Raffles are very popular worldwide for fundraising as well as offering great prizes. Smartplay offers several options for selecting raffle winners

In some countries, raffles can be established to offer prizes such as cars, motorbikes and even houses. In the United States, raffles are frequently used to as an add on activity to raise funds at charity events. Raffles work well for fundraising because they are easy to implement. Picking winners could be as easy as picking selecting a ticket out of a giant bin!

Of course if you want more drama and excitement, you may consider using a lottery-style ball machine or if the total number of entries is quite large, a digital drawing system. A number of Smartplay clients implement raffles using the Origin™ Digital Draw System. With Origin, you upload a spreadsheet of participants and in seconds generate a list of one to hundreds of winners at multiple prize levels.

Many UK-based raffles utilize large bins with hundreds or thousands of balls. This approach can be challenging, with presenting all of the balls to the players so they know all balls are present. Displaying then depositing all balls into the bin prior to each draw takes. And over time, with so much handling, balls can change in weight, which can possibly skew the outcome.

A more manageable approach with a traditional ball machine is using a multi-chamber machine whereby 10’s, 100’s, 1000’s, 10,000’s is represented each by one chamber. Or one chamber could include the alphabet (A-Z) and the other numbers (0-9). You could also introduce color to add some variety. The video below shows running a raffle with 2,000 entries, with only balls “0” and “1” in the first chamber, providing combinations 0000 to 1999 — a total of 2,000 entries.

 

If your budget is a bit tighter, you could opt for a single chamber machine and simply take turns drawing the 10’s, 100’s and so on. You could use a marker or magnetic board to post the results, possibly starting from the left, drawing the largest number first.

 

Custom Designed Raffle Machines

If your budget allows, you might consider a custom-designed raffle machine — one that can display balls, then automatically drop them in the raffle bin. We’ve designed and build hundreds of custom machines. Here’s one example of a custom raffle bin used to select the lucky winners for the New Jersey lottery’s annual event to recognize some of their most active players.

 

Contact us to discuss your raffle project.

Get the ball rolling. Contact us to discuss your raffle . . .