How to run a six figure prize draw on Crowdfunder
If you're reading this, you're already fundraising. You have a supporter base, a team, ongoing campaigns. This guide isn't about starting from scratch. It's about whether prize draws on Crowdfunder fit into what you're already doing, and when they're the right call.
Most people assume six-figure prize draw fundraising requires a celebrity, a festival, or a once-in-a-lifetime connection. It doesn't.
The route to six figures through prize draws is usually not one extraordinary campaign. It's a repeatable model, run consistently, that compounds over time. This guide explains how to build that model.
A prize draw works best when three things are true.
You have access to an exclusive prizeYou have an audience large enough to make the maths workYou have a cause people want to supportThis is why:
You have access to a prize that can't be bought anywhere else. This is non-negotiable. The prize doesn't need to be expensive to produce; it needs to be genuinely hard to get. Tickets to a sold-out event. A behind-the-scenes experience that isn't on public sale. A signed object with a real story behind it. The question isn't "what's valuable?" It's "what can only we offer?"
Edinburgh Zoo's prize draws offered private overnight access to the zoo, keeper experiences with specific animals, and Christmas encounters with a guaranteed winner. None of these were available on any public ticket website. That's the test.
You have an audience, or a partner has one, large enough to make the maths work. Prize draw entries often come in at £5 or £10. To raise £30,000 at £10 per entry you need 3,000 entries. Think about who you can actually reach and whether those numbers add up before you commit to a target.
You have a cause that people already want to support. The prize gives people a reason to act now. The cause is why they tell their friends. Heb Men's Cancer Support Group ran draws where the prizes were sourced from local businesses in the Hebrides, meaningful to locals and to a wider audience interested in that part of the world. The cause was personal and well-known in that community. That combination is what made three years of consecutive draws work.
The strongest prizes share one quality: they are not available anywhere else.
That doesn't mean expensive. War Child has raised strong totals from prize draws offering a meet and greet with Bastille (£2,445), a special winter show with AURORA (£19,580), and a signed Glastonbury screenprint (£7,260). These work because the audience for that artist wants that experience and there is no other route to it.
Edinburgh Zoo offered twelve different prizes across twelve draws, ranging from a private overnight stay paired with a Waldorf Astoria hotel night to monthly Giant Panda Magic Moments. The prize changed every time. The format didn't. By the later draws they were returning to an audience that already knew them and was already waiting for the next one to open.
The Aston Villa Foundation turned a Europa League Final moment into a fundraising window: a shirt signed by the squad, a certificate of authenticity, a cause tied directly to the club's community work. The prize was only possible because the team had reached the final, making it genuinely scarce and time-bound. For sports charities, major fixtures create natural prize draw windows that can be planned in advance and repeated season by season.
The question to ask isn't "can we get a big name?" It's "what do we have access to that our supporters would genuinely love to win, and can't get anywhere else?" Start with organisations and people you already have a relationship with. Think about what they control access to. Frame the conversation around what the partnership does for their audience, not just what it raises for you.
Prize draws have a different target logic to standard crowdfunding.
For a standard campaign, the target is tied to a specific deliverable. For a prize draw, there's rarely a natural ceiling. The mechanic isn't "we need this amount to do the thing." It's "the more people enter, the more good we can do." Treat your initial target as a milestone to hit and build past, not a ceiling to stop at.
Because donors aren't funding a specific deliverable, they're buying a ticket. Raising the target midway doesn't carry the same risk of appearing to move the goalposts that it does in standard crowdfunding. "We've smashed our target. Let's see how much more we can raise" keeps the energy going rather than closing the story off.
Communicate clearly about what the money funds. Transparency about the destination of funds is what builds the trust that makes people enter in the first place, and come back the following year.
The Talent Fund runs draws at very different scales across the same year: an Ed Sheeran draw raised £163,850 while an Annie Lennox/SISTERS draw raised £25,390. Running multiple draws throughout the year at different scales adds up. You don't need every draw to be the big one. You need a programme of draws that collectively builds to a significant annual total.
Don't launch cold
The prize draws that raise the most launch into an existing audience. Have your comms ready to go: an email to your list, posts ready for your social channels, and if you have a prize partner, their promotional support lined up for day one.
Sort the logistics before anything goes public
Prize draws have specific legal and compliance requirements around how winners are selected, how the draw is communicated, and the free postal entry route. Using Crowdfunder as your platform makes this significantly easier and you can talk to the team before you announce anything. Read our prize draw guidelines for more information
Think about timing
Prize draws work best when the prize has natural urgency: tickets to something happening soon, an experience tied to a specific moment, a seasonal window. Build the campaign around that urgency rather than around your fundraising calendar. Hope Blamire launches in late November and closes before Christmas, every year. That consistency is part of why it works.
Bring your own match funding if you can
A pound-for-pound match doubles the impact of every entry and gives people an additional reason to act now. The bring your own match fund mechanic on Crowdfunder is available from £3,000. Some campaigns have tripled their donations using this approach.
The active window can be shorter than a standard campaign
Urgency is built into the prize draw format. A draw tied to a specific upcoming event has a natural deadline that drives entries. That said, if you have a longer partnership arrangement and a large enough audience, a longer window adds meaningful income across the full period.
Treat the project page as a rolling content hub, not a static entry form
Updates matter even in a prize draw. Every update gives existing entrants a reason to share and gives new people a reason to enter. Progress posts, endorsement content from a prize partner, and impact stories from the cause all perform well. The data supports this: visitors who return to a campaign page give around twice as much as first-time visitors. Updates are the mechanism that brings them back.
Email is often the highest converting channel
Social is useful for reach and sharing, particularly for prize draws where the "chance to win" angle travels well. But the entry spike almost always comes from a direct email to an engaged list. Plan your sequencing before launch: a pre-launch teaser, a launch email, a mid-campaign momentum update, and a final 48-hour push.
Across Crowdfunder campaigns, email converts at 10.69% against 5.09% for organic social and 1.34% for paid search. The campaigns that raise six figures don't put all their eggs in one basket. They get pledges from an average of six different channels. Campaigns raising under £1,000 get pledges from three. Every new channel you activate is another way for someone to find you and give.
Gift Aid
Entries themselves don't qualify for Gift Aid, because an entry buys a chance to win rather than being a gift. What many charities do is link from the draw page to a standard donation page alongside it, for anyone who would rather just give. Those donations are eligible in the usual way, and it gives people who don't want to enter somewhere useful to go.
The prize draw model works best as an ongoing programme, not a one-off. The value compounds because each campaign builds your list of proven donors: people who've entered once and are likely to enter again if the next prize is compelling. The typical six-figure campaign raises 25% of its total in launch week and 12% in its final seven days, and runs for an average of 189 days. The differentiator isn't the launch. It's what happens in months two and three.
After every campaign, download your backer data, add it to your CRM, and treat it as the starting point for the next draw. These are people who gave money to your cause at a moment when they had an alternative. They're among your most actionable future donors.
Patchwork CIC runs a draw every month. Edinburgh Zoo ran twelve across several years. Hope Blamire runs one every November. Each model is different. What they share is that none of them are treating the prize draw as a one-off. They've built it into how they fundraise.
For any charity with a natural seasonal moment, a regular supporter base, or a consistent cause to fund, the question isn't whether prize draws can work. It's how often you can run them well.
Watch our video on how charities are making a huge impact
No celebrity backing or big brand partnership. A well-timed draw launched in late November, closed before Christmas, repeated year after year with the same discipline.
£347,066 across 41 prize draws
Patchwork CIC makes the case that monthly consistency compounds. You don't need a big moment. You need to keep showing up. This means more chances to reach new supporters.
Edinburgh Zoo tapped into something only they could offer - unique experiences for dedicated supporters. With a repeatable format, their audience were waiting each time.
Two exclusive prize draws gave fans the chance to win an intimate gig with Coldplay, with every entry going directly towards the charities efforts.
The chance to win a seat at an intimate acoustic set created a social media frenzy and thousands of new supporters for the cause.
Glastonbury tickets are near-impossible to get. British Red Cross, Oxfam and War Child turned that demand into over £3 million for humanitarian aid.
Ready to start a prize draw for your charity?
An easy way to boost donations, grow your reach, and give something back.