The HPPCOOP Electronic Raffle System

FAQs

1. Why electronic raffle system?
   Members who have been with HPPCOOP for a while know that our raffle system is electronic. This is because we just have so many raffle tickets that doing the raffle manually will be too difficult and expensive.
2. Why so many raffle tickets if number of members is just around 1,500?
   This is because each member gets 1 raffle ticket for every P50 MBF contribution per month. Thus, a member who's been with the coop for the past 12 months will have 12 raffle tickets. 1,500 members x 12 tickets is 18,000 tickets!
3. What is MBF?
   MBF or Members Benefit Fund is the P50/month contribution of members for use during our various annual raffles (e.g. General Assembly Raffle, Anniversary Raffle, Christmas Raffle, etc.). It may also be used for any members' benefit the board may deem appropriate. But for now, it's primarily for raffle.
4. If I've been with the coop for just 1 month, do I get a raffle ticket?
   Yes. If you''ve been a member of the coop for 1 month before a raffle draw, you get 1 raffle ticket if you have paid your P50 MBF corresponding to your first month of membership. This is to make it fair to members who have been with the coop longer and have contributed more to the MBF fund to have more chances of winning. So, if a member has contributed 12 months MBF, it's just fair that he/she gets 12 raffle tickets vs somebody who just joined last month. This is why you notice the number after the name which corresponds to the "nth" raffle ticket of a member, e.g. JUAN DELA CRUZ 1, JUAN DELA CRUZ 2, JUAN DEL CRUZ 3, etc.
5. What does DRAWN/INVALID TICKET mean?
   The HPPCOOP Elecronic Raffle System takes time to prepare. Sometimes after the system has been propared already, there are members who resign. Thus, to make it fair to existing members, we have to make their tickets invalid so they cannot be part of the raffle anymore. Drawn tickets are those tickets that won already. Although we have thousands of tickets, we have to remove those that were already picked by the system because although the chances are slim, the computer may pick the ticket again which should not be the case because technically, the ticket has been "drawn" already. So if a particular ticket JUAN DELA CRUZ 1 has already been drawn, it will be tagged as INVALID. But Juan Dela Cruz's other tickets, i.e. JUAN DELA CRUZ 2, JUAN DELA CRUZ 3, etc. are still valid because technically, he has paid for them.
6. Where do I find my assigned raffle ticket numbers?
   Login to the website hpp.coop. Click your profile picture and select Profile. Check MBF Count and MBF Tickets.

How does the HPPCOOP Electronic Raffle System work?

The HPPCOOP Electronic Raffle System (ERS) basically utilizes random number generation. There are several randomizations happening in the ERS. Below is the process flow of the ERS and their explanations.

Fig. 1

SORT 1
Members are sorted based on their Coop IDs. If you have multiple tickets, your name will be listed multiple times. For example, if you have 12 MBF tickets, your name is listed 12 times, i.e. JUAN DELA CRUZ 1, JUAN DELA CRUZ 2, JUAN DELA CRUZ 3,...JUAN DELA CRUZ 12. If you have 6, you're listed 6 times. If you only have 1 MBF ticket, you're listed only once.

RANDOMIZE
The computer then assigns a random number for each name on the list. If you have 12 tickets, you're assiged 12 random numbers. If you only have 1 MBF, you're assigned just 1 random number.

SORT 2
The list is then sorted based on the assigned random number. Afterwhich, a unique ticket number, starting from 1 will be assigned sequentially to each name on the SORT 2 list. At this point, the list of members is already randomized even before the raffle even begins. Somebody with multiple tickets will notice that their ticket numbers are not assigned in blocks but randomized.

TICKET NUMBERS and their corresponding Member Names are then fed into the HPPCOOP Electronic Raffle System.

SELECT
Choose an item to raffle from the list of prizes.

SPIN
The HPPCOOP ERS then continuously generates random ticket numbers starting from the first ticket to the last.

DRAW
Once DRAW button is clicked, the system will still continue to randomize for a while before stopping and selecting the winner. The rationale is so that whoever is clicking the DRAW button cannot directly select the winner. Having the randomization continue a few times makes the selection even more unpretictable.

CLAIM
Once the CLAIM button is clicked, the system then records the winner and invalidates the winning ticket number.

Then the process repeats from SELECT until all the raffle prizes have been drawn.

9th GA Raffle Example

To illustrate the randomness of the HPPCOOP Electronic Raffle System, Fig. 2 below is a "heatmap" of the winning numbers during the 9th Annual General Assembly Raffle. All the ticket numbers are listed sequentially. All the red blocks are the winning tickets. As you can see, the winning tickets are spread out. The winner is selected based on multiple factors, i.e. computer random numbers, who initiates the DRAW button, the millisecond difference in the clicking of the DRAW button, etc.

Fig. 2

If you have further question about our Electronic Raffle System, please Submit a Ticket and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.