The School Raffle Year, by the Numbers
Schools and P&Cs have run more than 4,000 raffles on RaffleLink since 2016, raising $16.7 million between them. That is enough history to say what a “normal” school raffle looks like, occasion by occasion, and, more usefully, what the top quarter do differently.
This post is the baseline. If you are planning next year’s calendar, or trying to explain to a committee why the Easter raffle should charge more than $2 a ticket, the numbers are below.
What each occasion typically raises
The table covers school raffles on RaffleLink from 2016 onward with at least $500 in sales, grouped by what the raffle called itself. “Median” is the middle result: half of raffles did better, half did worse. “Top quarter” is the line the best 25% cleared.
| Occasion | Raffles | Median raised | Top quarter | Buyers (median) | Typical ticket | Days on sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easter | 841 | $2,000 | $3,000 | 112 | $2 | 19 |
| Christmas / end of year | 664 | $2,300 | $3,800 | 97 | $2 | 23 |
| Mother’s Day | 300 | $1,700 | $3,100 | 80 | $3 | 15 |
| Fete / fair | 202 | $2,900 | $5,700 | 108 | $5 | 28 |
| Father’s Day | 193 | $1,400 | $2,100 | 72 | $2 | 17 |
| Major / annual raffle | 116 | $4,800 | $10,400 | 137 | $5 | 38 |
| Gala / dinner | 83 | $4,000 | $7,000 | 96 | $5 | 19 |
| Trivia night | 81 | $2,200 | $3,000 | 68 | $5 | 16 |
| Car raffle* | 49 | $39,900 | $58,000 | 534 | $50–$100 | 78 |
* Car raffles are identified from the prize rather than the title and hand-checked; 34 of the 49 had completed with sales at the time of writing. They get their own post.
Three things stand out.
Easter is the school raffle. One in five school raffles on the platform is an Easter raffle, and it is the most consistent: a donated-egg hamper, a $2 ticket, about 110 families, $2,000 in under three weeks. It is also the lowest-priced format on the list, which matters for the next section.
The occasions with a room in them raise more. Gala dinners and trivia nights sell to fewer people than an Easter raffle, but they raise as much or more, because the buying happens in one place on one night. (For the extreme version of that shape, see how one dinner raffle took $40,600 in a single evening.)
The “major raffle” is a different sport. Schools that run one big raffle a year, with a prize worth talking about and a five-week sale, take home more than double an Easter raffle at the median and more than three times at the top quarter.
When schools launch
School raffles follow the terms. Launches by month, across every school raffle since 2020:
| Month | Raffles launched | What’s driving it |
|---|---|---|
| February | 186 | Early Easter raffles |
| March | 898 | Easter (the single busiest month by a distance) |
| April | 343 | Late Easter, Mother’s Day |
| May | 290 | Mother’s Day |
| June | 169 | End of Term 2 |
| July | 164 | |
| August | 436 | Father’s Day, Term 3 fetes |
| September | 167 | |
| October | 309 | Term 4 fetes, early Christmas |
| November | 658 | Christmas and end-of-year |
| December | 71 | |
| January | 16 |
If you run one raffle a year, March is when your community is most used to being asked. If you run two, March and November are the natural pair. The quiet months are not dead: an August or October raffle competes with far fewer other asks in the school bag.
The one decision that doubles the result
Almost every occasion in the table draws roughly the same crowd: 70 to 140 buyers. That number is your school community, and it barely moves with the prize or the month. What moves is how much each of those families spends, and that is set almost entirely by the ticket price.
School raffles since 2020, grouped by single-ticket price:
| Ticket price | Raffles | Median raised | Spend per buyer |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1–$2 | 1,621 | $1,800 | $19 |
| $3–$5 | 1,373 | $2,400 | $26 |
| $6–$10 | 352 | $4,200 | $40 |
| $11–$20 | 174 | $5,300 | $45 |
| $20+ | 187 | $7,600 | $67 |
Nearly half of school raffles charge $1 or $2 a ticket, and they raise the least. The $5 ticket raises a third more; the $10 ticket more than double. Within the Easter raffles alone, the ones priced at $3–$5 out-raised the $1–$2 ones by about 20% with the same number of buyers.
The instinct behind the $2 ticket is fairness, and it is a good instinct. The fix is not a $20 ticket; it is a $5 ticket with a pack: five for $20, ten for $35. Families who would have bought a $2 strip buy a pack instead. 68% of school raffle orders are a pack, the average order is $27, and 97% of the money arrives online, mostly from a link in the school newsletter. Our ticket pricing guide goes deeper on setting the ladder.
What the prize is, and what it changes
We classified the first prize of every school raffle on the platform. The mix is what you would expect: Easter is 77% hampers, Christmas leans to gift cards, and the fete and major raffles are where holidays appear (about a quarter of each). The results by prize type:
| First prize | Raffles | Median raised | Top quarter | Buyers (median) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hamper or prize pack | 974 | $1,850 | $2,800 | 96 |
| Experience or event tickets | 445 | $2,000 | $3,600 | 79 |
| Gift card or voucher | 479 | $2,300 | $4,000 | 96 |
| Jewellery, art or luxury goods | 118 | $3,200 | $6,800 | 98 |
| Electronics or appliance | 447 | $3,300 | $5,000 | 105 |
| Holiday or accommodation | 484 | $3,400 | $5,400 | 109 |
| Cash | 235 | $3,700 | $6,800 | 123 |
| Car | 47 | $33,200 | $48,300 | 411 |
A hamper raffle and a cash raffle reach almost the same number of families. The cash raffle raises twice as much, because a $2 ticket is the natural price for a basket of donated eggs and a $5 or $10 ticket is the natural price for $1,000. The prize sets the price the community will accept, and the price sets the total. (The car row is the audited set from the car raffle post, shown here for scale; it includes raffles still in progress, so its median sits below the completed-only figure there.)
Cash prizes are not permitted in every state (Victoria bans them for raffles), and a holiday or appliance donated by a local business does the same job. The lesson is not “raffle cash”; it is “pick a first prize that justifies a $5 ticket”.
What the top quarter do
Reading across the raffles that cleared the top-quarter line:
- They price higher, as above. Almost none of the top quarter charged $1 or $2.
- They run to a date people already have. The fete, the concert, the trivia night. A draw with a room around it sells its last third in the final days.
- They give the sale time. Fete raffles run four weeks against Mother’s Day’s two, and raise 70% more at the median.
- The prize is worth a sentence. A hamper of donated eggs is fine; a hamper plus a family pass, a voucher from a parent’s business, or one prize everyone in the car park would want is better. Our prize sponsors guide covers how schools source them without spending.
It compounds
Schools that treat the raffle as a fixture (Easter, then the fete, then Christmas) build a buyer list that comes back each time, and each raffle starts from that list rather than from zero. On the numbers above, three well-priced fixtures a year is a $10,000-plus habit for an ordinary primary school, before a single “major raffle” enters the picture.
About the numbers
Figures come from raffles run on RaffleLink since 2016, school and P&C organisations only, raffles with at least $500 in paid sales. Occasions are keyed off the raffle title, so a Mother’s Day raffle titled “Term 2 Raffle” sits under “Other”. Buyers are distinct purchasers. Prize types come from a classification of each raffle’s first prize (machine-classified, then audited; car raffles checked by hand). Medians and quartiles are per raffle; no individual school’s result is identified. Australian dollars throughout.
If you run a school raffle, the schools page collects the formats, the compliance basics and the calendar in one place. There is no setup fee and nothing to pay until tickets sell.
