Boost your regular giving income with a fun and engaging fundraising product that’s simple to set up and starts earning straight away.
Affinity Lottery is an off-the-shelf pooled lottery, aligned to your charity brand, that can get you started with weekly lottery in just a couple of weeks.
In this blog, we’ll explore more about Affinity Lottery, its advantages, success stories, and how it can be a game-changer for your charity.
Woods Valldata: Partners in Possibility
But before we go into the details, first let’s find out a bit more about Woods Valldata and our fundraising knowledge and expertise. Woods Valldata are passionate about people, partnerships and what can be achieved when we do great things together.
We offer charities the full spectrum of outsourced fundraising services – with our own people and processes, technical capabilities and breadth of expertise in-house – so you know the service you get is the best it can be.
Whatever you want when you outsource your cross-channel fundraising programmes – insight, strategy and innovation driving growth, or reliable processes and continuous improvements delivering faster and more accurate banking, thanking and fulfilment – we make your supporters feel appreciated and elevate your ability to achieve more.
Lotteries from Woods Valldata
As specialist online lottery software providers, Woods Valldata has the perfect fit lottery for your charity. We offer three weekly lottery products tailored to suit various charity types, objectives and lottery stages:
- Affinity Lottery: Ideal for smaller charities with limited investment and capacity or charities looking to test whether a lottery is right for them. This pooled lottery product shares players across the different charities within the Affinity family. It offers insured and guaranteed prizes, giving all players an equal chance to win, regardless of the charity they support.
- Aspire Lottery: Similar to Affinity but with a weekly prize draw including only your players. This lottery also offers insured top prizes with an additional guaranteed prize fund designed by you, making it more relevant to your supporters.
- Advantage Lottery: Aimed at charities looking to migrate or expand their weekly lottery with more complex and engaging features. Perfect for charities with already established programmes or with high weekly lottery aspirations from the start.
Affinity Lottery Explained
This weekly lottery product is designed to provide charities with a steady and predictable income stream.
It allows all charities, regardless of budget or the size of the fundraising team, to offer a lighter, more enjoyable way for supporters to regularly give.
It is digitally aligned, agile, and comes with a low financial commitment for set-up and no additional fees thereafter – only a percentage of each £1 played.
Affinity Lottery comes with:
- A player website branded to your charity
- Player password-protected access to update their details online
- A portal providing you instant access to how your lottery is performing
- Secure access to supporter records so that you can update their details
- A suite of reports providing in-depth information on your programme
- Access to the Woods Valldata Supporter Services team to manage any player enquiries
- Annual webinar on Gambling Commission LCCP and what this means to society lotteries
- And much more.
Affinity Lottery is therefore an excellent fit for smaller charities looking for a simple, risk-free way to generate income or larger organizations exploring the potential of lottery for their charity.
Sally Newman from PETA and Rob Ross from King’s College Hospital Charity joined us on our webinar Affinity Lottery: Regular Giving Made Easy (available to watch on-demand now) to talk about their experiences of launching their charity lottery with Affinity.
Here’s a quick summary of what they said:
PETA’s Liberation Lottery
PETA, an international animal rights organization, has seen remarkable growth with the PETA Liberation Lottery.
Sally explained that after delays caused by the legal and administrative complexities of setting up their own weekly lottery, joining the pooled Affinity Lottery meant that they could get going immediately.
Affinity Lottery has presented a fresh and engaging way for PETA to connect with a more diverse range of supporters who have responded well to the lottery proposition.
What’s more, the lottery has become an additional tool to introduce supporters to the organization and has already seen new lottery supporters interact with the charity’s activism communications more than 1,500 times.
Because Woods Valldata deal with the operational admin of the lottery and the portal provides everything that’s needed, PETA have been able to focus on attracting new players into the programme.
Using predominately digital media, within a few weeks of launching, they had over 50 new players: a significant achievement for any charity entering the lottery space. By the end of their first year, they had reached over 1,500 players—a testament to the product's appeal and their strategic approach to digital marketing.
Sally emphasized the importance of buy-in from senior leadership within the organization. While some might initially have had concerns about the gambling aspect, Sally found that showcasing the positive impact of the lottery and sharing compelling statistics has helped ease any reservations.
The success of the Liberation Lottery has even led to discussions about expanding similar lottery initiatives across PETA's various international territories.
King’s College Hospital Charity Lottery
King's College Hospital Charity plays a crucial role in supporting the King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, a significant healthcare institution in South-East London.
Rob Ross from King’s shared during the webinar that their decision to explore the lottery was motivated by the desire to enhance their regular giving programme. The Affinity Lottery, with its modest one-pound-a-week ask and the attraction of the top prize of £25,000 seemed like a perfect fit.
From launch in November 2021, the Kings College Hospital Charity Lottery had reached nearly 8,000 players per week by the Summer of 2023.
Although they started small with digital recruitment resulting in 500 players in the first few months, their face-to-face recruitment strategy, suited to the site-based situation of the charity, has been a game-changer.
The charity is now exploring opportunities to migrate to the Aspire lottery from Woods Valldata, driven by the incredible growth and success of their Affinity Lottery journey.
Looking at establishing a lottery? Here’s some key things to consider:
When embarking on your lottery journey, it's essential to consider a few key factors:
Unrestricted Regular Giving Income
Weekly lotteries will attract a diverse range of supporters to give unrestricted income for your charity on a regular basis. What’s more, you can build relationships with them and engage them further with your charity’s cause.
Internal Buy-In
The perceived risk of gambling for senior teams can often be a blocker to launching a charity weekly lottery. Address any concerns about gambling by emphasizing that a weekly lottery is primarily a fundraising product with a low and capped stake, backed by in-built validation measures to protect players.
It’s proven to be a low-problem gambling risk. Perhaps suggest any leaders with reservations speak to similar charities running a lottery to discuss how it works for them (Woods Valldata can assist with making those connections if needed).
Acquisition Investment
While a significant investment was traditionally required, Affinity Lottery allows you to start with just one player and scale as resources become available, making it a low-risk option for all charities, regardless of budget.
Retention Strategies
Implement strategies like welcome packs, triggered communications, and well-placed upgrade calls to retain and nurture your players – remember, it’s cheaper to keep a player playing than recruit a new one!
Affinity Lottery: A Testament to Success
Affinity Lottery is a powerful tool for charities seeking to increase regular giving income while engaging supporters in an exciting way.
With robust statistics, versatile options, and multiple success stories, it's a compelling choice for organizations of all sizes. Partner with online lottery software providers Woods Valldata, and together, let's make regular giving with lottery easy and enjoyable for your supporters while achieving your fundraising goals. To learn more, reach out to charities@woodsvalldata.co.uk.
Start your journey with Affinity Lottery today and witness the incredible impact it can have on your fundraising income and supporter experience.
Want to know more?
We’d love to chat with you about our suite of weekly lottery products – each one designed with specific needs in mind, so you’re sure to find your perfect fit. Contact us to arrange a meeting or demo today.
Alternatively, why not come along to our open day? We’d love to meet you and show you behind the scenes at Woods Valldata so you can see for yourself why we’d make your ideal external lottery manager.
Any terms that are unfamiliar to you? Check out our Glossary for some short and sweet explanations.
