50/50 Raffles: How They Work, Why They Work, and How Much You Can Actually Raise

This information is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Laws change frequently.

The short answer: A 50/50 raffle is a fundraiser where the money you raise is the prize. Supporters buy entries, the pot grows, and at the end your nonprofit keeps half while one or more winners take the other half. There’s no prize to source, no sponsor to chase, and the math gets surprisingly large, surprisingly fast.

If you’ve ever Googled “how does a 50/50 raffle work,” you’ve probably found ten how-to guides and not a single one that answers the more interesting questions:

• Why does this format raise so much money,
• How much can you actually expect to bring in,
• What’s the catch?

Let’s get into it.

What a 50/50 raffle actually is

A 50/50 raffle goes by a few names — split-the-pot, jackpot raffle, cash raffle — but the idea is the same:

1. Supporters buy entries.
2. The total pot grows in public, in real time.
3. At the end, a winner is drawn.
4. The winner takes half. Your cause keeps the other half.

That’s it.

No silent auction items.

No basket of donated wine.

And no sponsor logos to negotiate.

The reason it’s called a 50/50 is the most common split — but as we’ll see in a moment, that split isn’t the only option anymore.

The format is only available for Raffles, not Sweepstakes. Sweepstakes have different rules in most US states, and a 50/50 prize structure isn’t allowed for them.

Why 50/50 raffles raise so much money

This is the part the how-to guides skip. Three reasons this format punches above its weight:

1. The prize sells itself — because the prize is the giving

Most raffles ask supporters to get excited about a thing. A spa weekend. A signed jersey. A flat-screen TV. The fundraiser’s job is to make that prize sound irresistible.

A 50/50 raffle flips that. The prize is cash. Everyone already wants cash. There’s nothing to describe, nothing to photograph, nothing to negotiate with a sponsor. As one RallyUp guide puts it: “No prize? No problem.”

That removes the biggest hidden barrier in a traditional raffle — finding a prize good enough to drive entry sales — and replaces it with something every supporter understands instinctively.

2. The pot creates its own marketing

In a prize raffle, the appeal is constant: “Buy a ticket, maybe win the thing.” In a 50/50, the appeal grows every single hour. Every entry sold makes the next entry more attractive, because the pot — and therefore the potential winnings — just got bigger.

This is why 50/50 raffles see entry sales spike right before the close. Supporters watch the pot climb and decide they want in before the music stops. A countdown on the campaign page plus a live tally of how much has been raised turns the fundraiser into a quiet little event of its own.

3. There’s almost no upfront cost

Traditional raffles cost something to run. Prize procurement takes time. Donated prizes often come with conditions. Purchased prizes eat into your margin before a single ticket is sold.

A virtual 50/50 raffle has, effectively, no setup cost.

No prize.

No venue (if you run it online).

And no printed tickets.

The pot funds itself. For a small nonprofit or a school group with a tight calendar, that’s the difference between launching this month and not launching at all.

How much can you actually raise?

The math is the fun part. Here it is, plainly:

Example — a 1,000-entry raffle:

• 1,000 entries sold at $10 each = $10,000 raised
• Your nonprofit keeps $5,000
• The winner takes $5,000

Example — a tiered-pricing raffle:

• Suppose your bundles are 10 entries for $10, 50 entries for $25, and 150 entries for $50
• 200 supporters average roughly $30 each = $6,000 raised
• Your nonprofit keeps $3,000
• The winner takes $3,000

Now stretch this out: a school PTA running a 50/50 alongside a back-to-school night has done $2,000–$4,000 in a single evening with nothing more than a table, a phone, and a QR code. A volunteer fire department running a 50/50 over a single weekend has cleared $15,000–$30,000 with no prize cost at all. Larger organizations running a 50/50 inside a gala routinely add five figures to their evening total — on top of the auction and the appeal.

The ceiling depends on three things: your audience size, your ticket pricing, and how visibly the pot grows. The first two you control. The third is what platforms like RallyUp are built to make easy.

A real twist on the split: the “Enhanced” 50/50

For a long time, “50/50” meant exactly that — half and half. RallyUp’s Enhanced 50/50 Raffle changes that, and it’s worth understanding because it changes the math of what you can offer your supporters.

With an Enhanced 50/50 you can:

• Set a custom split. 60/40, 70/30, 80/20 — whatever makes sense for your cause and your audience. Some nonprofits find that an 80/20 split is still attractive to supporters when the pot is big enough, and it dramatically improves what the cause takes home.
• Draw multiple winners. Instead of one big winner, split the prize portion among two, three, or more drawings. A $5,000 prize becomes five winners at $1,000 each, or ten winners at $500 each. More winners means more “I won!” stories — which means more social posts, which means more entries next time.
• Choose what funds the pot. Build the cash prize from all your campaign activity, from all raffle entries, or only from the entries tied to the Enhanced 50/50 itself.

That last setting is the quiet superpower. It lets you run a 50/50 alongside a traditional prize raffle on the same page without the math getting confused. Donors get a choice of how to play. You get a bigger total.

You can read RallyUp’s full description of this on the Raffles page under “Cash pot flexing”.

What it actually looks like to run one

The mechanics, end to end, on RallyUp:

1. Set up the raffle. Create a new Campaign, choose Raffle (prize or 50/50) as the Component, and select Cash raffle.
2. Set the split and the funding source. Pick the percentage that goes to the prize, choose one or multiple winners, and decide which funds contribute to the pot.
3. Set your entry pricing. Tiered bundles consistently outperform single-price entries — something like 10 for $10, 50 for $25, 150 for $50. Bigger bundles, better value per entry, more reason to upgrade.
4. Promote it. Share the link in email, on social, on your website. Add a fundraising thermometer or a live tally so supporters can watch the pot grow. Enable Text-to-Give so people can text a campaign keyword and get a direct link. Turn on Sharing Rewards so supporters earn bonus entries for sharing the campaign with their networks.
5. Draw the winner. RallyUp draws automatically at the close, subtracts payment processing fees, and shows the exact prize amount the winner will receive. The platform handles the drawing; your organization handles the actual cash distribution to the winner.

A few specifics worth knowing:

• The cash prize amount displayed to donors is the net amount — payment processing fees are already subtracted, so what your supporters see is what the winner actually gets.
• If you run a 50/50 alongside a traditional prize raffle, donors can buy entries for either.
• Peer-to-Peer (P2P) is available — supporters can build their own pages and sell entries on your behalf, with real-time leaderboards if you want to make it competitive.

If you’d rather not build it yourself, RallyUp’s Done-for-You service builds your raffle with custom images, copy, and branding at no extra cost.

Where 50/50 raffles really earn their keep

A 50/50 raffle is good on its own. It’s better as part of a bigger campaign.

On RallyUp, the same campaign page can run a 50/50 raffle, a silent auction, a donation drive, and ticketed entry — all sharing one URL, one checkout, and one donor record. Across the platform, nonprofits that stack multiple campaign types in one campaign raise 38% more on average than those running a single format.

That’s the practical reason 50/50 raffles end up in galas, year-end campaigns, walkathons, and giving days. They’re cheap to add, fast to set up, and they pull supporters who wouldn’t otherwise have bought a $200 auction item or a $100 gala ticket. The 50/50 widens the door. If you’re still deciding on a format, our roundup of fundraising ideas for nonprofits is a good place to start.

Before you run a 50/50: a note on the rules

Raffles are legal in some US states and not others, and where they are legal, the requirements vary widely from state to state. A few states’ agencies or statutes do not currently permit the online sale of raffle tickets at all. Others have rules about who can run a raffle, how prizes can be structured, what licenses or registrations are required, and how the funds must be handled.

Before you plan a 50/50 raffle, check your state’s official guidance for your specific situation. A good starting place is your state attorney general’s office or your state gaming commission — both publish raffle-related rules online. Your local jurisdiction may have additional rules as well.

RallyUp can point you toward authoritative information, but we can’t give legal advice. This information is provided for general informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Laws change frequently.

The bottom line

A 50/50 raffle works because it removes the two things that make most raffles hard — finding a prize and selling it — and replaces them with something supporters already want. The pot is the prize. The marketing builds itself. Your costs are close to zero.

How much can you raise? Anywhere from a few thousand dollars at a small community event to five or six figures at a gala or over a longer online campaign. The ceiling is set by your audience and your pricing, not by the format.

If you want to run one — or stack one inside a bigger campaign — fundraise free at rallyup.com or explore more fundraising ideas. No contracts. No subscriptions. Set up a 50/50 raffle in an afternoon, or have our team build it for you.

Frequently asked questions