The annual drawing, run so the whole town can check it
A volunteer department’s fundraising rests entirely on local trust, and it is usually the same few hundred families every year. Rafflebase gives the annual drawing a public proof page, so the record is open to the community that paid for it.
Free for up to 100 entrants. No subscriptions.
What usually goes wrong
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Community trust is the whole asset
You are asking neighbors for money on the strength of your reputation. A verifiable draw means the fairness of the drawing is never the thing anyone questions.
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Long ticket books are hard to reconcile
Months of stubs across a dozen volunteers is a counting problem. Digital entries are tallied continuously and exportable when you close.
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It runs for months, not an evening
Open entries in the spring and draw at the banquet. Every entry stays timestamped in the audit trail the entire time.
Three steps, start to finish
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1
Share it across town
One link works on the department’s Facebook page, in the mailer, and as a QR code at the firehouse open house.
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2
Draw at the banquet
Run it live in the hall. The proof publishes with the winner, in front of everyone.
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3
Leave the record public
The results page stays up. Anyone who wants to check next year’s drawing against this one can.
Every draw ships with its own proof
The winner and a SHA-256 hash of the draw publish together. Anyone can re-run the computation and confirm the same name comes out — no one has to take your word for it.
sha256 · 77e11240d197…cdfc115
Drawings that work for fire & ems
- Annual banquet or open-house drawing
- Equipment and apparatus fund raffle
- Boot drive companion drawing
- Firefighter of the year recognition prize
- Community calendar or merchandise raffle
- Auxiliary and support-squad fundraiser
Winner drawn
Annual banquet drawing
- Winner
- R. Castellano
- Entries
- 1,104
- Raised
- $11,040
Fire & EMS, specifically
- Do volunteer fire departments need a raffle license?
- Often yes. Volunteer fire companies are specifically named as eligible organizations in a number of state charitable gaming statutes, sometimes with their own license class. Requirements differ by state and occasionally by municipality, so check with your state regulator before selling tickets.
- Can we still sell paper tickets as well?
- Yes. Enter those buyers manually so the paper and digital entries end up in one list and one draw. The audit trail records who was added and when.
- Can we run a drawing with a large prize?
- Rafflebase places no limit on prize value — but your state may, and larger prizes often trigger additional licensing or reporting. That is a question for your state regulator, not for the software.
- How long do results stay available?
- Indefinitely. A completed raffle keeps its public results and verification page, so a drawing you ran years ago can still be checked.
Close to what you run
Run your next drawing here
Add your entrants, draw winners, and share a result nobody has to argue about.