A raffle app is a lottery, so build it like one.
A raffle app sells chances to win a prize, and the law reads that as a lottery wherever the organization happens to be. Before it sells a single ticket, someone has to know whether tickets can be sold online where the charity, club or school is registered, what has to appear on the ticket, and what the draw and the winner have to leave behind as a record. That makes it the most regulated corner of mobile apps for nonprofits, and the one where an off-the-shelf tool's assumptions can quietly put a fundraiser on the wrong side of a rule.
This page lays out what the job actually requires: where a raffle is legal to run through an app, with Great Britain and California as two primary-source examples that land on opposite answers, the fields a ticket, a draw and a winner record need, what Apple's review guidelines demand of a raffle app, and where a fundraising thermometer fits.
See where a raffle app is legalThe short version
Three parts, one register, and a record of every ticket.
A raffle is a lottery: people pay for a chance, the winner is picked by chance, and there is a prize. Whether an app can sell those chances online depends on where the organization is registered. Great Britain lets a registered small society lottery sell tickets online without a remote gambling license; California prohibits conducting a raffle over the internet at all. Whatever the answer, the app needs a unique number, a buyer and a payment reference on every ticket, a dated record of the draw, and enough about each winner to hand over the prize and report it where tax rules require. The rest of this page is the detail, with the sources.
The law first
Is a raffle app legal where you are?
Nobody licenses a raffle app; regulators license the raffle. So the first question is never which app for raffle ticket sales to pick, it is which regime the organization falls under, because that decides whether online sales are allowed, who may run the draw, and what has to be filed afterwards. Two well-documented regimes show how far apart the answers can be.
The three parts of a lottery
Every regulator starts from the same test. Someone pays for a chance (consideration), the winner is picked by chance, and there is a prize. Apple's review guidelines put it the same way: lottery apps must have consideration, chance, and a prize. Remove the payment and you have a free draw rather than a lottery, which is why California, for one, exempts free opportunity drawings from registration, and why an app relying on that route can never make a purchase or a donation a condition of entry.
1
Consideration
Money changes hands for the chance: the ticket price, or anything that works like one.
2
Chance
The winner is picked at random, not by skill or by a judge.
3
Prize
Something of value goes to the winner, cash and a car alike.
Great Britain: small society lotteries
Great Britain has the clearest small-raffle regime of the lot. A lottery run by a society for its own purposes is a small society lottery when no more than £20,000 worth of tickets are put on sale in a single lottery and the society's proceeds from lotteries stay within £250,000 a year. It needs no Gambling Commission license: the society registers with its local licensing authority, stays registered for as long as the lottery is promoted, and applies to the Commission only when it is about to exceed either limit.
The Commission's guidance, last updated in February 2021, also settles the question this page is about: a small society lottery operating under local registration that sells tickets by remote communication, internet or telephone, is not required to hold a remote gambling license. Read the Gambling Commission's guidance on small society lotteries.
Schedule 11 of the Gambling Act 2005 supplies the rules the app has to enforce. Every ticket must identify the society, state its price, carry the promoter's name and an address, and state the date of the draw. Every ticket costs the same. At least 20 percent of the proceeds go to the society's purposes, and a statement goes to the licensing authority within three months of the draw.
California: registered nonprofits, and no online sales
California lands on the opposite answer. Under Penal Code section 320.5, only eligible tax-exempt nonprofits that have been qualified to do business in the state for at least a year may conduct a raffle, and only after registering with the Attorney General's Registry of Charities and Fundraisers and receiving its confirmation letter, before any raffle activity, including selling tickets. At least 90 percent of the gross receipts must go directly to beneficial or charitable purposes in California.
Then the line that matters for an app: operating or conducting a raffle via the internet is prohibited, although the organization may advertise the raffle online. A raffle app for a California nonprofit is therefore a sales-tracking and draw-record app with online checkout switched off. The same page describes the one route that needs no registration, a free opportunity drawing where tickets are distributed generally and indiscriminately and nobody pays for a chance to win. See the California Attorney General's raffle rules.
The rest of the United States: a state matter, plus federal tax reporting
Federal law does not license raffles. The IRS treats them as gaming and says plainly that many states and localities regulate gaming by exempt organizations, and that its own guidance does not address state or local licensing. Every state is its own answer, and California shows that the answer can include a ban on selling online.
What federal rules add is reporting. A raffle prize of $600 or more that is at least 300 times the ticket price has to be reported on Form W-2G, which means the app needs the winner's name, address and taxpayer identification number. When the proceeds from a single wager exceed $5,000, the organization must withhold income tax, currently at 24 percent; the IRS's own example is a $1 ticket that wins $6,000, with $1,440 withheld. A non-cash prize counts at its fair market value less the ticket price. Read IRS Publication 3079 on tax-exempt organizations and gaming.
| Where the two regimes differ | Great Britain, small society lottery | California, nonprofit raffle |
|---|---|---|
| Who may run it | A society, for its own purposes | Eligible tax-exempt nonprofits qualified to do business in California for at least one year |
| Before the first ticket | Register with the local licensing authority; no Gambling Commission license below the limits | Register with the Attorney General's Registry ($30 fee) and receive its confirmation letter |
| Ceiling | £20,000 of tickets per lottery and £250,000 of proceeds a year, then a Commission license | Not set on the Attorney General's page |
| Share to the cause | At least 20 percent of proceeds | At least 90 percent of gross receipts |
| Online ticket sales | Allowed; no remote gambling license needed for a registered small society lottery | Prohibited; advertising the raffle online is allowed |
| After the draw | A statement to the licensing authority within three months | One aggregate report for all raffles in the registration period |
Sources: the Gambling Commission's guidance and Schedule 11 of the Gambling Act 2005 for Great Britain; the California Attorney General's raffle page for California. Neither this table nor the helper below is legal advice.
Try it
Can this raffle app sell tickets online?
Pick where the organization is registered and whether entrants pay. The answer is a summary of the sources on this page, a starting point for a conversation with your regulator, not legal advice.
Where is the organization registered?
Do entrants pay for a chance to win?
What the sources say
Choose a place and an entry type to see what the sources say.
App Review
What Apple asks of a raffle app.
Once the legal route is settled, the app still has to get through App Review, and Apple's guidelines describe gaming, gambling and lotteries as one of the most regulated offerings on the App Store, with a warning to expect extra time during review. Four rules shape a fundraising raffle app directly. Read the App Store Review Guidelines.
Guideline 5.3.2
Rules in the app
The official rules for sweepstakes, contests and raffles must be presented in the app and make clear that Apple is not a sponsor or involved in the activity in any manner. That is a screen, not a link to a PDF.
Guideline 5.3.4
Licensed where it is used
Apps that offer lotteries must have the necessary licensing and permissions in the locations where the app is used, must be geo-restricted to those locations, and must be free on the App Store. Lottery apps must have consideration, chance and a prize.
Guideline 5.3.3
No in-app purchase for chances
Apps may not use in-app purchase to buy credit or currency for use with real money gaming of any kind. A raffle ticket is not a consumable.
Guideline 3.2.1 (vi) and 3.2.2 (iv)
Who may collect money
Approved nonprofits may fundraise in their own apps if they offer Apple Pay support, disclose how funds will be used and make tax receipts available. Everyone else must keep the app free and collect funds outside it, such as via Safari or SMS.
Read together, the guidelines describe a specific shape: a free app, with the rules and the Apple disclaimer on a screen of their own, that only offers ticket sales where the organization is registered to sell them, and that either hands checkout to the web or, for an approved nonprofit, uses Apple Pay. That shape is worth designing in from the first screen, since it is cheaper than discovering it in a rejection.
The fields
What a raffle app has to record.
Every regime above turns into fields. Some are on the ticket by law, some exist so the treasurer can reconcile, and some exist because a tax form will ask for them months later. Four records cover it.
The ticket
The ticket is the unit of everything else: the sale, the draw and the report all point back to a number. If volunteers sell books of tickets at events, the app also needs to know who was selling where, which is the same roster problem a volunteer scheduling app solves, and the reason a ticket without a seller is a reconciliation problem waiting to happen.
| Field | Why it is there | Where it is required |
|---|---|---|
| Ticket number | Unique and never reused, so the stub, the screen and the draw all point at the same ticket. | Every raffle |
| Buyer name and contact | To reach the winner, and to show who bought what if a sale is questioned. | Every raffle |
| Price paid | The same on every ticket in a British small society lottery, and the wager the US tax tests are measured against. | Great Britain, US tax rules |
| Payment reference and channel | Cash at a stall, card on the web, a bank transfer: reconciliation needs to know which, and where the money landed. | Every raffle |
| Sold by, where and when | Which volunteer, which event, which day. It is the seller's audit trail and the proof that sales stopped when the rules said. | Every raffle |
| The draw it belongs to | A society can run several lotteries a year against one annual limit, so every ticket needs its parent draw. | Great Britain |
| Society name, promoter name and address, draw date | Printed on the ticket by law, so the app prints them from the draw record rather than letting a volunteer type them. | Great Britain |
The draw
The draw record is what turns a pile of sold tickets into a defensible result. If the draw happens at a gala and the rules say the winner must be present, the attendance list from your event check in app is the evidence; if it happens online, the method and the operator are.
| Field | Why it is there | Where it is required |
|---|---|---|
| Draw date and time | On the ticket in Great Britain, so it cannot drift once tickets are sold. | Great Britain |
| Method and operator | Drum or random number, who ran it, who witnessed it. The answer to the first complaint. | Every raffle |
| Winning numbers in the order drawn | Matched to prizes as drawn, so first prize went to the first number and not the most convenient one. | Every raffle |
| Tickets in the draw | The count and the closing time of sales, frozen at the moment of the draw. | Every raffle |
The winner and the prize
Winners are where a raffle app meets the tax office. The fields below are ordinary for a cash prize and unavoidable for a car.
| Field | Why it is there | Where it is required |
|---|---|---|
| Legal name and address | To hand over the prize, and the first lines of a US Form W-2G. | US tax rules |
| Prize description and value | Fair market value for a non-cash prize, since that is the number the tax tests use. | US tax rules |
| Taxpayer identification number | Needed when a US prize is reportable: $600 or more and at least 300 times the ticket price. Above $5,000 in proceeds, withholding applies too. | US tax rules |
| Claim and payout date | Closes the loop between the draw record and the money, or the car, leaving. | Every raffle |
The organization and the return
Finally, the record of the organization itself, most of which is set once and stamped on every draw.
| Field | Why it is there | Where it is required |
|---|---|---|
| Registration reference | The local licensing authority in Great Britain, the Attorney General's Registry in California, both before the first ticket. | Great Britain, California |
| Ticket price and the count on sale | Checked against the £20,000 per lottery limit before sales open, not after. | Great Britain |
| Gross proceeds and the share to the cause | At least 20 percent of proceeds in Great Britain, at least 90 percent of gross receipts in California. | Great Britain, California |
| The return after the draw | A statement to the licensing authority within three months in Great Britain; an aggregate annual report in California. | Great Britain, California |
The money
The fundraising thermometer, and where the money goes.
The screen most people picture when they say mobile fundraising app is the thermometer: a goal, a fill line, a number that climbs during the event. For a raffle it needs two lines, not one. Gross proceeds are what the limits and the reports are measured against, £20,000 per lottery in Great Britain or the gross receipts on a California report. The share reaching the cause is a different number, at least 20 percent of proceeds in Great Britain and at least 90 percent of gross receipts in California, and it is the one supporters actually care about. A fundraising thermometer app that shows only one of them is quietly wrong for one audience or the other.
An illustrative thermometer
Example numbers, not a benchmark
1,300 tickets at $5 against a $10,000 gross goal, for a raffle whose rules send at least 90 percent of gross receipts to the cause.
Tickets sold
1,300
At one price, $5 each
Gross proceeds
$6,500
What the limits and the report are measured against
To the cause
$5,850
At the 90 percent floor, and what supporters see; prizes and costs come out of the rest
Where the money goes is also where the app runs into Apple. Under guideline 3.2.2, an app that raises money for a charity or a fundraiser must be free on the App Store and, unless the organization is an approved nonprofit, may only collect funds outside the app, such as via Safari or SMS. An approved nonprofit may take money in its own app under guideline 3.2.1 if it offers Apple Pay support, discloses how the funds will be used and makes tax receipts available. Either way, in-app purchase is out. In practice a raffle ticket checkout is either a web page the app opens or Apple Pay inside an approved nonprofit's app, and the ticket record has to accept a payment reference from either. How that checkout is wired is its own decision, covered in taking payments in your app.
The workflow
Running a raffle through an app, step by step.
The order matters. Registration comes before the first ticket in both regimes above, and the return comes after the last prize is paid.
- 1
Confirm the route.
Which law applies, whether the organization qualifies, and what to register. Store the registration reference in the app before sales open.
- 2
Fix the draw.
Date, prizes and their values, one ticket price, and who the promoter is. In Great Britain all of that appears on the ticket, so lock it.
- 3
Decide where tickets are sold.
In person by volunteers, online where the regime allows it, and switched off where it does not. Default to off.
- 4
Sell and record.
Every sale gets a ticket number, a buyer contact, a payment reference and a seller. Nothing sells without all four.
- 5
Close and reconcile.
Stop sales at the published time, total the tickets, and compute gross proceeds and the share to the cause.
- 6
Draw and record.
Method, operator, witness, and the winning numbers in the order drawn, matched to prizes.
- 7
Notify and pay.
Collect the winner details the prize needs, including tax details for reportable US prizes, and log the payout.
- 8
File the return.
Within three months of the draw in Great Britain; on the aggregate annual report in California. Whatever the regime, the app should be able to print it.
Picking an approach
Raffle ticket apps, fundraising platforms, or your own build?
None of the records above need a fancy tool. What separates the options is whether the tool knows that a raffle is a lottery: that online sales are a per-region switch, that the ticket carries legal text, and that the draw leaves a record.
| Approach | Ticket record per sale | Knows the regime | Draw record | Online sales switch | Who maintains it |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Paper ticket books and a spreadsheet | the stub, if it is legible | whatever the treasurer remembers | a drum and a photo | none | you, by hand |
| General event ticketing tool | Yes | not raffle-aware | No | always on | the vendor |
| Dedicated raffle platform | Yes | the regions it supports | Yes | its rules | the vendor |
| Custom-built raffle app | Yes | your rules, per draw | Yes | on or off per draw | you |
Which row fits comes down to how closely the organization's raffle matches what a vendor assumed. A society running four draws a year against one annual limit, a California nonprofit that needs online checkout off and in-person sales on, a school that wants the raffle inside the same app as its events: each of those is a process an off-the-shelf tool half-fits, and teams in that position end up building their own. That is what Newly is for: describe the raffle you actually run, the ticket fields, the regions where sales are on or off, the draw record, and it builds a real native app around your rules instead of the vendor's. It ships the iOS build through App Store Connect, where you test in TestFlight and finish the listing; the current version does not produce Android release builds, so a raffle that needs Android supporters on day one should plan a web ticket page alongside the app.
Sources
Where the specifics came from.
Every rule and number on this page comes from one of four primary sources. The ticket contents, the 20 percent minimum and the three-month statement for Great Britain are from Schedule 11 of the Gambling Act 2005, the law behind the Commission's guidance.
FAQ
Raffle apps, answered.
It depends entirely on where the organization is. In Great Britain, a small society lottery registered with its local licensing authority can sell tickets online without a remote gambling license, as long as no more than £20,000 of tickets go on sale per lottery and the society's proceeds stay under £250,000 a year. In California, operating or conducting a raffle via the internet is prohibited, so an app there can advertise the raffle and record in-person sales but cannot sell tickets online. Other US states and other countries have their own rules. Check the regulator before switching on online sales; this page is not legal advice.
Settle the rules, then build the app.
A raffle app lives or dies on the boring parts: a registration before the first ticket, a number on every one, a draw that leaves a record, and online sales that are off where they have to be. Get those right, then build the app around them in Newly.