Understand: Drawing Raffle and Sweepstakes Winners

Be assured that your donors will have fair odds of winning your prize(s). Learn about the various ways you can draw Raffle and Sweepstakes winners.

MemberHub offers several ways to draw your winners and end your Raffle or Sweepstakes so that you can choose the best drawing method for your organization.

Before You Begin

• If you’re running a Sweepstakes, you won’t be able to draw Sweepstakes winners manually. You’ll need to use MemberHub to draw winners to ensure your Sweepstakes is legally compliant.

Use MemberHub to Draw Winners

MemberHub uses a certified randomization algorithm to draw Raffle and Sweepstakes Experiences winners. This randomization algorithm ensures fairness and promotes ethical fundraising practices. When you use MemberHub’s algorithm, you have two drawing options:

Set an Automatic Drawing Date

This method involves setting a date and time when you want the system to draw winners automatically.

1. Go to MemberHub's website and log in.
2. Select Experiences from the left menu.
3. If you have chosen a list view, click on the Experience title. If you have chosen a grid view, click on the Experience image.
4. Select Edit Experience.
5. Select Raffle or Sweepstakes in the timeline at the top.
6. Scroll down to When does your Sweepstakes/Raffle end? and enter your drawing date and time:
7. Scroll down to How do you want to draw the winner(s)? and select Have the system draw them automatically: 

Draw Winners When You’re Ready

This method involves setting a drawing date but not allowing the system to draw winners until you tell it to.

1. Go to  MemberHub’s website and log in.
2. Select Experiences from the left menu.
3. If you have chosen a list view, click on the Experience title. If you have chosen a grid view, click on the Experience image.
4. Select Edit Experience.
5. Select Raffle or Sweepstakes in the timeline at the top.
6. Scroll down to When does your Sweepstakes/Raffle end? and enter your drawing date and time. This information is required so donors can be informed of the drawing date and to ensure your fundraiser complies with local regulations:
7. Scroll down to How do you want to draw the winner(s)? and select Have the system randomly draw them when I tell it to: 
8. When your Raffle or Sweepstakes ends, and you’re ready to draw winners, follow the steps in this article.

Manually Draw Winners

If you’re running a Raffle and don’t want to use MemberHub’s algorithm, you can export entry information from the site and draw winners yourself. Note that if you’re running a Sweepstakes, you won’t be able to manually draw winners.

Export Ticket Numbers

If you’re drawing your Raffle winner manually, you can export a spreadsheet with everything you need:

1. Go to MemberHub's website and log in.
2. Select Experiences from the left menu.
3. If you have chosen a list view, click on the Experience title. If you have chosen a grid view, click on the Experience image.
4. Select View Raffle Entries*.
5. Select Export Entries in the lower left corner of the screen:

Limit One Prize Per Winner

When a donor purchases multiple Raffle or Sweepstakes entries, they automatically have the chance to win more than one prize. When a prize winner is determined, only their winning entry number is removed from the drawing pool. The remaining entries purchased by this person are still eligible for winning the remaining prizes.

If you allow donors to enter to win a specific prize, there is not currently a way to limit one prize per winner. For all other entry settings, you can limit one prize per winner in the Experience setup so that any winner is removed entirely from subsequent drawings:

1. Go to MemberHub’s website and log in.
2. Select Experiences from the left menu.
3. If you have chosen a list view, click on the Experience title. If you have chosen a grid view, click on the Experience image.
4. Select Edit Experience.
5. Select Raffle or Sweepstakes in the timeline at the top.
6. Scroll down to Allow donors to win more than one prize. This setting is turned on by default:
7. Click on the toggle to move it to the left and turn this setting off:

Note: some entry settings may also influence how winners are drawn and may lead to one donor’s name being drawn more than once.

Enter to Win Any Prize

When donors enter to win any prize, all entries are put into one entry pool. For each prize, MemberHub’s algorithm draws an entry number from the pool. The selected entry is then matched to a prize. This winning entry is then eliminated from the entry pool so that the specific entry is no longer eligible for any prize. This process will continue until all prizes have winners.

Note that in this scenario, if a donor wins a prize, only their winning entry is removed from the pool. Their other entries are still eligible to win any of the other prizes unless you limit each winner to one prize only.

Example: Alice purchases 10 entries to win any of 5 prizes. Alice wins the first prize, so her winning entry is eliminated from the entry pool. However, Alice still has 9 remaining entries in the pool, and she is, therefore, still eligible to win any of the remaining 4 prizes unless you prevent winners from winning more than one prize.

How-to: Allow Donors to Purchase Raffle Entries for Any Prize

Enter to Win a Specific Prize

If you’ve set up your experience so that donors can enter to win a specific prize, each prize will have a separate pool of entries. Each pool consists of all the entries purchased for that particular prize. For each prize, an entry number is randomly generated to determine the winner of that prize.

If a donor purchases entries for more than one prize, they may also win more than one prize. However, if you don’t want a donor to win more than one prize, you can always redraw a winner.

How-to: Allow Donors to Purchase Raffle Entries for Specific Prizes

Prizes with Multiple Quantities

If multiple quantities of a prize are available, then the algorithm will draw winners for each quantity available. A donor who purchases multiple entries for a multi-quantity prize may win that prize more than once unless you limit one prize per winner.

Redraw Winners

There may be a time when a prize winner is ineligible, can’t be contacted, or otherwise can’t accept a prize. If you ever need to redraw winners, you can do so as many times as you need. See the following Knowledge Base article for instructions on how to redraw winners:

How do I redraw winners for my raffle or sweepstakes?

*Note: Terminology on these buttons may be different according to the terminology that you’ve chosen for your Experience.