[admin]

The YorkieTalk 2011 Fundraiser Raffle is here! It's to help with costs for running and maintaining our wonderful community here at YorkieTalk!

If you have any prizes you would like to contribute to the raffle, please let us know via PM and we can add it to our prize list. We will greatly appreciate your help! We will add your prize to the prize list and after the raffle has concluded and winners are announced, you can directly ship the prize to the winner.

As YorkieTalk has continued to grow each and every year, so has our expenses. We now have over 75,000 members, over 3.5 MILLION posts, 21,000 photos in the YT Photo Gallery and over 322,000 picture attachments in posts. YT threads have been read over 114 MILLION times in all and members have downloaded over 12 MILLION attachments.

With that growth, our expenses for Web hosting, server maintenance, hardware upgrades, and general upkeep for our community has risen as well. We've made it a point to make sure each and every post on YorkieTalk is archived and searchable, as we know what a great resource any post can be. We've also made sure that every picture attachment is viewable and we set no limits on the number of photos a member can upload in threads.

We also strive to make sure YorkieTalk is online 100% of the time for our community. While we do have occasional outages here and there, for the most part, YorkieTalk has been online consistently for our members!

We're committed to keeping YorkieTalk a free resource for all members and provide guidance, help, and knowledge to everyone that seeks help in regards to their Yorkie.

We are planning to do a raffle to help with these costs.

Raffle Tickets are $5 each.

If you buy 10 Raffle Tickets for $50, you get 2 FREE! (For each additional 10 you buy, you get 2 free!) Please note for this offer, we can not "split" your tickets up or "gift" or "give" them to other YorkieTalk members. If you do gift 10 Raffle Tickets for another member, we will give them 2 additional free Raffle Tickets.

To purchase raffle tickets, please PM us and we will give you the address to mail your money order or check for raffle tickets.

Along with the check or money order payment, please mention that it is for the YorkieTalk 2011 Raffle and include your YorkieTalk username. Within 7 days, we will PM you and give you your raffle ticket number.

Official rules:

1. You may buy as many tickets as you would like. You must be a YorkieTalk member to buy a raffle ticket. Winners will be drawn at random. YorkieTalk administrators are not eligible to participate in the YT 2011 Raffle. YorkieTalk moderators are eligible to participate in the YT 2011 raffle.

2. Only one prize may be won per YorkieTalk member. If there are more prizes than entrants in the Raffle, there may be more than one prize per member. We will make sure that winners do not win their "own" prize that they donated. Members who donate prizes are eligible to win prizes in the raffle.

3. Tickets are non-refundable.

4. You may buy tickets for other YorkieTalk members if you would like. Please note in the payment section that it is for another member.

5. Raffle tickets will be sold until July 15, 2011 11:59PM Pacific time. The winners will be drawn completely at random within 5 days of that time. There is no limit to the number of raffle tickets that will be sold. Any tickets purchased after midnight July 15, 2011 will be considered a general donation to YorkieTalk.

6. The random drawing will be held by YorkieTalk staff. All decisions regarding the YT 2011 Raffle will be determined by YorkieTalk staff.

We have some wonderful prizes already! And a lot of prizes on the list!

Thanks to every member who is giving away a prize to support YorkieTalk! Without them, this raffle would not be possible!