From £1k to £1m: Raise more money through a prize draw on Crowdfunder
How to run an online raffle style prize draw
Giving Tuesday is an international day dedicated to celebrating all forms of generosity; time, money and goods, and every year organisations come together to inspire people to give in whatever way they can. On the day itself, there'll be a lot of noise and asks from fundraisers. A prize draw offers something different: rather than a straight ask, supporters get something back, a chance to win, which can help an appeal stand out in a crowded inbox or feed.
This guide covers how prize draws work as a fundraising method, what makes a good one, and how charities and fundraisers of any scale can use one to build toward Giving Tuesday.
A different kind of ask, not a variation of crowdfunding
A prize draw is a competition people enter for a chance to win a prize, in return for a donation. It works differently to a standard donation ask or crowdfunding campaign in one important way: because everyone has an equal chance of winning regardless of how much they give, it's inclusive in a way an auction, which tends to reward whoever bids highest, isn't.
A prize draw can also reach further than a typical crowdfunding campaign, because the prize itself, not just the cause, gives people a reason to take part, including people who wouldn't otherwise engage. That makes it a good complement to, rather than a substitute for, a straightforward crowdfunding push: many organisations run a prize draw to bring in that wider audience, alongside a separate crowdfunding campaign that can carry match funding.
For those wanting to run a fundraiser, our companion piece, "Raise 10K more this Giving Tuesday," covers the match-funded route.
Timing: running a prize draw around Giving Tuesday
Most prize draw guidance suggests running a draw for four to six weeks, giving enough time to build an audience and promote it properly before picking a winner. A prize draw, especially around Christmas, can benefit from a shorter time frame of two to four weeks.
For Giving Tuesday specifically, closing the draw exactly on the day itself isn't necessarily the best approach, it means competing for attention against every other charity's direct donation ask landing in supporters' inboxes on the same day. Two alternatives work better:
- Close the draw the day after Giving Tuesday (or a few days after). Use Giving Tuesday itself to ride the day's promotional energy and hashtags, then let the "last chance to enter" urgency land on its own, quieter day that's clear of the noise, and with breathing room to handle winner selection without doing it in the middle of Giving Tuesday chaos.
- Use Giving Tuesday as the midway moment, not the finish line. Run the draw for several weeks either side of it, with Giving Tuesday as the promotional spike partway through (in line with the "launch → midway update → final push" pattern below), and a separate, later closing date entirely of its own.
Who can run one
Prize draws are accessible to organisations of any size, there's no minimum scale needed to make one work:
- Large charities with existing high-profile networks can secure "money-can't-buy" experiences that generate significant reach
- Local charities, grassroots clubs and community groups can run smaller, regular draws, sports clubs sourcing prizes from partner brands, for example
- Individuals fundraising on behalf of one or more charities can build a prize draw from scratch, without any existing high-profile contacts, simply by asking their own network for donated prizes
What makes a strong prize draw
Small scale (£3,560) — Portloe Community Benefit Society ran a prize draw to help save their local pub, The Ship Inn, a great example of a community group rallying around a shared local asset rather than a cause in the traditional charity sense.
Medium scale (£23,608) — Hebridean Men's Cancer Support Group ran a Christmas prize draw that raised nearly £24,000, a small, volunteer-run support group showing the model scales well beyond a handful of donated vouchers.
Larger-medium scale (£31,590) — Fauna & Flora International offered the chance to win a trip to see mountain gorillas, proof a single, genuinely exclusive experience prize can carry a mid-sized conservation charity's draw a long way without needing a celebrity partner.
A few consistent principles, regardless of scale:
- The prize should feel disproportionately valuable relative to the entry price — if entry is £5, the prize should feel like it's worth £100+.
- A bundle of smaller prizes can work as well as one headline prize — useful for charities without access to a single big-ticket item.
- Connecting the prize to the cause tends to perform best — supporters who already care about the cause, and are also excited about the prize, convert at the highest rate. But a great prize with no obvious link to the cause can still work well.
- Keep the entry offer simple — people should immediately understand what they could win and what it costs to enter.
- Use tiered pricing to encourage bigger entries — e.g. £5 for one entry, £10 for three, £15 for six — rather than a single flat entry price. It gives supporters a reason to give a little more, since they're getting more entries for their money.
- Compliance matters, but it's more straightforward than it sounds — a prize draw on Crowdfunder does not require a licence from the Gambling Commission, as long as it includes a free entry route (the prize draw owner are responsible for making sure free entrants have the same chance of winning as paid ones).
- Building partnerships to source prizes
A few practical starting points:
- Map out who your potential prize-givers might be: celebrity ambassadors, patrons, trustee networks, local businesses, existing partners
- Make a direct, simple ask, explain what you're doing and why, and most organisations are more open to being asked than you would expect
- Where possible, get the prize-giver to promote the draw to their own audience too, this is often where the biggest jump in reach comes from, since it's rarely just about the prize's value, but who else it puts your cause in front of
Volunteers can play a role at every stage
Given Giving Tuesday's focus on all forms of generosity, not just financial ones, it's worth thinking about where volunteers fit into a prize draw, not just paid staff time:
- Sourcing prizes - a small team reaching out to local businesses or the organisation's wider network can cover a lot of ground quickly, and it's often a nice way to get to know volunteers better in the process (they may have skills, businesses or contacts of their own worth tapping into)
- Admin support - collating postal and other free entries alongside paid ones is a manageable, valuable task to hand to volunteers
- Amplifying reach - volunteers sharing the draw with their own networks helps grow an organic supporter base beyond the charity's existing reach
Promoting your prize draw
- Email first, then amplify with social - email tends to reach your most engaged supporters most effectively
- Multiple touch points rather than one push - a launch moment, a midway update, a Giving Tuesday countdown and push, and a final "last chance to enter" moment tend to outperform a single announcement
- Go direct wherever possible - over half of pledges to festive campaigns come through direct channels like WhatsApp and personal email, rather than mass communications, so don't default to a generic blast if a more personal message is an option
- Lean into urgency - every prize draw has a deadline, and reminding people of that helps drive last-minute entries
- Track what's working if running paid ads - ad tracking tools can show which messages are actually converting clicks into donations, not just clicks. The WWF used this approach on a prize draw saw three times the return on their ad spend, and used the same insight to sharpen their wider marketing, not just that one campaign.
Picking a winner fairly
Once a draw closes:
- Compile all entries (including any postal/free entries) into one list
- Use a random number generator to select a winner, and one or two runners-up, in case a winner doesn't respond in time
- Announce the winner publicly and update supporters, this closes the loop and builds goodwill for the next draw. Making a small event of it (a live announcement, a countdown, a drum roll) tends to go down well and builds anticipation for the next one
Examples of successful prize draws
At the larger end, a few well-known examples show what's possible with the right partner and prize:
- Coldplay, Crisis and War Child ran exclusive prize draws for the chance to win tickets to an intimate gig — a prize unavailable any other way. Between them, the draws raised over £1 million from more than 40,000 supporters, showing how a genuinely exclusive, money-can't-buy prize, promoted by the prize-giver to their own fanbase, can reach a whole new audience rather than just the highest bidders.
- Edinburgh Zoo's "12 magical animal encounters" drew on a 12-days-of-Christmas format — a new prize announced each day — and is a good example of a charity using an asset it already controls (access to the zoo) rather than needing an external celebrity partner. It's also a model the zoo has repeated and grown year on year.
- Hope Blamire's Christmas charity draw is a great example of what one person can build without any celebrity or brand partner at all. An individual fundraiser, Hope Blamire spent the run-up to Christmas collecting dozens of donated prizes from her own network, everything from cottage stays to artwork to hampers, and ran a draw split equally across four charities (Abernecessities, Eilidh's Trust, Glencoe Mountain Rescue and My Name's Doddie Foundation). The 2022 draw alone raised £136,524 from 7,998 supporters, and it's a model she's grown year on year simply by asking, and asking again.
At a smaller, more attainable scale, several charities on Crowdfunder show the model works just as well without a headline partner:
Patchwork House Women's Centre CIC, a women's centre in Torquay, has built prize draws into a regular part of how it fundraises rather than a once-a-year event. It has run several since 2023, including a Father's Day draw (£7,939), a summer draw (£7,591), an online store launch draw (£6,998) and a Christmas draw featuring advent calendars and a Dyson (£13,726). No celebrity prizes, no big-name partner, just a steady rhythm of modest, well-run draws that keep its community coming back.
The Flying Seagull Project, a charity bringing play and joy to children in crisis situations, raised £7,605 through a prize draw, a good example of a cause-led campaign where the story does as much work as the prize.
Free Kicks Foundation raised £7,165 by offering Oasis hospitality tickets at Wembley, proof that a single, genuinely exciting experience prize can carry a draw on its own, without needing a roster of donated items.
Beauty Backed Trust raised £7,087 through its October prize draw, run by a charity supporting people affected by cancer through beauty and wellbeing services.
Ipswich Town Foundation, the football club's charitable foundation, raised £18,625 offering a signed match-worn shirt, showing how an existing fanbase, even without a global brand behind it, can meaningfully scale up a draw's reach.
Medical Aid for Palestinians raised £13,895 offering festival tickets, tying the prize itself to the kind of audience likely to already care about the cause.
A final thought for Giving Tuesday
Prize draws work well as a repeatable activity, not just a one-off campaign, several of the examples above run their draws every year, sometimes monthly, building a loyal audience who return each time. For a fundraiser thinking beyond a single Giving Tuesday push, a well-run prize draw can become an annual fixture supporters look forward to, rather than a one-off ask.
If you'd like to talk to the team, email projects@crowdfunder.co.uk
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For more on planning a campaign from scratch, Crowdfunder's Knowledge Hub is worth a look too.
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