Wondering where to start with fundraising for your school or local charity? Here are some pro tips from our PTA raffle organisers!
Before the raffle draw...
A couple of things to think about will help you get clear on your messaging to parents and get the raffle organised:
- What's your raffle being organised around? An event, a cause, or a need for books or resources? Do you have a fundraising target?
- Where will the prizes come from? Try local businesses, parent donations, or ask class reps to organise hampers.
- Parents: Put a call out for parent sponsors in a Classlist announcement.
- Parent business owners will often donate vouchers for classes or services. In return, their business gets visibility on the raffle prize list.
- Parents will also be a great source for bottles of wine, chocolates or unwanted Christmas and birthday presents. Just let them know where and when to drop items off.
- Local businesses community: Create a Google Sheet with local business names. Create a sample email request or phone script. Buddy up with another parent or two to phone or email, or ask for volunteers to manage this.
Keeping a shared record of who has been contacted in a collaborative spreadsheet means you can make a note of who you spoke to, who contacted them, the response, and whether you should contact them again and, if so, how soon. This will be useful for your next raffle! - Class Reps: Reach out to Class Reps and ask them to get their families to either donate prizes or coordinate a combined prize, such as a themed class hamper, e.g Spring, Festive, Sustainable, Family games night, or let them choose their own.
Once again, it's useful to keep a spreadsheet to follow up pledges with contact names.
Let the Class Rep know when the prize will be needed. Sometimes the winner can even arrange collection with the Rep or parent donor directly! - Purchase a prize: If you spot a great deal in a supermarket or the sales, for example, it may be worth the investment to use an item on offer as a prize. Simply consider your ticket pricing and how many tickets you need to sell to cover the cost of the investment. Something that will appeal to many is a good option.
See our blog post on popular school raffle prizes for inspiration.
TOP TIP: Keep prize collection simple: either gather all prizes in one place and get winners to come to the school, or encourage winners and donors to speak to each other.
On Classlist, ambassadors can create a Classlist raffle in 5 minutes by filling in:
- A title e.g. "Fundraising Raffle" or "Festive Fair Raffle" or something more creative! Let us know your ideas on our socials!
- The date and time for the draw.
- Ticket price and bundle options
e.g.
£2 per ticket
1, 5 and 10 ticket bundles giving your community a £2, £10 or £20 option. - Your association's Stripe account.
- One prize to get the ball rolling. This could be 'Many prizes to come' until you have the details.
On the day of the draw
TOP TIP: Take photos! Photos of the winners receiving their prizes, the event or of the prizes displayed nicely. These will be useful for a fun follow-up as well as for marketing for your next raffle!
Share in a post on Classlist.
Classlist digital raffle:
- Ticket sales end 15 minutes before the draw. The draw is automated so you don't have to do a thing, - you already have enough to do! However, if you have a live event such as a fair or festival, you can call out the winners and present their prizes.
- The raffle organisers receive an email with the list of winners, and all participants receive an email with their own personal result.
Don't forget the follow-up!
Before you move on to the next project, let people know how it went.
- Publish a thank you note for sponsors, donors, participants and, of course, your parent organisers on Classlist.
- Add photos of the winners or a quote or anecdote, the amount of money raised and, importantly, where the funds are going.
People love to hear the outcome!
The Classlist raffle dashboard will let you know which pricing bundle was most popular. This can help you tweak your pricing on the next raffle event to maximise fundraising for your community.
About Classlist digital raffles
Not only can you reduce your time and effort with digital raffles as well as reducing waste from paper and ticket books but it really is quite easy!
- You'll need a Stripe account - it's the cheapest payment processing platform for schools,
- Classlist platform competitive fees apply to raffles at 7.5%.
- Parents can access the raffle from the app if they are registered Classlist users so no multiple sign-ins required.
- You can also provide a public link if you want to sell tickets beyond your immediate school families so to those not on the app
Are you on Classlist yet?
Classlist's award-winning parent communications app is the safer alternative to public social networks. It's easy to set up! Be amongst more than 400,000 parents using Classlist in 30+ countries. Get started today!
