Winner of Multi-Mosdos $100K Raffle Announced

A British man on Wednesday night was declared the winner of the top prize in the raffle campaign conducted jointly by dozens of mosdos and yeshivos across the world.

Chaim Tangy will receive $100,000, the largest of ten prizes offered by the initiative, which pools efforts of many mosdos to enable greater cash awards for all of them. The prize money was donated by an anonymous benefactor, making all the sales pure profits for the mosdos.

The raffle, currently in its eighth year, was started by the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation, based in Monsey, and run by Leah Ozeri. Aharon Lieberman was the point person for all the mosdos.

A diverse listing of the mosdos who market the raffle to their constituents, which sold for $100 each,  includes Friends of Diabetes, Kollel Jewish Learning Center of Pittsburg, Radio Hidabroot and Yeshivas Rabbeinu Chaim Berlin, as well the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation.

Winners of some of the lesser prizes come from Monsey to Monroe, and from South Africa to Baltimore and Lakewood. These include a Florida or Israel vacation, furniture, Otzar Hachochmah software, jewelry and electronics.

In a Hamodia interview regarding the raffle in 2013, Mrs. Ozeri said that its success comes from the fact that each mosad raises funds on its own — but the pooled prize allows for a much larger jackpot.

“We make everybody happy,” Mrs. Ozeri said. “We make sure that every mosad comes out a winner because we raise hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Raffle organizers promised to cap entries to 20,000 people. Even if a third of that number ended up buying tickets, a profit of close to half a million dollars was assured, to be divided among the participating groups.

Organizers did not reveal how much each mosad receives, but one administrator told Hamodia that he got $28,000 this year. That mosad on Thursday made its own raffle as well — a $1,000 gift certificate in a sefarim store.

The raffle advertised heavily online, and through email and text blasts by the individual mosdos. That enabled them to keep overhead to a minimum.

“It doesn’t cost me anything,” one administrator noted. “And the fact is that you are going into a good raffle.”

This article appeared in print on page 4 of the March 27th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.