Ronald McDonald House Charity Communications raised more than $10,000 in its reverse raffle Saturday for the Ronald McDonald House.

Director Jessica Ross said the group of Marshall University public relations students who make up RMHC Communications put together other fundraisers to help benefit the charity.

“This was the big event that we’ve been building up to,” Ross said. “The events that we’ve been doing throughout the semester were smaller fundraisers in order to allow us to have the funds to actually pull off this event.”

The reverse raffle meant the last ticket chosen won instead of the first ticket pulled.

WSAZ’s Tim Irr hosted the event and said he was surprised at the professionalism of the team.

“These kids in this class are just extremely professional in the way that they put this on,” Irr said. “They made it so easy for me to come in here and do this because they are so good at what they do. They did all their homework ahead of time, and everything they did in advance made tonight so easy for the people who were working it and ultimately made it successful because it raised $10,000 for RMH, so that’s huge and it’s all because of hard work.”

Ross explained the first ticket pulled won $100 and every 50th person drawn won his or her ticket money back.

Jaye Toler, director of development for the Ronald McDonald House, said the raffle will help after a funding loss.

“We found out that money we had already written into our budget that we always have, we found out that for two years we were going to be without that money,” Toler said. “It will come back to us, but in the meantime we were kind of scrambling to figure out how to fill that void, and that’s when the campaigns class said that they were going to organize a fundraiser. So we’re thrilled and really, really grateful.”

Toler said she appreciated the help the PR students provided to the Ronald McDonald House.

“It was such a pleasure to work with these students and the fact that they raise this much money, not that I’m surprised because they’ve been like so professional from the beginning, but oh my gosh, $10,000,” Toler said. “I don’t think any of us expected that much money and hopefully we can grow this next year. I would love if next year’s campaign class decides to take this, what they’ve started, and build on it.”

Mikaela Keener can be contacted at [email protected].