Raffles are a tried-and-true fundraising method, but they can be hard to implement manually, especially with online donations in the mix. Qgiv’s events forms can be the perfect solution to this dilemma. Here’s how to use a Qgiv event form for your nonprofit’s next raffle.
Please note: This checklist is by no means a complete list of protocols your nonprofit should consider putting in place when hosting a charity raffle. Consider it a starting point that you can build upon based on your organization’s unique needs. You should always consult your experts, such as legal counsel or event planners, to ensure you are following best practice for your organization and your event. Check out this great resource to learn more about games of chance and compliance!
Contents:
- Setting up your event form to sell raffle tickets
- How purchasing raffle tickets looks to donors
- How to select raffle winners
There are a few perks of using event forms to set up your raffle:
- Makes it easy to capture contact info of raffle ticket purchaser.
- Built-in ability to purchase multiple raffle tickets.
- Ability to apply discounts for multi-ticket purchases.
- Can manually enter offline raffle purchases through the Virtual Terminal (the purchase is an event registration in the app, so event tickets are used as a digital raffle ticket).
Setting up your event form to sell raffle tickets
1. Create a new Qgiv event form
To create a new event form, navigate to Form Management in the Fundraising menu and click Clone Form on an existing Qgiv donation form.
Next, go through the four steps of creating a new form.
a): Name the form and choose whether or not to clone API access and analytics.
b): Select form attributes to carry over from the existing form to the new form.
Chances are, you’re not going to want to carry over any existing attributes because this form is a raffle form and will be used a little differently.
c): Assign user permissions for the raffle form.
d): Review new form settings and click Create Form to complete form cloning.
2. Create an event on the new form and configure event settings
Navigate to your new form and click Events.
On the Events page click the Settings tab to fill out the Events Banner fields.
On this page, enable the Events Banner if it isn’t already toggled on. This shows donors how to reach the event side of your form to purchase raffle tickets. You can also use this menu to customize the wording on the Events Banner.
Save the Events Banner settings.
On the Active/Inactive tab, you should see the Add New Event button. Click this button to set up your specific raffle ticket event form.
Clicking the button will open the Event Settings menu for the specific event. You can read more about specific event settings in this Help Desk article.
Before diving into your event settings, here are some important items to keep in mind:
- Because you’re using this form to sell raffle tickets, change the receipt language to reflect that receipts reference raffle ticket purchases, not tickets to an event.
- Be sure to toggle on one-time donations for those who want to give an additional donation while purchasing raffle tickets.
- Be mindful when filling in the registration start and end dates. When you set a start and end date for registrations, you create the window during which you can sell raffle tickets on this form. If the raffle coincides with an event or if there’s a special drawing time, set the registration cutoff date to just before the drawing is to take place.
3. Create a package to sell raffle tickets
Once you’ve saved your event settings, you’ll be taken to the Packages tab. Packages normally are how Qgiv users sell tickets to an event. For this form, packages are going to be how you sell your raffle tickets.
Click either the Add New Package button or “create one now” link to create a new package.
Before you design your raffle ticket package, answer these questions to determine the best way to create your package.
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Is there a discount for purchasing multiple raffle tickets?
- If yes, can the multi-ticket discount amount be applied evenly across the number of purchased tickets or will the purchase total be off by a few cents?
- Is there one prize or multiple prizes donors can enter to win?
The answers to this question determine the best way to set up your package.
If you’re not offering a multi-ticket discount, you can set the package price as the cost of one raffle ticket.
If you do want to add a discount, you can still set the package price as the cost of one raffle ticket, but you’ll want to be mindful of how the discounts are applied. In some cases, a discount can’t be applied evenly across the number of tickets. For instance, this raffle ticket discount was supposed to be three tickets for $100. Because $100 isn’t divisible by three, Qgiv charged $99.99 with each ticket selling for $33.33.
If your discount is going to be divisible evenly across the number of tickets purchased, it’ll be fine to set a multi-ticket discount this way. If not, you can create packages that coincide with a set number of tickets at the price you choose. Donors will then have to select that package deal on the event form to purchase that number of tickets.
If you have more than one prize you’re selling raffle tickets for, this can be accommodated by creating a custom field for your raffle ticket package. Simply create a drop-down menu field and make it required for raffle ticket purchases. For each ticket, donors will select a prize option from the drop-down menu. This determines what prize or prizes they enter the drawing to win.
Once you’ve decided how you want to set up your package, complete the package fields to set it up.
First, name your package and add an optional description.
Skip the Private Package toggle, and if you set up event start/end dates in on the Details tab, you can skip the Include registration start and end dates toggle as well.
Leave the Tickets Included per package set to 1 if you only want to include one raffle ticket with this package.
If you want a single package to include multiple tickets, adjust the Tickets Included field accordingly. For instance, if users buy a "5 Raffle Tickets" package, the number of tickets included per package should be five instead of one. That means five tickets will be generated when a donor buys this package.
In this area, you can also set the Default Quantity of packages that will be pre-populated when someone visits the registration form. Leaving this set to 0 will allow ticket purchasers to select their own number of packages.
If you want to limit the number of tickets you sell, you can do so using the Max Available per Event and Max Available per Transaction settings. If you have unlimited tickets available, leave these fields set to Unlimited.
Next, assign a Price for the package. Leave the Fair Market Value at $0.00.
After you’ve set the price, skip the early bird discount. The next field to consider is the Include a multi-package discount toggle. Enabling this feature makes a table appear where users can input a per package price when buying multiple packages.
For instance, if the price of a raffle ticket is $5.00 but you want to offer a $1.00 discount when buying 5 or more packages, you can set the price for 5 or more packages to $4.00.
Set the discounted price for the multi-ticket purchase fields. For amounts you’re not offering a discount for, keep the per package price the same as the cost of one package. Bear in mind that users who buy more than 10 tickets will receive the 10+ packages discount for any number over ten.
When satisfied with your package settings, click the Add New Package button to create the package. Repeat this process as needed if you’re creating multi-ticket packages without using the Include a multi-package discount table.
4. Create a custom raffle ticket field
Once you’ve built your package(s), click the Custom Fields tab to create a custom raffle ticket field.
You’ll display the custom field when donors purchase their packages. Donors will select a custom field response for each raffle ticket they purchase. To create a new field, click the Add New Field button or the “create one now” link.
The custom field is where donors will choose what prize their raffle ticket will be entered to win.
First, pick a Field Type.
If you have multiple prize options, select Dropdown from the Field Type list and enter the possible prizes. The drop-down list defaults to three options. You can add more options by clicking the Add Option button. Donors will then pick a prize from the drop-down menu for each ticket they purchase.
Enter a Field Label and optional Field Help Text.
The field label is displayed on the form when donors make their purchase. This is what they’ll see. You can enter something like, "Please select your prize."
If there’s only one prize, you can use a Checkbox Field Type so donors must check the box to confirm they are entering the drawing. In this case you’ll want the displayed Field Label to read something like, “Enter me to win [Prize].”
If you'd like to offer some additional explanatory text to raffle ticket purchasers, you can enter it in the Field Help Text area.
Next, select "Yes" for Required so donors can’t check out without making their raffle prize selection.
For the Display Settings, select Per Ticket if you want to display the field for every raffle ticket purchased.
If you're selling packages that include multiple tickets, and you want all tickets in the package to apply to the same prize, you can select Per Package. Selecting Per Package will display this question once for the whole package, regardless of how many raffle tickets are included.
Then, add this custom field to your raffle ticket packages by selecting the relevant packages in the Associate Field With Specific Package(s) area.
Finally, you can customize the Reporting Label for the field. The Reporting Label is how you’ll identify this custom field in your Qgiv Registration Report. You’ll need to add a label you can identify quickly when you’re drawing your raffle winners. Your Reporting Label can match your Field Label or can be shortened to “Raffle Prize” or something similar.
Click the Add New Field button to create the field.
Once added, you’ll return to the Fields tab. There are two additional tabs, Promo Codes and Attendees. You will not need these tabs for your raffle. They can be ignored.
To start the raffle, navigate back to the Events list and toggle your created Raffle Ticket event to active. It will now display on your form.
Donors can now purchase raffle tickets using your event form!
How purchasing raffle tickets looks to donors
When donors access your form, they’ll see a Get Tickets button. You can customize this button text in Event Builder.
Your raffle information will be displayed, as will the raffle package(s) you created.
The donor then chooses the number of raffle tickets to buy and determines if they’ll make a one-time donation. The total cost they’ll be charged will be calculated automatically. Any multi-ticket discounts will also be automatically applied.
If you chose to use multiple packages to offer a multi-ticket discount, donors will see multiple package options rather than one Raffle Ticket package.
Next, donors would enter their personal information.
After the Your Details step is the Additional Details step, where donors specify what prize they want their raffle ticket purchase to count toward. Users can specify one prize per ticket but can put tickets in for multiple prizes if more than one prize is available.
If there’s only one prize, the dropdown menu of choices would be replaced with a single checkbox that donors would select for each ticket.
Lastly, donors would complete their Payment Details to enter the raffle.
How to select raffle winners
When the raffle ticket purchase window closes, you can use Qgiv to collect the names and contact information of every raffle ticket purchaser.
Use Qgiv’s Registration Report to pull a report of donors that purchased raffle tickets. This report will show each purchaser and the number of tickets in their name. Include the Raffle Prize custom field in the export of the report to see which prizes each raffle participant entered to win.
To pull the report, go to Reporting then select Reports from the menu on the left side of the screen.
Scroll down to the Qgiv Registrations report to find the right report. It’s located in the Standard Qgiv Reports section. Then click the View Report button.
Once you can see the report, click the Advanced Filtering button and select your raffle form. Then, add the Participant Fields filter and select the custom field answers for your raffle prize participant field(s).
Change the Range to include all purchases since the form became active. An easy way to do this is to select All.
The table below won’t show the Participant Fields, but you can view the selected raffle prizes by downloading the report as an Excel spreadsheet or .CSV file.
Once you’ve downloaded the Qgiv Registrations report, open and sort the report by the custom field that lists the donor’s selected raffle prize. This way, you’ll be able to easily sort raffle tickets by prize.
In Excel, this can be done by clicking Data, then Sort, then select the Raffle Prize column. Then click “OK” to sort.
To make the next part easier, hide all columns except for the raffle prize and participant first and last name fields. To do this, highlight the columns between Last Name and Raffle Prize.
Then, right click the selected fields and select Hide from the menu that appears. Now, you should see the First Name, Last Name, and Raffle Prize fields grouped together.
Next, use an Excel Macro or random name picker to determine the raffle winner for each prize.
An easy way to do this is using the website, https://wheelofnames.com. Simply go to the site and add the participant names for each category for the number of times they had tickets.
For instance, in the screenshot above, Dale Gribble purchased one raffle ticket for the 65” Smart TV. His full name would be entered once. For Chad Lessman or Hank Hill who have multiple tickets for this prize, you’d enter their full name for each ticket they bought. Chad Lessman bought five tickets for this prize so his name would be entered five times. Hank Hill bought fifteen tickets so his name would be entered fifteen times.
To add the names to Wheel of Names, select the first name and last name cells for that prize category. You can select multiple cells by holding down the mouse button and scrolling to the end of the entries for that prize. Copy these selected cells and paste them into the Name field in Wheel of Names. Entrants will be listed with their first and last name displayed. People with multiple entries will have their name listed multiple times on the wheel.
Once all entries are entered for that prize, click the wheel to spin. The wheel spinning animation will occur and the winner will be selected randomly.
Repeat this process for each raffle prize. Be sure to remove the names of the entrants from previous categories before copying and pasting entrants for each raffle prize.