How do you let raffle winners choose their own prize?

Put every prize on one shared list, then give each winner a private link to that list. They open it, see what is still available, and take one. The prize is removed from the list the moment it is claimed, so no two winners can take the same thing and the organiser never has to assign anything by hand. Prize Desk works this way: winners choose first come, first served from a live pool.

What happens if two winners pick the same prize at the same moment?

One of them gets it and the other is told straight away to pick something else. The claim is written inside a database transaction that locks the prize row, so the two requests are handled one after the other rather than both succeeding. There is no window in which a prize can be promised twice, however close together the clicks are.

Can a winner change their mind after choosing?

Not on their own. Each winner picks once, and the page asks them to confirm before the choice is made. The organiser can put a prize back on the list from their dashboard, which frees it for anybody and lets that winner choose again, so a genuine mistake takes about ten seconds to undo.

What if a winner never opens their link?

Nothing is blocked: the other winners carry on choosing from what is left. The organiser dashboard shows who has picked and who has not, so you can chase the few who are outstanding rather than everybody. If someone drops out entirely you can remove them, which stops their link working, and draw a replacement.

Do winners need an account or an app to choose their prize?

No. The link is the credential. A winner opens it in whatever browser they already have, on a phone or a laptop, picks a prize and closes the tab. There is nothing to install, no password to set and no email address required unless the organiser has asked for a delivery address.

What if there are more winners than prizes?

The later winners find an empty pool, which is a worse experience than being told. Draw no more winners than you have prizes, or add the extra prizes before you send the links out. If you do end up short, close the draw in your settings so nobody opens a link to nothing, and contact the winners who missed out yourself.

Let winners choose their own prizes

Drawing the winners takes a minute. Working out who gets which prize is what eats the evening. The fix is to stop deciding: put every prize on one live list, give each winner a link to it, and let them take what they want.

This page explains how that works in practice, including the awkward parts: two winners clicking at once, somebody who never opens their link, and what to do when a prize is claimed by mistake.

The problem, stated plainly

A school fair collects forty donated prizes and draws thirty winners. Now somebody has to hand them out. The usual method is a spreadsheet and a phone, and it goes wrong in the same four ways every year:

Two people are offered the same hamper because two volunteers were ringing round at once.
Six winners never answer, so nobody can move on to the next prize.
The spreadsheet is out of date within an hour, and only one person knows which version is current.
Somebody ends up with a prize they did not want, while the thing they did want went to a person who was indifferent to it.

None of that is a failure of organisation. It is what happens when one person has to serialise thirty conversations. Letting the winners pick removes the bottleneck rather than making the volunteer faster at it.

What a winner actually sees

A page with their name on it and every prize still going, with photos and descriptions. Anything already taken is greyed out and marked Gone, so the list is honest about what they have missed rather than quietly hiding it. Tapping a prize asks them to confirm, because it is the one irreversible thing they will do.

The list refreshes by itself every few seconds. A winner sitting on the page deciding between two things will watch one of them disappear if somebody else gets there first, which is exactly the information they need to make up their mind.

How you set it up

1
List what you have to give away
Add each prize with a short description, and a photo if you have one. A phone snap of the table is enough. Prizes can be added or edited right up until the winners start choosing.
2
Draw the winners
Draw on the wheel from entries collected through your entry link, or paste in a list you already hold. You can draw everybody at once or in batches as prizes come in.
3
Send each winner their private link
Every winner gets their own URL. Copy them one at a time, or copy the whole table into a mail merge, or download a CSV. Prize Desk sends no email, so they go out however you normally reach people.
4
They pick, and the pool updates for everyone
A winner opens the link, sees everything still available, and takes one. It is marked gone for every other winner immediately, so the same prize cannot be given away twice.

Two winners, one prize, same second

This is the failure that matters, and it is the reason the mechanic needs software rather than a shared Google Sheet. Two winners both open their links at eight in the evening, both want the signed shirt, and both tap it inside the same second.

What happens

The two requests are queued rather than run side by side. The database locks the prize before checking whether it is still available, so the second request cannot read a stale answer. One winner gets the shirt. The other sees "Sorry, someone just took that one. Please pick another." and the list in front of them updates.

A shared spreadsheet cannot do this. Two people typing into the same row at the same time both think they have it, and nobody finds out until the prizes are being handed over.

The questions organisers ask first

Can I take a prize back if it was picked by mistake?

Yes. In the prizes tab there is a Put back button on anything already claimed. It returns the prize to the pool and lets that winner choose again. Use it sparingly and tell the winner, because from their side a prize they thought was theirs has become available to everyone.

How do the links get to people?

You send them. Prize Desk sends no email at all, which is deliberate: an email nobody receives is worse than no email, and most community organisers are already in a WhatsApp group or a class list that works better than a message from a name nobody recognises. The dashboard gives you each link to copy, a whole table to paste into a mail merge, and a CSV with names, emails, links and who has chosen.

Can I stop people choosing after a certain point?

Close the draw in settings. Existing links keep working, so nobody hits a dead page, but nothing further can be claimed. There is no automatic deadline, so if you want one, say it in the message you send with the links and close the draw yourself when it passes.

Does it work for one winner and one prize?

It works, but there is nothing for it to solve. With a single prize, use the draw wheel on its own and tell the winner yourself. The pool starts earning its keep at about five winners, and is the difference between an afternoon and ten minutes by twenty.

Can winners see each other?

They see which prizes have gone and, on a claimed prize, that somebody has taken it. They do not get the other winners' links, contact details or entries. Each link opens one winner's view and nothing else.

The prize pool is about logistics, not fairness. Whether your draw needs registering, and what evidence you should keep that the winners were picked at random, is a separate question covered in the guide to the rules.

Try it with your own prizes

Setting up takes about a minute and there is no account to create. Add your prizes, draw your winners, send the links. It is free, and it never handles ticket money.

Set up a prize pool Just draw the winners