How many tickets, and how to make them
How many raffle tickets you need is set by your crowd, not your prize: it's how many people will actually be there, times how many each one buys. A raffle ticket comes in two joined halves — the ticket the buyer keeps and a tear-off stub with the same number that you collect for the draw — so the drawn stub matches the winning ticket in someone's pocket.
You can buy a pre-numbered roll of double tickets at an office-supply store, which is cheap and numbered for you, but it's generic: fixed colors, no event name, and no say over where the numbers start. Numbering your own by hand in Word is exactly the tedious job a computer should be doing. Our Raffle Ticket Maker prints numbered tickets with matching stubs and your event name, and lets you set the starting number so a second batch continues the first. It's free; you do cut them apart yourself.
Using the free Raffle Ticket Maker
Put your total in the box labeled "How many tickets" and your event in "Event name." Leave "Start number" at 1 for a first batch. Click "Generate … Tickets (PDF)" and you get numbered tickets, eight to a sheet, each with a matching stub.
Working out how many to print
The number people get wrong is the quantity: running out mid-event loses sales, and it's the one mistake you can't fix on the night. Estimate on the generous side on purpose.
- Estimate who will actually be there.
Start from how many people will really be in the room, not how many you invited. - Pick how many each person buys.
Single tickets suit a small crowd; at a bigger event most buyers take a strip of five or a bundle. - Multiply, then add about 20%.
Selling out mid-event costs you real money; leftover tickets cost nothing. - Enter that total and generate.
Put the number you landed on into "How many tickets" and make the PDF. - Reprint in sequence if you sell out.
Set "Start number" to one past your last ticket, so no number is ever used twice across batches.
A rough starting point
These are just rules of thumb; your crowd is the real number. A 100-person fundraiser at about five tickets each is roughly 500 tickets, so print 600. A 300-person gala selling bundles can clear 2,000 and up, so plan it as batches from the start. A small office draw of 30 people might only need 100.
Numbering counts your sales
Because the numbers run in sequence, they tally the take for you: last number sold minus first, plus one. The maker prints up to 2,000 tickets at a time; for a larger run, print in batches and bump the start number each time so the whole event stays on one unbroken sequence.