How to Run a Raffle + Raffle Ticket Generator
A raffle is a type of lottery where people buy tickets for a shot at winning a prize, anything from a gift basket to a trip. They're one of the most popular ways to fundraise because they're so easy to run: sell tickets (the more someone buys, the better their odds), then draw a name at random to find your winner or winners. Raffles are easy to run if you're taking cash and drawing names out of a hat. But if you want to run things properly online, where people pay digitally and the winners are picked automatically, you need a bit more than a hat and a Sharpie. Collctiv's raffle ticket generator was built for exactly this. It’s easy to use whether you’ve sold tickets through Collctiv or not.
How to run a raffle
Running a raffle comes down to five steps.
1. Set the prize (and the cause). Decide what's up for grabs and, if it's for charity or a group cause, be upfront about where the money's going. A clear prize and a clear purpose is what actually gets people buying in. If you offer multiple prizes, people are more likely to buy more tickets for a chance to take something home. Popular prizes are experiences, vouchers, merch from the charity and luxury hampers.
2. Set your ticket price. Keep it simple and set one price per ticket. Ensure that you raise enough to cover the cost of the prizes and to support your cause. Estimate how many tickets will be sold and make sure the price feels fair next to the prize.
3. Collect entries and payment. If you’re doing this manually, we recommend keeping a spreadsheet with everyone’s names and how many tickets they have bought. If you want to collect digitally, you can create a pot with Collctiv, send a link to the group chat or have people scan a QR code. People can pay without downloading anything and Collctiv will automatically calculate the number of tickets bought based on how much money the person has sent.
4. Draw the winner. Pick names from a hat or use a raffle generator. Whether you’ve used a spreadsheet or collected money through Collctiv, you can upload a CSV file onto the tool and the winner will be chosen randomly. Collctiv keeps a clear record of how it was decided but you might still want to have someone present with you as a witness.
5. Notify and pay out. Announce the winner (this can be done automatically with Collctiv) and if the raffle was raising money for something, make sure it actually gets there.
Why use a raffle ticket generator
Using a raffle ticket generator helps you manage your raffle with confidence. It keeps track of every entry, ensures every payment is accounted for, and selects a winner at random, giving everyone a fair chance.
If you're selling some tickets online and others in person for cash, you can easily upload a spreadsheet of offline sales and/or add participants manually. When it's time for the draw, you'll have a complete record of every entry, making the process transparent and easy to verify.
For anyone running a raffle for a school, club, workplace or charity, that turns a job that would normally eat a whole weekend into something that pretty much runs itself.
How a Collctiv organiser used the raffle generator
We spoke to a Collctiv customer who is a member of the parents' association committee at her kids' school, where raffles are a common way to raise extra funds at events.
The problem
The school organised a movie night event and the raffle was priced at £1 per ticket, so a £10 contribution meant 10 tickets. The money itself was collected through Collctiv without any issues.
The problem came at draw time. There wasn't an easy way to actually run the raffle online, so the process meant downloading the spreadsheet of contributors, manually adding an extra line for every £1 someone had paid so each ticket was represented, uploading it into a separate raffle tool, then amending and re-uploading when anything changed. For a small raffle, that was already a lot of manual admin. It clearly wouldn't hold up for anything bigger.
The solution
That gap was the reason Collctiv's raffle ticket generator was built: upload the payment export straight from the pot, and the tool automatically works out how many tickets each entrant is owed based on what they paid. There is no need for manually duplicating rows for every £1. Every ticket gets a unique ID, prizes can be entered directly into the tool, and the draw itself takes a few clicks.
The results
At the school's summer fair, the same organiser sold over 600 raffle tickets across 13 prizes.
“All I had to do was upload the payment export file I got from the pot and the tool calculated the tickets. I entered the prizes and had the raffle drawn in 5 minutes.”
Run your own raffle
Whether it's a school fair, a work fundraiser, or a charity event, Collctiv's raffle ticket generator takes care of the payment collection, the ticket numbering, and the draw so you can focus on the event, not the admin.
