The three categories
- Category 1 — up to $2,000 in gross ticket sales. No licence. Run by non-profit associations; total prize value must be at least 20% of estimated ticket sales. The classic meat-tray or single-hamper raffle.
- Category 2 — $2,000 to $50,000 in gross ticket sales. Still no licence for eligible associations (which includes educational bodies — a P&C raffle lives here), but the rules on ticket content, advertising and the draw get stricter.
- Category 3 — over $50,000. A licence from the Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation (OLGR) is required before sales begin, and the licence number goes on every ticket. Schools rarely reach this.
What that means for a school raffle
A typical school raffle — 6,000 tickets at $2 is $12,000 of sales — is a category 2 game: no licence, but tickets and the draw must follow the rules. Tickets should identify the association, the prize, the price, and the draw details, and the draw must happen as advertised with results made known. Sequentially numbered tickets with matching stubs are how every Queensland art union has satisfied this since forever.
Records
Keep proper records of tickets sold, proceeds, expenses, prizes and winners with the association’s books. As in every state: numbered books make the records mostly write themselves.
The fine print: general information for school fundraisers, not legal advice. The authoritative detail is the Charitable and Non-Profit Gaming Act 1999 via Business Queensland / OLGR. Elsewhere? NSW rules · Victorian rules.