Most raffle organisers measure one number: the total raised. It is the number the committee asks for, and it is also the least useful figure for making the next raffle better, because it hides everything that produced it. Two raffles can both raise $10,000, one from 200 loyal supporters buying big bundles and the other from 2,000 one-ticket strangers, and those are completely different fundraising machines with completely different next moves.
These are the metrics that actually explain your raffle's performance, why each matters, and where to find them. This is the measurement companion to our guide on charity raffle reporting for your board: that piece covers what to communicate; this one covers what your fundraising team should track.
Net proceeds, not gross
Gross ticket sales flatter every raffle. Net proceeds, gross minus prize costs, platform fees, payment processing and marketing spend, is the number that funds your cause, and the gap between the two is your cost ratio. Track the cost ratio across campaigns: donated prizes versus purchased prizes typically moves it more than any other decision, which is why procurement effort shows up here first.
Where to find it: on GalaBid, the Payments report shows campaign profit with fees and consignment costs already deducted.
Average transaction value
Total raised divided by number of purchases. This is the metric your pricing and bundle design directly control, and it is the first place to look when two similar campaigns produce different totals. If your average transaction barely exceeds your single-ticket price, your bundles are underpriced, buried on the page, or missing; our ticket pricing guide covers the fixes.
Watch alongside it: bundle take-up rate, the share of buyers choosing a package over singles. Below about half, the bundle offer needs work.
Number of unique purchasers
Not tickets sold, people. Purchaser count is your reach metric, and it drives two things the total hides: how many contactable supporters this raffle added to your base, and how concentrated your risk is. A raffle where the top ten buyers account for most of the revenue is fragile in a way the total never shows.
Watch alongside it: new versus returning purchasers. New purchasers measure acquisition; returning purchasers measure relationship strength. Comparing purchaser lists across campaigns gives you a repeat rate, and our guide to encouraging repeat raffle buyers is the playbook for moving it.
Sales curve by day
When money arrived matters as much as how much. Plot daily sales from launch to draw and read the shape: a strong opening week means your launch and early bird mechanics worked; a dead middle is normal but improvable; a weak final surge means your countdown sequence failed to fire. The curve tells you which phase of the next campaign deserves the effort, which is precisely how the early bird and countdown playbooks divide the work.
Benchmark worth knowing: across GalaBid campaigns attached to events, up to 40% of sales can arrive before the event itself. If your pre-event share is far below that, launch earlier.
Channel contribution
Where did buyers come from? Even rough channel tracking, email versus social versus QR codes versus volunteers on the night, tells you where next campaign's promotion budget and effort belong. Email typically over-delivers relative to effort; discovering that your volunteer sellers moved a third of all tickets changes how you staff the next event.
How to track it simply: distinct links or codes for major placements, volunteer-mode sales reported separately, and timing spikes matched against your promotion calendar.
Sell-through rate
Tickets sold as a share of tickets available, for capped raffles. High sell-through with weeks to spare says your price or cap had headroom; selling out on the final day says the balance was right; chronic undersell says the cap was decoration. Sell-through is also your scarcity engine mid-campaign, since a visible "82% sold" does real persuasive work.
Participation-to-audience ratio
Purchasers divided by the audience that actually saw the raffle: your email list, event attendance, community reach. This is the honest measure of how compelling the offer was, independent of how big your megaphone is. A small club converting a quarter of its members is outperforming a large charity converting two percent of its list, whatever the totals say. When this ratio is weak, the fix is usually the offer (prizes, price, page), not the promotion; our landing page best practices cover the conversion end.
Fulfilment and follow-up metrics
Two post-draw numbers predict next year's raffle better than anything above: time-to-thank (hours from draw to the thank-you email landing) and prize fulfilment time. Both measure whether the experience ended well, which is what buyers remember. Under 48 hours to thank is the standard worth holding; our thank you email templates make it a scheduling job.
Set your baseline, then compare
None of these numbers means much in isolation; all of them mean something against your own last campaign. After each raffle, record the set in a simple sheet: net proceeds, cost ratio, average transaction, purchaser count, new-vs-returning split, pre-event sales share, sell-through, participation ratio, time-to-thank. Fifteen minutes with your platform exports, and next campaign's planning starts from evidence instead of memory.
On GalaBid, the Payments, Summary, Bids and Buys and Participants reports between them contain every metric on this list as a download. Set up your next campaign free on GalaBid's raffle platform and let the reports do the record-keeping.