School Fundraising Raffles

Every school or P&C should run a raffle as part of their yearly fundraising program because…

Raffles are an easy way to raise lots of money for your school!

Fundraising raffles are minimal effort and there are a few steps/jobs that can be shared by either school staff or P&C members.

Primary schools and small high schools can run a “whole school” raffle (i.e. each family from the school is sent home with a small book of raffle tickets). Large high schools may decide to run smaller targeted raffles (e.g. to support the band or sports team). Raffles can be combined with events such as fetes or trivia nights – any school event where parents or the community are involved.

Below are the basic steps required to run a raffle and a few helpful hints to improve your results.

• Get your P&C and school principal/admin staff involved.
• Estimate the number of tickets you might sell.

Here’s an example: if you send a raffle book of 10 tickets home with each student in a school with 200 students – you may be able to sell between 1,000 – 1,500 tickets. At $2 per ticket you may be able to raise between $2,000 and $3,000 dollars.

• Organise some prizes that “fit” with how much money can be raised. For example, if you believe you can sell $2,000 worth of tickets, the first prize should be somewhere between $400 – $700. You can go higher or lower but you should try to be fair. Note: there are legal requirements about the value of prizes vs number of tickets sold.

Try to have prizes donated or sponsored by a local business. You’ll be amazed at what businesses will do if you just ask! If they donate a major prize it is always nice to include their logo on the ticket.

• If you can’t get a business to donate a good first prize you could suggest a partial sponsorship – you can pay half and ask the business to donate the other half. Many schools have all of their raffle prizes donated and just put a “donated / sponsored by …” next to each prize!
• Ask everyone you know if they can donate a prize. You can write a generic “asking for raffle prizes” letter, and drop it off at local businesses.
• Decide when the raffle will be drawn and ensure everyone is given enough time to sell the tickets, but not so much they “leave it until the last minute”.
• Now you need the raffle tickets. If it’s a very small raffle just buy some at your local newsagent for a few dollars – if it is larger you can get a quote from us to get your raffle tickets printed! Note: there are state legal requirements as to what should be printed on the tickets – please check on our regulations page.
• Ask the school admin staff to send a book home with each student – get them to send them home in an envelope with instructions (Budget Raffle Tickets offer free custom covers so you can include instructions for ticket sellers). Have some spares that can be sent home if people sell more then 1 book or if the P&C or school staff can sell extra tickets.

Encourage everyone to sell your tickets – promote the great things that will be done with the proceeds. Put information in the newsletter, school website or post large signs around the school. If you can provide a seller’s prize this is a great way to get children and families enthusiastic about selling tickets.

• Finally, collect all of the money and unsold tickets, put all of the sold ticket stubs into a barrel or a large box and give it a good stir or shake! Now draw out the winners. It’s a good idea to combine the draw date with a school event or a regular school assembly.

Always be on the lookout for raffle prizes / ideas for next year.

There are dozens of ideas to improve sales, like having themed raffles (Easter, Mothers/Fathers day etc), but we suggest you only run 1 major raffle per year and possibly 1 or 2 smaller ones targeted at smaller groups within the school.

We would love to hear your success stories so we can share them with others.

Get started today! You can raise much-needed funds to make a real difference at your child’s school!

Our Experience

Budget Raffle Tickets have been helping non profit organisations fundraise since 2007. We’ve gained extensive knowledge – working with thousands of raffle holders – and have years of experience running local raffles ourselves (see about us).

We can provide information and guidance to help you achieve a successful fundraising outcome. If you have any questions about raffle fundraising please don’t hesitate to contact us.