A "winner's choice" raffle lets you offer a selection of unique Experiences for your grand prize winner to choose from.

A successful fundraising raffle must offer a prize with enough perceived value to entice supporters to purchase a lot of tickets at a higher price point than your typical $1 carnival raffle ticket.

We designed this fundraising raffle guide to help you from start to finish, including Word templates for raffle tickets and even some promotional email templates that can be used with ConstantContact or MailChimp.

The guide covers the following steps for setting up your raffle:

  1. Set Fundraising Goal.
    Setting a goal is crucial for establishing a ticket price and figuring out how many tickets you will need to sell.
  2. Reserve Experiences.
    Deciding which Experiences to offer can be done in a single meeting, and reserving through Winspire takes less than 5 minutes.
  3. Set Ticket Price.
    Your raffle ticket price needs to be high enough to raise a substantial sum of money, but low enough to entice almost anyone. In the guide, we'll show you how to work back from your fundraising goal to establish your ticket price.
  4. Create Tickets & Flyers.
    We've created ticket templates for raffle tickets, flyers and emails. The raffle template is double-sided and consists of 10 tickets per sheet, with areas for you to enter your own organization’s logo and other details about your raffle.
  5. Sell Raffle Tickets.
    You can sell to anyone! The most important part of a successful Winner’s Choice Raffle is the promotion of the grand prize! Learn three cheap and effective methods for promoting your raffle, including:RAFFLE_3-ways-to-promote
  6. Draw the Winner! The best time to draw the winner is alongside another event, such as a fundraising gala. Winspire takes care of the rest, fulfilling their raffle prize down to the very last detail.

Top Benefits of a Charity Raffle

Raffles are being used by charities in several practical ways to increase revenue, drive awareness and generate donors:

  • Encourage attendance and build momentum for a big fundraising gala.
  • Ensure all demographics have the ability to give at a fundraising event, whether you're hosting a walk-a-thon, music festival or dinner gala.
  • Add to the excitement of a charity golf tournament.
  • Incorporate into social peer-to-peer fundraisers to encourage participation or achieve certain goals.
  • Change up the traditional fundraising bake sale, car wash, gift wrapping sales, etc.

How It Works:

What’s better than winning an incredible vacation in a raffle? How about the ability to choose where you go and what you do? 

In a "Winner's Choice" raffle the organizing committee pre-selects a set of packages from the Winspire catalog, giving the winner a choice of their favorite Experience. Offering multiple high-end Experiences to choose from will appeal to a much wider audience and maximize ticket sales. For example, you can offer the Exotic Supercar Driving Experience for the guys, New Orleans Jazz & Dining for couples and the Kennedy Space Center Astronaut Adventure for young families. Something for everybody! 

The entire catalog of Winspire Experiences is available at no-risk, which means your organization doesn’t purchase anything until after the winner is declared. 

NOTE:  Before you decide to host a raffle, check the raffle laws in your state. Some states do not allow raffles at all or require certain permits that must be applied for in advance.

SUCCESS STORIES:

_Example-Raffle-Montana

Montana State University Athletics Department raises $32,000 in raffle tickets

Over the course of an entire school year, roughly 300 student athletes were asked to each sell at least 10 raffle tickets for $10 a piece to friends, family and the rest of the student body. The prize was a “Winner’s Choice” of three Winspire Experiences that included getaways to Lake Tahoe, Napa Valley and Cabo San Lucas. The winner chose the Lake Tahoe Weekend Getaway (NP Cost: $2,550 – which happened to be the least expensive package of their grand prize selection) so the department netted a total of $29,450.

_Example-MPMS

Marin Primary and Middle School sells $22,000 worth of raffle tickets

The Parents Association of MPMS in San Francisco sold more than 850 tickets by involving the entire student body and their parents. The grand prize was a choice of one of four once-in-a-life-time trips provided by Winspire, including trips to Mexico, San Diego, New York and Whistler. Raffle tickets were sold by students and their families for one month leading up to their annual fundraising gala for $25 a piece or $100 for five tickets. The Association challenged students with a contest, enticing them with a big party or field trip going to the class who sold the most tickets. They held parking lot rallies, selling both event and raffle tickets in the morning as parents dropped off their kids.

The winner's name was drawn at the MPMS Marti Gras Auction Gala held on the evening of March 29th. The event drew upwards of 280 guests, who spent the evening socializing and browsing more than 180 silent and 11 live auction items. A New Orleans Jazz Winspire Experience was offered in the live auction and sold a total of 9 times, raising another $7,000. All told, Winspire Experiences helped raise $27,000 for the school.