Are you thinking of incorporating a raffle as part of your charity’s fundraising initiatives?
Much like weekly lottery and other prize-led fundraising channels, raffle has soared in popularity as a fundraising initiative for charities over the last few years.
In fact, the percentage of online play alone for raffle is increasing year-on-year; there’s been a 77% uplift in online response, and 18% increase in online gift between 2019 and 2021. What's more, in 2024 and average of 14% of all raffle response is digital – and it looks like this won’t be slowing down any time soon. You can hear more about the latest raffle trends in our annual Prize-led Fundraising Benchmarks and Trends webinar available to UK charities to download now.
Here at Woods Valldata, however, we know that every charity is unique, and will have different fundraising initiatives that work best for them.
So, how can you be sure that raffle is truly the best avenue for your own organisation, and how can Woods Valldata help with your overall raffle strategy and raffle programme?
Read on to find out!
A raffle programme is an excellent choice for your charity if you’re aiming to:
1. Diversify your income streams
Income generation for charities has seen a huge shake-up in the last couple of years. As a result of the pandemic and the ongoing cost of living crisis, there has been a decrease in donations through methods such as regular giving, events, and community fundraising.
If your own charity has experienced this or something similar, then it’s likely you’ll have thought about how you can diversify your income streams to attract new supporters and offer alternative ways to donate.
This is an area in which a raffle will truly prevail!
In short, raffle not only provides your current supporters with an additional, new and fun way to donate to your cause, but will give you a whole new range of ways to boost awareness and exposure of your charity into the wider world and attract potential new players (more on that below).
What’s more, you can cross-sell into raffle from your current programmes too. For a real-life example of how Woods Valldata helped RSPB to keep their players plying, be sure to read about how we assisted them with their raffle strategy here.
2. Grow the lifetime value of your supporters
The lifetime value of a supporter is the average measure of how much supporters donate to your cause from the time they start donating to the end of their support. This is also often seen abbreviated to LTV.
Raffle can have an incredible impact on this value score; again, due to the opportunities available to cross-sell it within your other programmes, but also because it can:
- Re-engage lapsed supporters by offering them a new and exciting way to donate to your cause
- Encourage the acquisition of new supporters who may be more motivated by winning than giving, but are still keen to support a worthy cause
3. Find new ways to make your supporters feel truly valued
It goes without saying that the more valued your charity’s supporters feel, and the more of an impact they believe they are having in the success of your charity’s cause, the more likely they will be to stick around for the long haul. It's all about building lasting relationships with your supporters.
Raffle opens a whole new avenue in which to communicate with your supporters, enrich the supporter journey and take a stewardship approach i.e., by thanking them, highlighting the positive difference that playing your raffle is making, and keeping them up to date
For example, as part of your raffle strategy, you could create a personalised “thank you” letter or email that also explains how their raffle donation will directly help your charity’s cause.
You could even phone them, if they’ve given you permission to do so, or you could send them regular updates via email to let them know how the cause that the supporter has put their money towards is going.
In short, the opportunities to make your supporters feel valued and want to continue supporting your charity are almost endless with a raffle!
4. See a strong return on investment (ROI) from your fundraising initiatives
Understandably, you’ll want to know that a charity raffle is going to provide you with the best possible ROI. The good news is that, executed properly, it absolutely will!
In fact, our experts at Woods Valldata found that raffle consistently exceeded a 2:1 return for our charity partners!
One fantastic example of this is the charity raffle that the Woods Valldata supported The Air Ambulance Service (TAAS) with, which saw the charity achieve an astounding £1M+ annual raffle income.
5. Implement a strong raffle strategy from the outset
At Woods Valldata, we are experts in raffle strategy and can help you to get the most out of your raffle programme.
We will work together with you to forecast your programme over time based on mailing volumes, channel response rates, and channel budgets.
What’s more, we can also work with you on ask strategies, incentives to meet your objectives, prize structure, campaign timings, creative approach, segmentation and targeting, and so much more.
That's exactly what we did with RNIB, working to make their raffle the best in Britain.
A raffle is also a great choice for your charity if you have the capacity, resources and appetite for success.
If you have a good-sized supporter mailing base, the budget available for launch, acquisition and retention, the capacity to set up and manage the programme (including ongoing planning and admin) and the ambition within your internal teams to succeed, then a raffle is a brilliant string to add to your fundraising bow!
Why not see whether raffle is right for you by taking a journey on our decision making tree?
At Woods Valldata, we truly believe in raffles as an effective channel for income generation for charities.
We would therefore be delighted to team up with you in support of your raffle programme, should you choose to implement one!
Just a few of the things we offer as part of our raffle service include raffle strategy and programme direction, data processing and prep, pack and raffle ticket print and production, response handling and thanking and banking.
What’s more, as an experienced external lottery manager, we not only have excellent compliance standards, but we also run an annual online Gambling Commission Roadshow to keep our charity partners at the very forefront of legislation and compliance requirements from the Gambling Commission.
If you’d like to learn the full scope of our raffle offering or would like to discuss the ideas and goals you have in mind for your raffle, book a free consultation with us today!
