In this release, we are pleased to announce new raffle functionality that allows organizations to run cash pot raffles more effectively. Now, organizations can run fully supported 50/50 raffles and cash raffles where a percentage of the amount raised, less any platform or payment processing fees, is awarded to the raffle winner.
We’ve added flexibility to allow the organization to specify the exact percentage they’d like to award the winner of the cash raffle so they are not explicitly bound to a 50/50 split. If the organization wants to run a raffle where the winner receives 30% of the funds raised and the organization keeps 70%, they can change the settings to fit their use case. We will discuss the details below.
Campaign Setup
In Campaign Setup, organizers can now enable a prize, 50/50 cash raffle, or both.
- Prize raffle – Enabling a Prize raffle enables the same functionality that already exists in the platform for raffles.
- Cash – 50/50 raffle – Enabling a cash raffle enables new functionality to create a cash prize where the prize is a portion of the amount raised.
Organizers can independently enable general prizes and cash raffles to fit their campaigns.
When only the prize raffle option is enabled, Campaign Setup for the raffle activity will be precisely as it is now. However, if both a Prize Raffle and a 50/50 Raffle are enabled simultaneously, we’ll see a new button on the prize creation card.
There’s a brand new “Create cash prize” button that, when pressed, opens a brand new modal that allows the organizer to create a cash prize.
Additionally, once the cash prize is saved, it is highlighted with a unique icon so the organizer can easily distinguish it from all other prizes.
As a quick note, when only a cash raffle is enabled on the Campaign, the interface for adding a cash prize shows without the option to create regular prizes.
Options for Calculating the Cash Prize
If you have chosen to allow donors to buy separate entries for the prize they want to win, you can specify how the application should calculate their cash prize.
Calculate the cash prize from – The first setting, “Calculate the cash prize from,” allows the organizer to choose which types of donations contribute to the cash prize. For example, the first option calculates the cash prize from the entire Campaign’s amount raised. The second option calculates the cash prize only from the raffle activity. The last option, which only shows if the user is running a prize-specific raffle, allows the jackpot amount to only be calculated on funds received from entries sold for the cash prize.
Cash prize percentage (%) – The second new setting, “Cash prize percentage (%),” allows the organizer to specify how much of the amount raised, calculated by the setting discussed in the previous paragraph, should contribute to the cash prize amount. For example, instead of only allowing 50/50 raffles where the amount raised would be split evenly between the winner and the organization, we’ve added this setting to allow the organizer to specify a bespoke split. They can set a split where only 20% of the amount raised is awarded to the raffle winner, or perhaps they want 70% to be awarded to the winner – it’s totally up to the organization.
Number of winners – One other setting that is important to note is the “Number of winners”. This setting works slightly differently from the way it works for the general prizes we support in the app now. Since there can only be one cash prize, the number inserted in this input field is the number of people who will split the winnings. For example, if you enter 2 winners here, they will split the jackpot amount evenly between them.
Campaign Page
One central point of focus for this release was ensuring that the amount raised and the jackpot amount were calculated precisely to display the true amount that the organization would take home and the winner(s) would win. That way, the jackpot amount is an accurate percentage of the amount raised that is shown on the Campaign Page, which helps provide clarity to supporters and avoids potential confusion on the accuracy of the jackpot calculation. This works by not including any types of fees or costs at all in the amount raised calculation, such as credit card processing costs covered by supporters, shipping costs, etc.
We’ve added a new option in Campaign Setup to allow the organizer to use this new amount raised calculation on other Campaigns. For 50/50 raffles, this setting is turned off and hidden from view since we want to preserve the accuracy of the calculations for supporters’ clarity.
When an organization enables 50/50 raffle functionality, supporters will see a brand new element (see image above) on the Campaign Page that tells their supporters there’s a cash prize, how much the cash prize is worth, how many winners will split the cash prize, and a call to action to enter into the 50/50 raffle. When this call-to-action is pressed, the user is taken to the “Prizes” section of the Campaign Page to purchase raffle entries.
In addition to the jackpot element near the banner area of the Campaign Page, users will also find a prize card for the cash prize along with all of their other prizes. Having both the jackpot element in the banner area described earlier and a prize card helps ensure that we maximize the visibility of the cash prize to supporters.
The process for entering a cash prize raffle is the same as entering a raffle for general prizes supported in the application currently.
Related Resource: How to Run a 50/50 Raffle