1. Pick the moment (6 weeks out)
Tie the raffle to a day families already care about: the Easter hat parade, the Christmas concert, the fete. Set the draw date and time before you print anything — it goes on every ticket, and in NSW you are expected to draw when you said you would.
2. Rustle up prizes (5 weeks out)
Donated beats bought: local businesses, class hamper themes, that parent with the beach house. Aim for one headline prize and a ladder of smaller ones so more families win something. The fastest fill: a mufti day where the entry fee is a prize donation — one school day, whole prize table. Prize ideas that actually get donated. Keep prizes under $30,000 total and you need no permit in NSW (the rules, in plain English).
3. Price it and print it (4 weeks out)
$2 a ticket, $40 a book of 20 is the comfortable school standard — familiar, and the book maths is easy at the gate. Print numbered books at school (about $70 in paper and toner for 6,000 tickets); numbered tickets are a legal requirement in NSW, not a nicety, so skip the blank templates.
4. Sign books out to sellers (3 weeks out)
This is where numbered books earn their keep. Keep one list: book number, ticket range, who took it. Send books home with a note and a return date. Unsold books come back; sold books come back as stubs and money — and the ranges tell you instantly who has returned what.
5. Sell everywhere families are (2 weeks out)
School gate mornings, the office window, assembly, the newsletter, the school app, the P&C Facebook group. Put the price and the draw date in every mention. A table, a float tin, and two rostered parents per morning is plenty. The full playbook, with a copy-paste newsletter blurb: how to promote a school raffle.
6. Draw day
Stubs in the barrel, draw publicly at the advertised time, record each winning number and name as it comes out. Ring winners within a couple of days. The stub already has their name and phone — that is why the stub exists.
7. The week after
Bank the money, reconcile against the ticket ranges (sold numbers × price = the tin), thank the donors publicly, and file the record — what was printed, sold, raised, won. If the tickets were numbered, this is twenty minutes; if not, it is archaeology.