The Sandbag Times Issue No: 45

VETERANS RAFFLE
The Raffle That Is Just The Ticket For Veterans
Have you heard of the YES (Your Emergency
Services) Society Veterans Raffle that helps
our Armed Forces & Emergency Services
Veterans charities? We hadn’t either, until we
spoke to founder (and former Police Officer),
Chris Hearn, who told us all about it and
explained just why he felt the need to take a
huge leap of faith and set it up in the first
place.
“Don’t get me wrong,” says Chris, “I respect
the National Lottery and all the other lotteries
and raffles that do great things for good
causes. What I don’t like, however, is the
amount of money that they take out of the
funds for things like ‘admin costs’ etc.”
And once you look into it – it’s a bit of an
eye-opener. On the YES Society website
(yessociety.org.uk) it clearly shows in diagrams
(laid out below) that the 3 major lottery
companies in the UK are giving less
than a third of the money they collect back
to good causes and some also have admin
costs of almost a third!
“Once I found out exactly how little was
going back to good causes, I just thought
that was unacceptable,” says Chris. So he
formed the non-profit organisation YES
Society & then created the Veterans Raffle,
designed upon a purposefully built platform
that could give most of the money to supporting
Good Causes and the rest back in
Prizes, and with super low admin costs too.
Chris also wanted to make sure the funds
went to charities that made a real difference
in their communities. He felt this was very
relevant both to him and to his former colleagues
with whom he had worked alongside
for many years. YES Society has chosen
to focus on supporting those who are
suffering from mental health related conditions
such as PTSD, those who have complex
injuries such as loss of limb and those
who find themselves out of work and/or
homeless.
“Some large military and emergency service
charities are brilliant at raising money – but
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