Recall, of course, that you do not require government oversight for a small prize draw held in a confined location amongst a particular group of people: those who patronise a particular shop or pub on a certain day, or employees of a small business. You can sell Raffle Tickets to your particular group, at a particular time, in a particular venue, without going through the Gaming Commission. Do be sure to read up on the rules and ascertain whether your prize draw falls into the proper categories before you decide to forgo a visit to the Commission.

As you know, it is illegal to sell alcohol without a licence. It is not, however, illegal to offer alcohol as a prize in a contest! Therefore, you can earn money at a charity event by selling Raffle Tickets and offering drinks as prizes.

Some offer a single drink as a prize, which means you can offer many prizes and draw out the suspense. Or, you could help everyone get their drinks more quickly by using bottles as prizes. In theory, the winner would pour out draughts for each of their friends and the evening’s festivities can get underway with greater haste.

Consider your guests. Would they prefer an evening of drinking to another kind of entertainment? Whether they genuinely want to help your cause, or simply show up for a beer, selling alcohol Raffle Tickets can help turn your dry and dusty event into a rousing success!

I’m not certain how much they were selling individual Raffle Tickets for, but the value of the prize is placed at £13,000. This covers not only the egg from a healthy female donor (the winner can choose a donor who looks like her, or choose based on the donor’s racial background, upbringing, and education) but also the cost of the IVF treatment needed to fertilise the egg with the male genetic material of ones choose and the implantation of the embryo into the uterus.

The company’s idea was to sell Raffle Tickets in order to promote their new service: Baby Profiling. It was a joint venture between a London fertility clinic called Bridge Centre, and and American group, the Genetics and IVF Institute (GIVF) in Fairfax, Virginia.

No matter how you break it down, this prize draw helped the group reach its goals. Not only did they earn money selling Raffle Tickets, they garnered a remarkable amount of publicity, a great deal of it free. Yes, much of the publicity was controversial, but I would argue that those who decry this prize draw are not potential clients to begin with. Their outrage, however, has allowed a greater number of potential clients to become aware of the clinic, as well as the technology.

Some of them were free raffles, and others cost a pound or so to enter. I could be winning extra borrowing privileges at the Uni library, a 50 pound gift certificate to the Uni book store, a year’s subscription to a newspaper, a Curious George doll, a few different books by unknown authors, or a tiny torch that clips on to your book so you can read in bed without keeping your partner awake with excessive light.

As you may have guessed, I attended a large book festival this week!

While I often write about printing your own Raffle Tickets online to help you raise more money, free raffles have their place in the world. Rather than selling Raffle Tickets for fund raising purposes, completely free raffles help your organisation in another way: they help you to build your mailing list and create free publicity for your group. While potential supporters are filling out the information on your Raffle Ticket, you have an opportunity to pass out literature, discuss your mission, and generally create goodwill around your name.

Once you’ve mined the data from these Raffle Tickets, you can add the names and details to your database. Spreading the word about upcoming events and promotions is easier than ever. Remember, with free raffles, you need not obtain expensive prizes. Small, coveted items work just as well. What do people like? As you can see, an item like a book can draw certain customers to you. Perhaps a tray of meats from a local butcher, or an attractive scarf. If it’s attractive and perhaps a bit frivolous, you will quickly collect plenty of names while drawing in new supporters!

Your success depends on a few factors:

• Your organisation’s reputation
• The value of your prizes
• The cost of your tickets
• The skills of your sales team
• Publicity and exposure

If your reputation is already stellar, you can build on that, but if people are skeptical of your group, use your prize draw as a means of getting your message out and creating better buzz around your name.

Regarding prizes and ticket prices, do put some good thought into these choices. You may have to make many phone calls, use your networking skills, and perhaps even call in some favors to find prizes that people can get excited about. Then, price accordingly. For big ticket items, you can certainly ask for two pounds per ticket (the legal limit), but remember, you can make the same amount of money even if you charge less, by selling more tickets.

Let your sales team speak for you and show you in your best light. Your team should be able to talk coherently about your mission, and they should be willing to follow the crowds! Sporting events and street fairs are wonderful places to send your team. The more exposure they give you, the more money you’ll make. Make sure to write about your upcoming prize draw on your own website, but also on blogs and forums. Send press releases to the newspaper. Let people know when and where tickets will be available.

Start planning now and reap the rewards throughout the year!

You successfully held your Raffle. Prizes were donated, tickets were sold, the draw was well-attended, and everyone went home happy. Winners have received their rewards; your accounts have been filled with cash.

If you’ve printed your own Raffle Tickets, you’re left with something else: a big hat (or bowl, or steel drum) full of ticket stubs. With neat micro-perforations, they all detached quite easily, with clean edges, so that you could read the name and contact information of the winner.

Are you going to throw those stubs in the bin? Shred them for confetti? Use them for bookmarks?

Maybe later. If you’re clever, first, you’re going to make sure you’ve wrung every last scrap of useful information from those stubs.

You’ll want to hold onto the stubs until you’re sure your accounts balance correctly. It’s important to know how many ticket you sold and how much money you made. Even if you don’t care, the government does! Be certain the numbers work out so you can report appropriately to HMRC and to the directors your own organisation. If nothing else, you’ll want these numbers as a basis for next year’s draw.

You may also want to mine those stubs for information. You can easily create a mailing list of potential donors based on these details. It’s a smart idea to ask people if they mind being adding to the list and working out a system for marking the stubs in advance, but if you are doing legitimate charity work and need to expand your base, it’s a reasonable place to start.

Brian and Wendy Wilshaw, owners of Oldborough Retreat, Morchard Bishop, a lovely estate featuring a 5-bedroom home, 4 holiday lodges, and a fishing lake, found it difficult to find a buyer at their £950,000 asking price. They thought perhaps a raffle would seem rather an easier way achieve the value they desired.

The Wilshaws sold 46,000 Raffle Tickets at a rate of £25 each, for a sum total of £1.15m. In short, they achieved their goal. As readers of this blog are well aware, lottery laws in the UK would make a straight raffle illegal, so the Wilshaws added a competition aspect to their draw, asking participants to answer a question about fishing licences. However, their method fell under suspicion, and the draw was delayed over six months while authorities investigated the legality of the contest. Besides allegations that the question was too simple, and that those who failed to answer correctly were given second chances, the Commission worried that the Wilshaw’s personal gain in the matter violated the law of the land.

At long last, however, the Gambling Commission found in the Wilshaw’s favour earlier this summer and the prize draw proceeded without any further difficulty. Another couple, Stephen and Caroline Sickelmore, immediately offered up their home as a prize in their own raffle, and other homeowners throughout the UK have followed suit.

In today’s economy, home sales can be even trickier than lottery laws. It was a long road for the Wilshaws, but once again, Raffle Tickets saved the day!

UK raffle laws allow for certain types of small raffle without council oversight. However, large prize draws always require proper licensing. This may involve the filling out of forms and the paying of fees.

Of course, having gone to such trouble to begin, you really feel compelled to do the job right: in for a penny, in for a pound, you know! In that case, you’ve surely selected some lovely, high-quality designs and are planning to print your own Raffle Tickets.

And having gone so far as to print your own Raffle Tickets, indeed you want to sell every single ticket and recoup your investment. You need to work smarter, not harder.

Raffle Tickets sell themselves when they find their receptive audience. Clearly, your legwork can have a big impact, but you can only be in one place at a time. The solution: matching publicity materials to advertise for you!

Many Raffle Tickets can be paired with matching Posters and Flyers, so you can advertise your draw with minimum fuss and maximum style. If you prize draw occurs in conjunction with a larger event, you can even choose to match your Admission Tickets and Invitations to your Raffle Tickets.

The power of print can work to your advantage! Find a proper design and combine it with the proper materials and you’ll soon witness the strength of superior publicity!

But suppose you’ve exhausted your valid options? You’re no longer welcome at the charitable car dealership, the socially minded art-collector’s, the business-like pet groomer? What if no one wants to help your cause?

When you’re all out of options, we present to you

Irreverent Prizes for Desperate Fundraisers*

• Take my spouse, please! What? She keeps saying she wants to get out more often! They do it on reality TV. Specify time limits if you want him/her back.
• No one said anything about new! If your car is worth less than your monthly loan payments, consider that an old clunker might be worth fifty pence to someone
• What’s behind door number two? Time to clean out the attic. Great-grandmother’s collection of rusty spoons, a pram with three wheels, that pile of antique hubcaps on your neighbor’s lawn: stuff it into an unmarked box and sell chances at the unknown mystery prize (specify no returns).
• Kid friendly Your children clamor for a sense of independence! Offer it to them by selling their unique skills in a draw. Tiny hands are brilliant at cleaning out tight spaces like gutters! Or, your immobile couch potato kid can put his skills to use working as a coffee table.
• Fabulous-ish Trying to get out of that family or high school reunion? Offer up your identity for one night. Winners get to visit exotic locales and meet new people, while inheriting a whole new set of problems to make them feel better about their own lives. Works best if the event includes an open bar.
• Please include head shots at time of purchase Have you a copy of Photoshop? Winners receive a set of lovely doctored holiday snaps proving they’ve been to Majorca, Cairo, New York. All the benefits of holiday with none of the hassle.
• What’s the opposite of fabulous? Can you sing tunelessly, for a long time? Express offensive political opinions? Force your company on others? Do so with a vengeance, then raffle off the ability to make it stop!

Well, thanks for bearing with us thus far! And check back for more silly (and even more serious) suggestions for running the best raffle ever!

* For comic purposes only. Involuntary human servitude and enforced child labor are definitely illegal in the UK. Check local laws or your Gaming Council for other limitations of charity draws.

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, your aim is to make money for your organisation. The last think you want is to violate the law of the land or create trouble for your favorite charity or group. For this reason, it is of the utmost importance that you are aware of the legal implications of your raffle.

In the UK, we have some strict laws concerning lotteries and raffles, as per the Lotteries and Amusements Act 1976 and the National Lottery Act 1993. Large raffles are considered a form of gambling and therefore require a licence. There are three kinds of legal raffles.

• Small Raffle: If all your proceeds will go to charity and you intend to sell tickets only during the course of the event, a Small Raffle will suit your needs. Charge no more than one pound per ticket. You can give away any donated prizes, but may not have cash awards or spend over 250 pounds on prizes. You do not need a licence for this type of raffle.
• Private Raffle: If tickets will be offered only to a defined group, such as members of a club or employees of the same organisation, and the raffle will not be advertised or available outside this group, a Private Raffle will be appropriate. In this case, you will also not need a licence.
• Charity Raffle: If you want to sell raffle tickets amongst the general populace over a period of days, you will have to declare a Charity Raffle. Charge no more than 2 pounds per ticket and keep strict financial records. YOU MUST OBTAIN A LICENCE FROM THE GAMING BOARD OR LOCAL AUTHORITY FOR THIS!

An alternative way to sell raffle tickets without a licence is to hold a Prize Competition. Rather than determining the winner by drawing, you will ask a quiz question and reward prizes to those who answer correctly. Since the Prize Competition is based on skill rather than luck, it is not a matter for the Gaming Board.

Do It for Charity can offer some wonderful ideas on fund raising, including tips for keeping your raffle proper and legal. Best of luck!