and hell-bent-for-leather in Massachusetts and Maryland, where legislation is teed up for the next sessions and great progress has been made but -- dammit! -- legislation is hard and more and more support has built up but it isn't across the finish line yet, goldarnit <bleep>.

Some Frequently Answered & Asked Questions:

 

[Pollux]

Waaah! Lonely. Not an interesting event? Did I somehow post in the wrong forum? Not even an interesting rating, much less a like? Wasn't the post at least a wee bit humorous? Or have I unwittingly transgressed the bounds of what passes for modern-day polite society?

Alan

 

[CatB]

I'm sure you realized Peter pre-empted your readership, so I'm just posting to keep your posts from feeling too lonely. Also, just curious about MA taxes, if the winner lives in another state, will those state taxes be paid to the winner's state of residency?
Also, where will you be for the big event this time? Are you all going to livestream again?

And most importantly, thanks for all that you and Jessica and everyone else there is doing to help save the planet!

 

[hurrrrz]

Why do we need to have 3 threads for this? Don't get me wrong - I bought some tickets for this a while ago - but 3 threads is a bit much, no?

 

[CatB]

@hurrrrz I only saw the one from PeterK, then noticed Alan’s orphan thread. Which one did I miss?

Edit: never mind, just found the other one. So, to answer your question - I think it just happened. It looks like one of them is tagged “Vendor” and I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I’m guessing someone saw the other thread Peter started and suggested he tag it “vendor” so people know it’s kind of selling something. Since this is, imo, more of a PSA, it’s sort of a gray area.

But anyway, may the odds be in your favor! ;-)

 

[Pollux]

I'm sure you realized Peter pre-empted your readership, so I'm just posting to keep your posts from feeling too lonely. Also, just curious about MA taxes, if the winner lives in another state, will those state taxes be paid to the winner's state of residency?
Also, where will you be for the big event this time? Are you all going to livestream again?

And most importantly, thanks for all that you and Jessica and everyone else there is doing to help save the planet!

Hi, @CatB,

Thank you for your kind words!

Peter has been doing an excellent job... I just thought, well, I'll try a different thread title and a different voice to see if anyone liked it. (That's also the answer to @hurrrrz's question.)

We're closing down sales in 30 minutes... at 2 p.m. ET... we've sold 3427 tickets so far out of our 4000 ticket goal... so lots of good news here... we've drawn lots of attention for carbon pricing (even radio spots on WBUR in Boston!)... we've raised funds for the organization... and the odds were already fantastic for winning a car but now are even a bit better!

This is the really exciting part... I LOVE this part... OK, maybe I don't love the proctology inspection we'll get from the auditors tomorrow, as they do their thing to make sure that we're behaving well... but the part where we generate winners and the winners get Teslas.... THAT'S my FAVORITE PART!!!!

Alan

 

[Pollux]

Good day to all... the vehicles got raffled off on New Year's Day! I think @PeterK has already reported on this elsewhere, but since I'm the one who started this particular thread at the last minute, I figured I'd follow up here.

To my surprise, the New Year's Day Drawing was lightly attended; I think about twenty people, including guests and some CXC folks such as staff and @PeterK himself along with his lovely daughter. Our Dec 31 2015 New Year's Eve drawing was a party with about 70 people in attendance; our July 4, 2017 drawing was an Independence Day party with, I'm guessing, 100-125 people. We figured that people would appreciate a restful New Year's Day afternoon party, like a recovery party after New Year's Eve. Maybe people were too tired to rouse themselves from their sofas. I did hear afterwards that we had about 250 people tuning in via livestream.

The auditors did their thing. Wald & Company sends two of their people, a principal (that's a partner in the company) and a junior. They have had some engagement all throughout the raffle period, asking questions about our procedures. On Drawing Day, they run off a bunch of reports about the raffle, which they retain. They inspect a random set of tickets and stubs. The number of inspections is sized based on the number of tickets sold. They then generate random ticket numbers and we do a walk-through of each purchaser, order, physical ticket and physical stub, verifying each step along the way. IIRC, this time they picked around 40 tickets to inspect. And they found a ticket that had what at first seemed to be the wrong owner and address... until we looked back at the order and explained to them that they had found a ticket that had been purchased by an individual "on behalf of" another individual. Later, after the drawing, we realized that they had also happened to inspect one of the winning tickets! It's pretty cool, the power of inspecting a random sample of appropriate size. Then, of course, they observed the loading of the raffle drum. The stubs are in pouches and we loaded the pouches in a random order drawn that morning from random.org. Finally, the auditors observed the drawing of the winning tickets.

Here's a picture of the picking:

On the left as you look at the picture is Michael Green, Climate XChange's Executive Director. Reading the ticket she just picked is Amanda, one of our staff. On the far right near the bottom, you can see @PeterK's knees with his daughter sitting on his lap.

By the way, the venue was the first floor of Old West Church at 131 Cambridge Street, in Boston, MA. CXC has use of the entire church, with most staff operations taking place on the second and third floors. The first floor is used for meals and events. A separate organization uses some of the basement as a day care facility.

This year's winners ranged all over the country, and each winner won a Tesla. Here are the winning stubs. First the fronts:

...and then the backs:

Mr. Green, the Executive Director, has already been in touch with each winner. The winners have already sent their paperwork back to us and are moving forward with getting their Teslas.

I believe the Grand Prize winner already has configured his new vehicle and based on a conversation I was party to a couple of days ago I think CXC has already paid his deposit. CXC will pay the rest when his vehicle is ready for delivery; and at that time, we will send the tax payments in to the feds and to Massachusetts.

CXC will do similarly with the Second and Third Prize winners.

By the way, if you're interested in the precise amounts of prize money involved, please refer to the payout table I included in the first post to this thread.

Most of all, I would like to say thank you to everyone who read about the raffle and at least briefly considered carbon pricing, and especially to those who supported Climate XChange and the carbon pricing mission by taking a chance on the Carbon Pricing Awareness Raffle. We need your support and we are grateful for it! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!

Best regards,
Alan