The Big Charity Raffle
Most charity raffles are small. The median on RaffleLink is about $3,300, and two-thirds raise under $5,000. One in ten clears $20,000, and that raffle is a different design from the others, not the same one sold harder. If you run one raffle a year and want it to matter, this is the raffle to design.
We pulled every charity raffle since 2016 that grossed $20,000 or more. There are 183 of them, from 110 organisations. Here is what they have in common.
The shape of a big charity raffle
| Raffles over $20,000 | |
|---|---|
| Raffles | 183 (from 110 organisations) |
| Median raised | $34,800 |
| Top quarter | $55,800 and up |
| Largest on the platform | $510,000 |
| Median number of buyers | 601 |
| Spend per buyer | $57 |
| Typical ticket | $20 |
| Median campaign | 65 days (about 9 weeks) |
| Median sell-through of the ticket cap | 62% |
Compare that to the typical charity raffle: 82 buyers, a $5 ticket, six weeks. The big raffle is not the small raffle done harder. It is a different design: seven times the buyers, four times the ticket, and a campaign long enough for both.
What the prize is
| First prize | Raffles | Median raised | Buyers (median) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Car | 54 | $59,500 | 598 |
| Holiday or accommodation | 42 | $29,100 | 538 |
| Cash | 32 | $31,300 | 526 |
| Gift card or voucher | 20 | $30,900 | 708 |
| Boat, caravan or other vehicle | 12 | $46,400 | 984 |
| Jewellery, art or luxury goods | 10 | $25,600 | 400 |
Three prize types account for seven in ten big charity raffles: a car, a holiday, or cash. The car is the outlier on both size and cost; the holiday and the cash prize reach almost the same number of buyers for a fraction of the prize outlay, which is why they are the workhorses of the $20,000–$50,000 band.
Two notes on prizes. Cash is not a permitted raffle prize in Victoria, where the equivalent is gold bullion or a large voucher. And the prize value has a legal relationship to the tickets you can sell in most states (the ticket value offered may not exceed a multiple of the prize value), which RaffleLink checks during setup. The permit checker shows the position for each state you plan to sell into.
The ticket
The median ticket in a big charity raffle is $20, against $5 for the platform as a whole, and the median buyer spends $57. That spend comes from packs: three tickets for $50, ten for $150. A pack ladder does two things. It raises the average order without raising the entry price, and it gives the committed supporter a way to give more. 62% of charity raffle orders are a pack.
Sell-through matters too. The median big raffle sold 62% of its ticket cap, which means the cap was set high enough not to strangle the campaign and low enough that “only 40% left” was true in the last fortnight. Set the cap from the prize-value ratio your states allow, then let the platform show the countdown.
Nine weeks, and more than one state
Big charity raffles run for about nine weeks and open to more than one state. Both matter.
Length buys sends. The typical big raffle is built around four or five emails to the supporter list, a social calendar, and a closing week that carries a third or more of the total. Two weeks is enough for an event raffle; it is not enough to reach a national list twice.
States buy reach. Charity raffles opened to four or more states took 51% of their revenue from interstate buyers, against 4% for raffles kept to the home state. The larger the raffle, the more states it was opened to: a median of two for the $20,000–$50,000 band, three for $50,000–$100,000, and six for raffles over $100,000. Each state has its own permit position and some have thresholds a big raffle will cross (Queensland’s Category 3 line is $50,000 in sales, New South Wales requires an authority above $30,000 in prizes, Victoria’s permit threshold is indexed each July). RaffleLink encodes all of them and can lodge applications on your behalf; the work is deciding early which states are worth the permit. Our note on adding Queensland to an interstate raffle walks through the largest of those decisions.
Trust is part of the design
A $20 ticket bought by someone who has never heard of your organisation is an act of trust, and the big raffles are built to earn it: a verified organisation badge (ABN, VGCCC or manual verification, shown on the raffle page), a draw that is cryptographically signed and published, and, in Queensland, a draw program the regulator has approved to $500,000. None of that sells a ticket on its own. All of it removes the reason not to buy one.
Before you launch: the checklist
- Which states, and which permits. Decide from your supporter list, not your postcode. Lodge early; some permits take weeks.
- The prize and its ratio. Pick the prize, confirm the ticket cap the ratio allows in each state, and set the cap so 60–70% sell-through is a good campaign.
- The ticket and the pack ladder. $20 base, packs to $150 or more.
- Nine weeks and a send plan. Launch, two mid-campaign sends, a last-week push, a final-day reminder. The closing week is the campaign.
- Verification before launch. Get the badge on the page before the first email goes out.
- The second raffle. The buyer list is the asset the first raffle leaves behind. Design the first one so that list is worth something next year.
About the numbers
Charity and not-for-profit raffles on RaffleLink since 2016 with at least $20,000 in paid ticket sales; 183 raffles from 110 organisations. Prize types come from a classification of each raffle’s first prize (machine-classified, then audited). Buyers are distinct purchasers; interstate share compares the buyer’s address state with the organisation’s. Medians throughout; no organisation’s result is identified. Australian dollars, gross ticket sales before prize costs and fees.
The charities page has the full segment picture, and we are happy to talk through a big raffle’s structure on a 15-minute call.
