Keeping your fundraising legal

Guidance

Keeping your fundraising legal

Games like raffles, sweepstakes and charity lotteries can all be great ways to put a little fun in your fundraising. They’re also some of the most regulated areas of fundraising. Read below for all the essential info!

The safest and easiest way to hold a raffle is to hold an incidental raffle. This means a raffle that is held at a fundraising event. For this type of raffle, you can use “cloakroom” style tickets. There are some rules which you must adhere to:

What you must do: 

  • Only sell tickets at the event – anyone at the event can purchase a ticket.
  • Only take £100 maximum out of the profits of the draw to cover costs and prizes.
  • Hold the draw at the event itself.

What you must not do: 

  • Sell tickets before the event, or to people not attending the event.
  • Apply Gift Aid to the money – legally, buying a ticket does not count as a donation.
  • Rollovers are not permitted.

For full information on holding your own raffle, tombola, sweepstake or free prize draw, download our guide.

For more information on raffles, you can visit the Gambling Commission website.

Collecting money for St Luke’s Hospice? Great! We just need to make you aware of the following…

Public collections

  • You must have a licence from your local authority to collect funds in public places. You can apply for this on behalf of the charity, or we can do it for you. Some areas have a very limited number of licences to issue, so it’s best to ask us first.
  • Collections have a minimum 28 day application timeline to process and each council will have different rules and regulations. Please contact your local authority to find out more.
  • If you are collecting on private property you will need written permission from the landowner or manager.

If you hold a collection for St Luke’s Hospice without a licence or proper permission, it may result in the charity losing future opportunities to collect donations in these places.

Collecting tins

Collecting tins or buckets will need to be supplied by St Luke’s Hospice with security seals, so please get in touch with the Fundraising Team, who will be happy to supply you with what you need. You can return the full tins and buckets for our finance volunteers to count.

Collecting door-to-door

You are not allowed to collect funds by going door-to-door, even if you know them. The Fundraising Regulator has strict guidelines on who is able to carry out this type of fundraising. Only our authorised Lottery canvassers are able to do so on behalf of St Luke’s Hospice.

For more information, please visit the Institute of Fundraising website.

Please note that we can’t accept any responsibility for accident, injury, loss or damage as a result of your event. We therefore strongly recommend that you check that you have adequate insurance and that you take all reasonable steps to ensure the safety of all concerned. You will also need to check any third-party supplier’s public liability insurance.

To find more advice about health and safety, please visit the Institute of Fundraising website.

We can help

Fundraising materials

We’d love to support your fundraising and can provide you with any of the branded equipment below:

  • Posters and leaflets
  • Plastic and paper banners
  • Pull-up banners
  • Money boxes
  • Collecting buckets
  • T-shirts and running vests
  • Tombola drums
  • Balloons
  • Stickers

Have you got a big event coming up?

We might be able to help organise some volunteers, or a speaker to join you and say a few words about what we do. If you can give us as much notice as possible, then we’ll be able to help you out in whatever way we can.

Get in touch

Fundraising enquiries

From requesting a collection tin to assistance with raising money – no enquiry is too big or too small!

Our friendly fundraising team is here to help and can be contacted by emailing community@slhospice.co.uk or by calling 01606 555811.