One keen parent at a small school spent a few weekday mornings walking the main street. She came back with about $2,000 of vouchers and products from local businesses: a café, a hair salon, a garden centre, a beauty therapist, the butcher. Nobody wrote a cheque, and most of it cost the businesses very little.
That pile of prizes became a donated-prize raffle. This guide walks through how to do the same: who to ask, what to ask for, how to package it so tickets actually sell, and how to make sure the same businesses say yes next year.
Do the maths before your first visit
A raffle with $2,000 of prizes is a Class 2 raffle, which a society can run without a licence. DIA's lottery game rules say prizes must be worth at least 20% of the lottery's gross potential income, which DIA counts as every ticket printed times the single-ticket price, with donated prizes at retail value. Flip that around and every $1 of prizes lets you print up to $5 of tickets, so $2,000 of prizes allows up to about $10,000 of tickets. The full rules for each class are on our raffle rules page.
| Ticket price | Tickets you can print | Books of 10 | Books of 25 |
|---|---|---|---|
| $2 | 5,000 | 500 | 200 |
| $5 | 2,000 | 200 | 80 |
| $10 | 1,000 | 100 | 40 |
Two things to know. The cap uses the single-ticket price, so a "3 for $10" deal never lets you print more. And the cap is a ceiling, not a target. Count your realistic sellers, assume one book each, and add about 20% spare.
Ask for things that cost them little
The donation goes on the ticket at full retail value, but what it costs the business is usually much less. These are the asks that tend to land (values are typical retail).
- Gift vouchers ($25 to $100) from cafés, restaurants and shops. They only cost the business the goods at cost price when redeemed, and often bring in a new customer who spends more. Check the expiry outlasts your draw by months.
- Beauty services ($50 to $150): lashes, nails, brows, a massage or facial. Mostly staff time in quiet slots.
- A haircut and colour ($80 to $250). Same logic.
- A WOF, car valet or dog groom ($60 to $300). If a garage hesitates at a full service, a WOF or valet has no parts cost.
- Garden goods ($80 to $200): a mulch, compost or bark delivery, or a plant voucher. Bulk product, and the drop can join an existing run.
- Experiences with empty seats ($30 to $300): a round of golf, cinema passes, an escape room, a month at the gym, a term of swimming lessons.
- An hour of a tradie's time ($100 to $300), with the area and expiry written down.
- A meat pack from the local butcher ($50 to $200).
- End-of-line stock they'd discount anyway. Value it at today's retail price, not the original.
On tax: from 1 April 2024, trading stock given to an approved donee organisation typically isn't taxed as if it were sold, according to IRD. For donated services, the retail value isn't itself deductible, though the business's ordinary costs usually still are. Schools are approved donees; many sports clubs aren't. Check before you mention a "tax receipt".
How to ask
Go in person, mid-morning on a weekday, and ask for the owner or manager. Allow 4 to 8 weeks before the books go out, and avoid the November and December rush if you can.
A 60-second ask that covers everything:
Kia ora, I'm Sam, a parent at the school. We're running a raffle for the Year 6 camp and our goal is $5,000. We're asking a few local businesses to donate a prize: a voucher, a service, or some stock. Anything around $50 to $150 is perfect. Your business name goes on every ticket and the poster, and we'll thank you on Facebook and in the newsletter. We print on the 20th, so could you let me know by the 15th?
Leave a one-page letter with your group's legal name, the purpose and goal, the draw date, how you'll credit them, your phone number and a reply-by date.
Then keep a simple list: business, contact, date asked, outcome, prize, retail value, date collected, date thanked. It turns next year's round into a morning's work. Every prize must be confirmed and in your hands before you print, because prizes can't change once sales start.
Before a prize goes on the ticket, check:
- Confirmed value: the retail value, in writing.
- Restrictions: any conditions, which DIA requires you to show at the point of sale.
- Expiry: months past the draw date, since winners can take up to 3 months to receive prizes.
- Delivery area: where a delivery or tradie's visit will reach.
- Redemption contact: who the winner calls to book or collect.
One big prize, lots of small ones, or themed packs?
Honest answer: nobody has good evidence. We looked and found only practitioner opinion, mostly from overseas raffle-software companies. Here's roughly what they say.
| Structure | Strengths | Weaknesses |
|---|---|---|
| One big prize (all $2,000 together) | One headline that sells to strangers at a supermarket table. Simple draw. | Most buyers win nothing. A pile of unrelated vouchers makes a muddled headline. |
| Many small prizes (say 20 × $100) | "Lots of chances to win" suits family buyers. Every donor gets their own line. | Weak headline. Twenty winners to contact and deliver to. |
| Themed packs | Turns $50 donations into $200 to $400 prizes that are easy to describe. Each pack appeals to a clear group of buyers. | More work to put together. |
A themed pack groups related donations into one named prize:
- Pamper pack: lashes, nails and a facial.
- Garden pack: a mulch delivery, compost and a plant voucher.
- Family day out: cinema passes, a café voucher and a round of mini golf.
- Date night: a restaurant voucher and cinema passes.
NZ Red Cross suggests packaging prizes as hampers or gift bags and using photos of them in your promotion.
What we'd do (our judgement, not data): a tiered draw. Build one headline first prize worth $500 to $1,000 from your strongest donations, then 4 to 8 themed packs, then any leftover single prizes. The headline sells to strangers and the spread keeps families buying. The 20% rule only cares about the total value, not how you split it.
Ticket price and book size
The NZ school and club raffles we found mostly charge $2 to $5 a ticket, with $10 kept for big prizes such as a grocery grab. A rough rule of thumb:
- $2 when kids are selling to grandparents and neighbours. A small ask, and the change is easy.
- $5 for a school-wide or club raffle with a headline prize over $500.
- $10 only with a prize worth talking about and adult sellers. At $10 the 20% rule bites fast: a $1,000 prize allows only 500 tickets.
Multi-buy deals like "3 for $10" are popular overseas. Each ticket is still one entry, and they never raise your cap.
For book size, aim for a book a seller can finish in a week. Ten tickets suits kids and families; twenty-five suits club members selling at the bar. Commercial NZ printers usually supply books of 10. For Goods Sake also has a free printed raffle ticket maker that prints numbered books of 25, 50 or 100 with each donor named against their prize.
Write down who has which book, set a return date two or three days before the draw, and chase the stragglers by phone. Class 1 and 2 raffle tickets are sold in person, never online, in Facebook comments, by phone or by message. DIA treats buying tickets that way as remote interactive gambling, which only licensed Class 3 lotteries may do. Our rule: hand every buyer a numbered paper ticket, face to face, and write their name and phone on the butt.
Prizes you can't offer
Wine in the hamper is the most common slip. These are banned as prizes in every class of raffle, per DIA:
- alcohol of any kind, and bottle-store vouchers;
- tobacco and vapes;
- firearms, ammunition, airguns and gun-shop vouchers;
- explosives and restricted weapons.
So when the wine shop offers, thank them warmly and ask the café next door instead. Meat, groceries and food hampers are all fine.
Raffles are for groups, not individuals
This is the commonest mix-up: you can't run a raffle to fund yourself or your kid's trip. If individuals run one, DIA says all the profit must go back into prizes. Only a society (a school, PTA, club or trust) can keep the proceeds for its stated purpose. Raising for a rep trip? Ask your club to run the raffle for the team, or look at a class or team mini-raffle run through the group.
Thank them properly
This is where next year's prizes come from.
- Before: "Donated by" next to every prize on the tickets and poster.
- On the night: read out or display the donor list at the draw.
- After: a Facebook post naming and tagging every donor, a newsletter mention, and a photo of the winner with the prize at the donor's shop, if both are happy.
- A window card: a printed "Proud supporter of our school 2026" certificate they can put up.
- Report the result. "Your voucher helped raise $4,100 for the new netball bibs" is the line that gets a yes next year. Keep the donor list for the next committee.