Raffles & live wheel
HometownLift's raffle module sells tickets online or at the gate, builds a buyer list automatically, and powers a live spinning wheel you can put on the projector at halftime. Confetti, winner reveals, crowd energy — and a clean audit trail for compliance.
The challenge
Print 1,000 numbered stubs. Tear them in half. Hand one to every buyer. Drop the matching half in a hat. Then dig through 1,000 paper stubs at halftime trying to read the handwriting. The volunteers selling tickets spend half the game counting stubs.
A board member reaches into a hat, pulls out a stub, and reads a name into a microphone. Nobody can hear over the crowd. Half the audience misses it. The energy is flat. The big revenue moment of the night just becomes a footnote.
Paper stubs go into a hat. Cash goes into a box. There's no donor record, no email follow-up, no way to invite buyers back next month. Every raffle starts from zero.
Most states regulate charitable raffles — auditable draw records, ticket numbering, prize value disclosures. A hat full of paper stubs doesn't satisfy anyone if a regulator asks.
The HometownLift approach
Each raffle gets a public ticket-sales page. Supporters buy tickets online, pay via Stripe, and their entry is logged automatically with name, email, and ticket count. They can buy at home, at lunch, on the way to the game.
Volunteers can sell tickets at the door using the same page on a phone. Tap to Pay support means no cash register required. Every sale lands in the same buyer list as online entries — one source of truth.
Open the wheel page on a laptop, plug into the gym projector, and you have a regulation-compliant random draw with crowd-energy confetti and winner-reveal animations. Halftime becomes a moment, not a footnote.
Set up a grand prize, three runners-up, and a handful of door prizes. Spin the wheel for each one. Past winners are automatically excluded from later draws (or not — your call).
Every spin is timestamped. Every winner is recorded with their ticket number. The full draw history is exportable as a compliance record so when the state asks, you have receipts.
Every raffle ticket buyer becomes a known supporter in your donor CRM. Invite them back to next month's raffle, your annual campaign, or the season-opener. Raffles aren't a one-and-done — they're a top-of-funnel.
FAQ
Yes. The wheel uses a cryptographically-seeded random selection from the eligible buyer list, weighted by how many tickets each buyer purchased (so a buyer with 10 tickets has 10 entries on the wheel). The visual spin is for theatre — the result is committed before the animation finishes and recorded in the audit log.
No. The wheel is a web page. Open it on a laptop, plug the laptop into any HDMI projector or large-screen TV, and full-screen the browser. Works on any modern device with a display output.
Yes. The wheel can pull from any list of eligible entrants — donors, ticket buyers, members, event attendees. 'Spin the wheel for a free dinner from local donors who gave $50+ this month' is a valid use case.
Charitable raffle rules vary by state. Most require your org to be a registered nonprofit, prize value caps, ticket numbering, and audit records. HometownLift gives you the audit records and ticket numbering — but the registration and prize-cap compliance is your org's responsibility. Check with your state's attorney general or a nonprofit attorney before running a major raffle.
Explore more
Every feature HometownLift offers, in one place.
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Learn more →Ready to get started?
