Charity Lotteries in the UK: Rules Beyond the Standard Raffle
A one-off tombola at a summer fete and a running weekly lottery are regulated very differently. Here is where the line sits and what it means for a small community charity.
Published July 2026Most community fundraisers understand raffles reasonably well, because most community fundraisers have run one: tickets sold on the day, prizes drawn at the event, done. What catches people out is the next step up — running a recurring draw, selling tickets over a longer period, or operating something closer to a weekly numbers game — because at that point you have moved from an incidental raffle into what the Gambling Commission classes as a society lottery, and the rules change substantially.
Where the line actually sits
An incidental non-commercial lottery — the standard fete or event raffle, where tickets are sold and drawn at the same event and it is not the main purpose of the gathering — needs no licence or registration at all in most circumstances, provided the prizes and proceeds stay within set limits. This covers the overwhelming majority of what community groups do at fetes, quiz nights and charity dinners.
A society lottery is a different animal: tickets sold over days or weeks, often not tied to a single event, run repeatedly through the year to provide a regular income stream for the charity. This is what many hospices, air ambulance charities and larger local causes run as a weekly draw, and it requires registration, either with the local authority for smaller lotteries or with the Gambling Commission itself once turnover crosses certain thresholds.
Registration requirements
A small society lottery, registered with the local authority, has to keep proceeds below a set annual limit and each individual draw below a set ticket-sales limit; once a lottery grows beyond those figures it must register with the Gambling Commission directly as a large society lottery, which brings a heavier compliance burden including licence fees, more detailed reporting, and rules on the proportion of proceeds that must go to the good cause rather than administration and prizes. The current thresholds and the registration process are set out on the Gambling Commission's own guidance pages, which are the authoritative source and worth checking directly since limits are periodically reviewed.
Tickets for a registered lottery must state the name of the promoting society, the ticket price, and the date of the draw, and cannot be sold to anyone under sixteen. Proceeds have to be applied to the purposes of the registered society, and accurate records of income and prize payouts need to be kept and, for larger lotteries, reported to the regulator.
Why the distinction matters practically
A small community charity that starts an occasional raffle at each of its three annual events stays comfortably inside the incidental lottery exemption and needs to do nothing beyond good bookkeeping. The moment that same charity decides to run a running weekly draw to build a steadier income stream — which many charities eventually consider, since a regular lottery income is more predictable than one-off events — it needs to register properly before selling a single ticket, and running an unregistered lottery of that kind is a criminal offence, not just an administrative slip.
Online ticket sales complicate this further, since a lottery sold online is available continuously rather than at a single event and almost never qualifies as incidental, regardless of how modest the prizes are. Any charity thinking about moving its raffle online, rather than selling tickets in person at events, should treat that as the trigger to check registration requirements rather than assuming the old exemption still applies.
Getting advice before you commit
The Gambling Commission publishes clear guidance aimed specifically at small societies and charities, and most local authority licensing teams are used to fielding questions from community groups about exactly this distinction. A short phone call before launching a recurring draw, rather than after, avoids the far more awkward conversation of having to refund an unregistered lottery's proceeds once someone points out the rule was missed.