How to run a church raffle
Start to finish, in the order you’ll actually need it.
This is the practical version. Not the pitch, not the arithmetic on why you’d pay for a website (that’s its own page), just what to do, roughly in the order you’ll need to do it.
Before you start
A little groundwork now saves a scramble later.
Pick your dates around the calendar you already have
Spring and fall are the two natural windows for most parishes. Whatever your rhythm, set a start date and a drawing date before anything else, since every other decision on this page depends on it.
Get the go-ahead you actually need
A parish council vote, a pastor’s approval, or a diocesan sign-off where one is required. Confirm this before you promise anyone a prize, not after.
Have your EIN ready
Most raffle websites, including ours, verify your organization’s EIN at signup. Know it before you sit down to set things up so you’re not hunting for it mid-setup.
Check your state’s rules once, early
Raffle and charitable gaming laws vary by state, and some states require a certified physical drawing. The state-by-state page is the place to check, not a guess.
Pick your format
Most parishes already know which one they’re running, since it’s usually the same one as last year. If you’re deciding fresh, here’s the short version.
One big prize, or a few
Run the traditional draw. It’s the simplest format and the one most parishes already run on paper.
A table full of prizes, each with its own draw
Run a basket raffle, sometimes called a tricky tray or Chinese auction. Each prize gets its own ticket pool, so supporters put tickets where they actually want to win.
Something that builds over weeks or months
Run Queen of Hearts. A progressive weekly draw that can carry a fundraiser for a season instead of a single weekend.
A picnic, festival, or single big event
A duck race or ball drop works well tied to something already on the calendar, sold ahead of time and drawn live in front of everyone.
Setting ticket prices and bundles
“Why would anyone buy more than one ticket?”
A caller who’d never built a raffle before pushed back hard on this: why offer bundles of 1, 5, 10, or 25 tickets at all? What if somebody just wants three?
The numbers say otherwise. Across raffles we’ve supported, single-ticket pricing averages roughly $11 per order. Bundle pricing lifts that to about $64 per order.
The tickets themselves aren’t worth anything until somebody buys them. Selling ten for $64 raises far more than selling one for $10, and most supporters will take the bigger bundle once it’s in front of them.
Selling tickets: online, cash, and paper, together
The envelope after the collection, a book of paper tickets sold door to door, and the online orders all need to land in the same drawing. Most raffle tools only handle the online part, which is the single most common way a church raffle ends up disorganized.
We built the case for a single drawing pool into the homepage itself, since it’s the one thing worth understanding before you pick any raffle website: see how the one-pool model works. The short version: online, cash, checks, and paper books all feed one sequential pool, no duplicates, no gaps, owned by your parish.
Practically speaking: assign one person to enter cash and paper-book sales as they come in, rather than batching them the week of the drawing. A trickle is easy. A shoebox the night before is not.
Promoting it
Most of your sales will come from people who already know you. Make it easy for them to share, and easy for the people they share it with to buy in under a minute.
The bulletin and the announcement
The parish bulletin and a mention after Mass still outperform almost anything else you’ll try. Say the drawing date, not just “buy a ticket.”
Social sharing, made easy
A direct link that works on a phone, shared by a handful of parishioners to their own networks, tends to outperform a single official post by a wide margin. Make the link short and give people a reason to forward it, not just see it.
Give it real time to build
A raffle announced two weeks before the drawing sells differently than one announced two months before. Bundles (see above) matter more in a short window; a longer window lets word of mouth do more of the work.
Remind people it’s still open
A short reminder in the week before the drawing, especially a “last chance” framing, reliably brings in a final wave of orders from people who meant to buy and hadn’t yet.
Drawing day
A fair drawing is a sequential one: every ticket in the pool, numbered without gaps or duplicates, drawn from the same set regardless of how it was purchased. That’s the whole standard.
If your state requires a certified physical drawing, printable paper-ticket mode is the compliance-aware way to satisfy it without giving up the convenience of online sales for everything else. Check your state’s requirements before drawing day, not on it.
After the drawing
Announce it properly
Name the winner publicly, the same way you promoted the raffle. It’s part of what makes the next one credible.
A quick tax note
Raffle ticket purchases generally aren’t tax-deductible, since the buyer receives a chance to win something of value in return. That’s standard IRS treatment, not something specific to us, but it’s worth saying plainly to anyone who asks. We aren’t tax advisors; check with yours for anything specific to your parish.
Say thank you
To the winner, to whoever donated prizes, and to whoever actually ran it. Next year’s volunteer is more likely to say yes if this year’s felt appreciated.
Write down what you’d change
A three-line note while it’s fresh (what sold, what didn’t, what nearly went wrong) is worth more to next year’s volunteer than anything on this page.
Where to go from here
Raffle and charitable gaming laws vary by state and we don’t operate in every one of them. Nothing on this site is legal or tax advice.
We’ll look at your raffle before you sell anything
Every organization goes through a review before tickets go on sale. It isn’t a sales call. It’s the step that catches a raffle structure that was never going to work.