Five dollars could mean a semester’s worth of tuition for an in-state freshman or sophomore Mississippi State University student as Alumni Delegates seeks to raffle off a scholarship for just that in its first-ever tuition raffle fundraiser.  
Alumni Delegates will send letters out to the parents of around 3,500 current in-state freshman and sophomore students. Each letter will include six raffle tickets for parents to purchase for $5 each. Parents can then mail back the money for the number of tickets they want to purchase along with the ticket stubs or can mail back $25 for all six tickets. 
The money raised through these ticket sales will be used to pay for the winner’s tuition, and a ticket will be drawn from the pool mid-April.
Jeff Davis, Alumni Association executive director, said he brought the tuition raffle idea to MSU after seeing its success at his previous school, Steven F. Austin State University.
Davis said over a five-year period at Steven F. Austin, the tuition raffle raised over $120,000. With success not only at Steven F. Austin, but also at other schools across the nation such as the University of Michigan, Sam Houston State University and the University of New Hampshire, Davis said he feels confident the raffle will be successful at MSU as well. 
According to Davis, a tuition raffle, as opposed to raffling off a prize or selling T-shirts, involves both parents and students in a fundraiser that, no matter who wins the scholarship money, can only have a positive outcome. 
“You know, it’s cool because a student’s getting free tuition, but it’s a way for parents really to participate because the mailing goes out to parents of current students,” he said. “So, there’s the excitement factor of, you know, maybe my student will win, but at the end of the day, it’s going to raise scholarship dollars for other deserving students as well, so it’s kind of a win-win.”
Casey McGee, Alumni Delegates Scholarship Committee chair, said Davis was a driving force behind the Delegates’ decision to do a tuition raffle. 
“He’s kind of helped us out, and that’s what’s really pushed us to do it is that they’ve had such a great turnout, so we’re hoping it’ll be the same for us, too,” she said. 
McGee heads up the scholarship committee, which was created specifically for the fundraiser, and said the committee’s role will be to mail letters, keep track of each ticket sold and students entered in the raffle and keep track of the money raised.
Charlie Stocks, Alumni Delegates president, said he hopes any money raised beyond the cost of tuition can be donated in the form of individual scholarships through the Office of Admissions and Scholarships or put toward an endowed scholarship. 
“We would turn that over to the Office of Admissions and Scholarships, and that would go in the pool of all of the scholarships that get awarded through the scholarship resume,” he said. “It would be up to the Office of Admissions and Scholarships to award those, but it would have our name on it.”
McGee said the committee does not work with MSU’s Office of Admissions and Scholarships at this point. 
“This is really just the Alumni Delegates doing our own thing, and of course, Alumni Delegates is through the Alumni Association, so as of right now, at least until we see how this turns out, we’re not working with admissions or anything like that,” she said.
For this particular fundraiser, especially in its first year, Stocks said extending the raffle to out-of-state students or all students who pay in-state tuition, even if they are from out-of-state, might have proven too complicated. 
“Out-of-state would be kind of tough just because out-of-state tuition is a good bit more, but whatever we raise above the cost of tuition, it’s kind of just up to us to decide what we want to do with it. We will use it in some form or fashion to help students,” he said. “We didn’t want to overcomplicate things. That would get pretty difficult with saying you know, ‘If your child is an out-of-state student but they’re paying in-state tuition. I don’t know, it just seemed like that would get kind of complicated for the first year.”
After evaluating this year’s raffle and its success, Stocks said there is always potential to expand the fundraiser. 
“Next year, depending on how it goes this year, we definitely want to look into expanding who we send the letters out to because that can only mean raising more,” he said.
One of the reasons Stocks said he was attracted to the idea of a tuition raffle is its low-risk nature. He said if the raffle does not raise enough money to cover the cost of a semester of tuition, the Alumni Association will cover the difference. 
Davis, who is in his first year as executive director of the Alumni Association, said in bringing the idea for the raffle to MSU, he hopes to build on the success the Alumni Association and Alumni Delegates had under former executive director Jimmy Abraham. 
“Well, I’m just trying to bring new ideas to the table, but also I think that there’s a lot of great things that we’ve done for a long time here at Mississippi State. So, there’s no need to necessarily change the good things that we’re doing It’s just how can we add things to make the Alumni Association more relevant? Not only to our alums, but to our students, who are alums, they just haven’t graduated yet,” he said. 
McGee said although coming up with an original fundraising idea is exciting, she would love to see other organizations take a cue from the Delegates.
“As proud as we are to be starting this, if it encourages other organizations to try and do the same thing, then that’s great because that’s creating more scholarships for students,” she said.
Davis said he hopes to see the tuition raffle expand in years to come as parents and students spread the word about it and the university’s study body continues to grow.
“Hopefully, maybe 10-20 years down the road, maybe in addition to the drawing that we’re doing, maybe we’ll have an endowment that’s helping 10 or 20 kids a year,” he said. “That would be fantastic, and I think it’s all about Bulldogs helping Bulldogs.”