How do you promote a raffle successfully?

Use as many channels as you have available. Start with getting a web page built which you can promote easily online using social media. Get some flyers or posters printed and ask local businesses to display them. Save the digital version of the flyer and use that to post online in newsletters, emails and social media.

The raffle tickets can also promote themselves. Order your custom raffle ticket printing and start adding them to your outgoing newsletters or magazines.

Yes. We offer a free web page to assist with your raffle promotion. You can include your raffle date, prizes and contact information so it's easier for people to buy tickets from you. Best of all, it's free!

Yes, posters are a great way to build excitement around your raffle. Make sure they are professionally designed and printed to maximise their effectiveness — we can print posters and flyers alongside your raffle tickets.

Start announcing at least 2–3 weeks before tickets go on sale. Use every channel you have: a post on social media, an email to your mailing list, a notice in your newsletter, and a poster on your noticeboard or in the school bag.

Your announcement should include the draw date, the cause you are raising money for, the headline prizes and where people can buy tickets. Keep it short and visual — a well-designed flyer shared digitally gets far more engagement than a block of text.

Create a digital flyer rather than a text-only post — visual content gets far more engagement. Post it to your personal profile, ask committee members to share it, and post in local community groups. Create a Facebook event for the draw date and use it as a hub for updates and prize announcements.

Remember, you can promote your raffle on Facebook but you cannot sell tickets through the platform. For more detail, see our section on running a raffle on Facebook.

Focus on people who care about the cause you are raising money for and make sure the cause is clearly explained on your promotional material. A long list of prizes also helps — the more prizes there are, the better the odds feel, which makes it an easier sell. If the prizes are connected to the cause, even better.

The most effective approach is to go where your audience already is. For school raffles, send books home in book bags and sell at the school gate at drop-off and pick-up. For clubs, sell at meetings and training sessions. For community raffles, set up a table at local events, markets or outside shops (with permission).

Hand each buyer a book, ask them to fill in their details on the stubs, collect the stubs and give them the tickets. Always carry change and be ready to explain the cause and the prizes in one sentence.

Keep it simple: say what the cause is, what the top prizes are and how much the tickets cost. For example: "We're raising money for new playground equipment. Tickets are £1 each, books of 5 for £5. First prize is a £100 gift voucher."

People buy raffle tickets because they want to support the cause, not because of a hard sell. Be friendly, explain where the money goes and let the prizes do the rest. In our experience, the sellers who do best are the ones who are genuinely enthusiastic about what the money will be used for.

Beyond the traditional door-to-door and event-day selling, here are approaches that work well for our customers:

• Send books home in school book bags with a reply envelope — parents fill in stubs and return the money via the child.


• Run a "golden ticket" promotion where one hidden ticket wins an extra bonus prize.


• Offer an early-bird draw for people who buy tickets in the first week.


• Ask local businesses to sell tickets from their counter in exchange for a mention on your promotional material.


• Set up a table at a local market, supermarket entrance or community event (check you have permission first).

Ask the printers to print some more as quickly as they can. We often find that promoters underestimate how generous people are and we have a large number of returning customers getting those extra 500s or 1000s in for the last week of sales.

Try to plan ahead and overestimate, as it is far less expensive in the long run and causes much less stress.

For most small society raffles, you cannot legally sell tickets online. The Gambling Commission requires an operating licence or a registered External Lottery Manager (ELM) to sell lottery tickets via the internet, and most payment processors including PayPal do not permit raffle ticket sales through their platforms.

What you can do legally is use the internet to promote your raffle and then sell the physical tickets in person. This is what most of our customers do and it works well. Here are the practical steps:

• Set up a free web page (we offer one with every order) listing your prizes, draw date and contact details.


• Share the page on social media, email lists and WhatsApp groups to reach potential buyers.


• Invite people to contact you or visit a location to buy their tickets in person.


• Post updates as prizes are added or ticket sales hit milestones to build excitement.

If you do need to sell tickets online — for example, for a large national charity raffle — your organisation will need to either apply for a Gambling Commission operating licence or partner with a registered ELM. This is a more complex process and is generally only suitable for larger organisations. For further guidance, see the legal requirements section.