Running a prize draw for a charity
A raffle is still one of the most reliable ways a small charity raises a few thousand pounds, and most of them need no permission at all. The parts that catch people out are rarely the draw itself: they are Gift Aid, selling tickets a fortnight early, and what to do with forty donated prizes once the winners are out of the hat.
This covers England, Wales and Scotland. Northern Ireland runs a separate system with its own forms.
Three shapes of charity draw
Which rules apply comes down to whether anyone pays, and when. Everything else follows from that.
| What you are running | What it needs |
|---|---|
| Free to enter, prizes donated | Nothing. Outside the Gambling Act. Good for awareness and list building, poor for raising money. |
| Tickets sold and drawn at your event | No registration, within the £500 prize and £100 expenses limits. |
| Tickets sold in advance or online | Register a small society lottery with your council before selling a single ticket. |
The third row is the one that trips charities up, because selling online feels like the same raffle as selling on the day. It is not, and registration has to be in place first. The full detail, including fees and what the council asks for, is in the guide to raffle rules.
Gift Aid does not apply to ticket money
This is the single most common mistake, and it is expensive to unwind. HMRC treats a raffle ticket as a payment for the chance to win, not as a gift, so no part of the ticket price is eligible for Gift Aid. The same goes for 100 clubs and prize draw entries.
What you can do instead
Offer a separate, genuinely voluntary donation alongside the ticket, and keep the two amounts clearly apart in your records and on the form. The donation can be Gift Aided if the donor receives nothing in return for it. What you cannot do is treat part of a ticket price as a donation because the prize was donated.
If your lottery grows
Small society lottery registration with the council covers a great deal, but it has ceilings. Ticket sales of more than £20,000 in a single draw, or more than £250,000 across a calendar year, take you out of it and into a licence from the Gambling Commission.
A one-off summer raffle will not get near this. A monthly lottery that has been running for three years quietly might. Add up a year at a time rather than a draw at a time, because it is the annual figure that catches people.
At least 20 per cent of the proceeds of a small society lottery must go to the purposes of the society. Most community raffles clear this comfortably because the prizes were donated, but it is worth checking if you have bought a headline prize.
Getting prizes donated
Local businesses give more readily to a named cause than to a generic fundraiser. Approach them six to eight weeks ahead, in person where you can, with something on headed paper that names the charity, the event, the date and how they will be credited. Suggest a specific thing, a voucher or one item, rather than asking open-endedly.
There is a longer version of this, written for PTAs but true for any small charity, in the guide to running a school raffle.
Entrant details
A prize draw collects personal data, and a charity holding a spreadsheet of four hundred names and emails should treat it as seriously as any other supporter data.
- Collect only what you need to run the draw and contact a winner. A phone number or an email, not both, is usually enough.
- Say at the point of entry what the details are for, and how long you will keep them.
- Do not add entrants to a newsletter because they entered a raffle. Ask separately, and make it optional.
- Delete the list once the prizes are handed out and any council return is filed.
- If you publish the winners, the surname and the town is usually enough. Tell entrants beforehand that you will.
Prize Desk deletes a whole raffle, entries included, ninety days after the organiser last opened their dashboard, and an organiser can delete everything on the spot at any time. Certificates, which record how the draw was made, are kept for two years because they are evidence.
The draw, and showing it was fair
Draw in front of people where you can, and ask someone unconnected with the committee to pull the tickets or witness it. Then write it down on the day: the date, the number of tickets sold, the method, who drew and who watched, and the winning numbers. Supporters rarely ask. When one does, weeks later, that note is the difference between an answer and an awkward pause.
Handing out forty prizes
Charity fundraisers end up prize-rich and volunteer-poor: dozens of donated items, dozens of winners, and one person with a phone. That is where the evening goes, and it is the part no ticket platform helps with.
The methods that work are set out in multiple winners, multiple prizes. The one that scales is to stop assigning prizes altogether and let each winner choose from a live list, first come first served, so a prize can never be promised to two people.
Where Prize Desk fits
Prize Desk is free for charities and always will be. It never sells tickets and never touches the money, so it does not change which rules apply to you. It collects entries through one link, draws the winners with a cryptographic random number generator, issues a certificate recording how the draw was made, and then lets each winner pick their own prize from what is left.
Sources, checked for this page: HMRC's detailed Gift Aid guidance, chapter 3, which lists raffle and lottery ticket payments among those that are not gifts, and the Gambling Commission on society lotteries for the £20,000 and £250,000 thresholds. Council registration fees vary, so confirm yours with them.