Multiple winners, multiple prizes: who gets what
One prize and one winner is easy. The trouble starts at about the point where you have twenty winners and twenty-five donated prizes that are nothing like each other, and somebody has to decide who gets the spa day and who gets the car wash.
There are five methods people actually use. Each is defensible; they just fail in different places. This page sets out where each one holds up, so you can pick before the draw rather than improvising afterwards.
Decide the method before you draw
This is the one thing worth getting right. Entrants should be told how prizes will be allocated at the point they enter, not after somebody has already won. It costs a sentence on the poster or in the post, and it removes the only version of this that causes an argument: a decision that looks like it was made once the names were known.
If you are running a promotion as a business or an influencer, this is not just good manners. The advertising rules expect the significant conditions of a promotion to be stated up front, and how prizes are awarded is one of them. There is more on that in the guide to picking a giveaway winner fairly.
The five methods
Draw prize by prize
Announce a prize, draw a name for it, put that name aside, then move on to the next prize.
- Works because:
- Unbeatable in a room. Every prize gets its moment, nobody has to be told later what they won, and the fairness is visible to everybody watching.
- Breaks when:
- Slow. Forty prizes is forty draws, and winners who are not present still have to be found and told afterwards.
- Best for:
- A fete, a club dinner, an awards night: anywhere the draw is part of the event.
Draw everyone, then assign in draw order
Draw all your winners in one go, then give first place the first prize, second place the second, and so on.
- Works because:
- Fast, and easy to explain. The order is random, so the allocation follows from the draw rather than from anybody’s opinion.
- Breaks when:
- Somebody gets a prize they have no use for while the person who wanted it got something else. With donated prizes that vary wildly in appeal, this is common.
- Best for:
- When prizes are of similar value, or when there is a clear headline prize and the rest are much of a muchness.
Ask winners to rank what they want
Send every winner the list, ask them to rank their top few, then work down the draw order giving each their highest available choice.
- Works because:
- People end up with things they want, and it feels considered.
- Breaks when:
- You are now running the allocation by hand from a pile of replies, chasing the third of people who never send theirs, and re-running the whole thing when one drops out.
- Best for:
- Small numbers, maybe up to about eight winners, where you have the patience.
Let winners pick, first come first served
Publish one live list of prizes, give every winner access to it, and let them take one each. A prize disappears the moment it is claimed.
- Works because:
- No allocation work at all, and no prize can be promised twice. Winners self-select for what they actually want, which is the outcome ranking is trying to reach without the admin.
- Breaks when:
- Needs the list to be genuinely live. A shared spreadsheet will let two people take the same thing before either notices. Late openers get a thinner choice, which has to be said up front.
- Best for:
- Many winners, many different prizes, winners scattered rather than in one room. This is what Prize Desk was built to do.
Sealed envelopes on the night
Number the prizes, put matching numbers in envelopes, and hand a sealed envelope to each winner as they are drawn.
- Works because:
- Works with no technology, feels like a moment, and cannot be argued with once opened.
- Breaks when:
- Everybody has to be present, and swaps then happen informally in the car park, which is fine but is not something you control.
- Best for:
- A dinner or a party where every winner is in the room.
Which to pick
| Your situation | Method that fits |
|---|---|
| Everyone is in the room | Draw prize by prize, or sealed envelopes. |
| Prizes are similar in value | Draw everyone at once and assign in draw order. |
| A handful of winners, very different prizes | Ask them to rank, if you have the time to match them up. |
| Many winners, many different prizes, nobody in one place | Let winners pick from a live list, first come first served. |
| Prizes arriving at different times | Draw in batches, one batch per set of prizes, and say so up front. |
The bits that catch people out
- Two people chasing winners at once. This is the single commonest cause of a prize being promised twice. Either one person owns the allocation, or it happens somewhere that will refuse a second claim on the same prize.
- No claim-by date. Without one, a handful of unreachable winners hold up the whole thing indefinitely. One or two weeks is normal, and you have to announce it when you announce the winners.
- Rolling unclaimed prizes into next year. A raffle run under the event exemption cannot do this. Redraw the prize among the entrants who did not win instead.
- Drawing more winners than you have prizes. Somebody then has to be told they won nothing, which is worse than not being drawn at all.
- Nothing written down. Keep a record of the date, how many entries there were, how the winners were picked and who got what. It takes five minutes on the day and answers any question asked three weeks later.
Where Prize Desk fits
Prize Desk does the fourth method properly. You list the prizes, draw the winners on a wheel, and send each winner a private link to the same live pool. They take what they want, and a claimed prize vanishes for everybody else in the same instant, so it cannot be given away twice. Nothing is assigned by hand and there is no spreadsheet to keep current. It is free, and it never sells tickets or handles money.
Related: letting winners choose their own prizes, running a school raffle and picking winners at random.