Misery Mountain’s brilliantly effective and repeatable fundraising campaign.
Gregg Blanchard /
Misery Mountain is a small ski area in Peace River, Alberta. Like other small non-profit ski areas, they do a decent amount of fundraising to help keep the trails open and lift spinning. Unlike other non-profits, however, they go big on an annual campaign that, by my estimates, raises somewhere north to $75,000 each fall.
The campaign is simple: 3,000 raffle tickets, $50 each, winner gets a brand new truck.
The truck has an MSRP of $70,000 – $75,000 (it’s unclear whether the dealership is offering it at cost), second place in the raffle gets $5,000, and third place gets a cool $1,000.
This is also an annual tradition. Here’s the initial promo from last year.
The oldest reference on Instagram could find was 2020.
But on Facebook I found posts about the raffle as early as 2015 when they only sold 2,000 tickets.
I’ve seen this campaign pop up from time to time, but it wasn’t until I saw a mention of it again this year that I took a little more time to explore the history of this campaign.
There’s a lot to like.
1) Rinse and Repeat
The first is how similar the campaign is year to year. They’ve found something that works and they’re rolling with it. I know it’s fun to come up with new campaigns, but I sometimes wonder if there’s more that resort marketers could rinse and repeat each year than we think.
2) They Know Their Market
Not every market is going to get excited about a big ol’ truck, but Peace River does. There are hundreds of things the resort could have auctioned off but they understood their market well enough to know that a truck was the perfect reward.
3) Partnership & Pop Ups
The one thing that has seemed to grow each year is the number of partners that take part. This year, that locations you could buy tickets included:
- Go Auto Peace River
- Mighty Peace Chevrolet
- Rentco
- Style Ryte
- Pats Auto Supply Peace River and Grimshaw
- Venture Parts
- Nampa Auto & Farm Supply
- Misery Mountain Ski Area
- Canadian Tire
And of course at the ski area. Even better, the resort pops up a quick presence at many of these locations throughout the fall promoting the raffle (and the ski area).
4) Relevant to All
There are likely hundreds of people in each of these communities who don’t ski but love to support the value the ski area brings to the area. By using something with mass appeal they are giving everyone a way to participate in their fundraiser.
5) Off Season Content
This ski area isn’t doing much in the summer and their pass sales can only be pushed so hard, so I love the fact that gives the hill a simple, valuable, relevant message to push during the off season. And push it they do. Some years their Instagram feed has as many truck raffle posts as skiing posts.
Predictability
I really, really love this campaign. It’s simple, super effective, gets the whole community involved, and can be repeated each year with little or no changes.
The thing I love most of all, however, is what the combination of those elements deliver: predictability. In my limited experience, fundraising can have some fairly hefty swings year to year depending on local economies or the situation of big donors. This campaign seems to smooth out those spikes as much as anything I’ve seen. Like locking in pass sale revenue in the spring, Misery Mountain can likely count on this $75,000 in their budget long before the tickets are sold.
That’s huge.
Big props to Misery Mountain for not only coming up with the idea but sticking with it for so long.