How to build a prize draw partnership for your large charity
In discussion with Crowdfunder’s Max, head of Campaigns.
The prize draws that raise transformational sums are not the ones with the best prizes. They are the ones where the partner has carefully considered the prize.
Our Projects team have worked on prize draw campaigns with artists from Coldplay to Ed Sheeran and charities from War Child to Crisis, and describe the pattern: “The partner promotes the draw. Their audience enters. The charity captures thousands of new supporters who had no prior connection to the cause.” The same mechanic, with a comparable prize, raises a fraction of the total when the partner doesn’t show up with genuine enthusiasm.
That distinction is the whole guide.
What a prize draw partnership actually does
The money is only part of it. When Max (our head of Campaigns) worked on a draw featuring a handful of pairs of tickets to a major event, face value around £20,000, it raised over £900,000. What surprised the charity most wasn’t the money. It was the 44,000 supporters. Most had never donated before. Many had probably never heard of the charity. They arrived because the event promoted the draw to their own audience, and that audience responded.
Charities spend significant sums every year on donor acquisition: digital ads, direct mail, cold outreach, brand campaigns. The costs keep going up, and the returns often diminish. A well-run prize draw delivers what all that spending is chasing; thousands of new supporters who actually want to be there, as a byproduct of something that also raises significant money.
The supporters who arrive through a well-matched prize draw are not random. They are pre-qualified, not by an algorithm, but by affinity. The introduction has been made by someone they trust. The relationship begins from a fundamentally different starting point.
This is what Max means by the right room. The artist, the festival, the brand: they don’t just bring reach. They bring the right people.
What makes a prize draw partner the right one
Three things have to be true.
They have something only they can offer. Not the most expensive prize. The most exclusive one. Tickets to a sold-out show that cannot be bought anywhere else. An object with genuine provenance and a story behind it. Alex Turner offered the guitar he played during Arctic Monkeys’ first headline set at Reading. Nick Cave offered hundreds of pieces of personal memorabilia, from guitars and signed posters to plectrums and lyric sheets, raising over £220,000. War Child’s prize draw offered two tickets to one of the hardest shows in London to get into and raised £195,000. None of these required significant cost to deliver. All of them were things that couldn’t be bought anywhere else.
Their audience is the right room for your cause. Max explains, a Glastonbury fan seeing a draw for a humanitarian charity is likely someone who is culturally engaged, progressive, and bothered about the state of things. The connection is already there, whether or not it’s been put into words. A brand with 500,000 passive followers is a different proposition entirely.
They genuinely care. This can’t be engineered. The draws that raise the most are the ones where the partner promotes the campaign because they want it to succeed, not because a contract requires it. Chris Martin has volunteered with Crisis for over twenty years. That relationship is why the Coldplay draw happened and why it worked. When the fit between the partner and the cause is right, the results are extraordinary. When it isn’t, the same mechanic raises a fraction.
The difference between a good partnership and a great one
Max makes an observation worth sitting with. The best partnerships he’s been involved in didn’t look like partnerships at all. There was no sponsorship deck, no tiered benefits package. Someone cared about a cause, wanted to help, and the conversation was about how to make something great, not how to structure a deal.
The charity sector has spent years professionalising partnerships, and for good reason. Contracts protect both sides. Deliverables create accountability. But somewhere along the way, a lot of partnership conversations start to feel like procurement. Real enthusiasm gets quietly negotiated out of existence. The partnerships that deliver the most are the ones where someone took ownership. They work because someone wanted them to, not because a contract told them to.
Prize draws make this dynamic unusually visible. Either someone promoted it, or they didn’t, and the numbers tell you exactly which one happened.
Where to start looking
The best partnerships come from existing relationships. Before approaching anyone new, map what you already have.
Your ambassadors and supporters. Who already publicly backs your charity? Who has volunteered, donated, or spoken up for you? These are your warmest starting points.
Organisations that control access to something scarce. Festivals with sold-out tickets. Artists with meaningful objects. Venues or experiences with genuine exclusivity. The question is simple: what do they have that their audience would genuinely want, and can’t get anywhere else?
Your existing corporate and institutional partners. Corporates who are often in the background of a relationship and campaign are sometimes the ones with the most to give, and also the most to gain.
How to approach a potential partner
Lead with what’s in it for them and their audience.
The draw gives their fans something genuinely exciting to be part of. It gives the partner a public, meaningful way to support a cause they care about. And unlike an auction, it’s inclusive: thousands of people can participate for a small entry fee, not just whoever can afford to bid.
A good first conversation is short. It covers what the prize would be, the timeline, how proceeds will be split if there are multiple beneficiaries, what they can offer in terms of promotion to their own audience, and whether they’d consider matching some of the funds raised alongside the prize.
Don’t overcomplicate it. The question you’re really asking is whether they care about this cause and whether they have something only they can give.
Setting up the campaign
Once a partner is confirmed, talk to Crowdfunder before you announce anything publicly. Prize draws have specific legal requirements around free entry routes, terms and conditions, and winner selection. Getting this right before launch is much easier than fixing it afterwards.
It’s also worth a discussion with the team about the build-up, any ad spend, and the Meta Pixel.
Making it repeatable
The draws that have raised the most have done it more than once. The Coldplay and Crisis/War Child campaign ran in December 2024 and returned in November 2025, more than doubling its total. Glastonbury has run its draw across multiple years.
A partner that has done it once and seen the results is far easier to bring back. Keep the relationship warm: share what the money funded, tell them what it made possible, give them genuine reasons to be proud of what the partnership achieved.
The best prize draw partnerships are not transactions. They are relationships that raise more every time.
Have something in mind, or even just the seed of an idea? The best draws often start with a simple “what if?”
Useful links:
How to run a six figure prize draw on Crowdfunder
How to run an online charity raffle in the UK [blog coming soon!]
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