Woodrup Track bike raffle - 50 tickets

coins for a couple of tickets is different to using a structured payment system to accept transactions from bank accounts.

Real-life rules are easy to apply.

The draw is public (witnessed) and random (from a hat or tombola).
The target charity is up-front declared to all entrants.
The tickets sold or donation amount is declared at time of draw.

Basically it's fully transparent and most schools, community groups, etc are aware of the laws.

http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/Gambling-sectors/Lotteries/About-the-lottery-industry/About-lotteries-raffles/About-lotteries-raffles.aspx

It's really simple in real-life to comply, but very hard on-line to comply.

On-line demands a level of transparency harder to achieve, and the key requirement is on this page: http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk/Gambling-sectors/Lotteries/About-the-lottery-industry/About-lotteries-raffles/Incidental-non-commercial-lotteries.aspx

Incidental non-commercial lotteries (also known as raffles) are held at events where all money raised goes entirely to purposes that are not for private or commercial gain (such as school fetes).

That's actually why LCEF and others could do it... provably passing every penny to a cause.

LFGSS has done one before, and again every penny went to charity (a hospital blood cause as it was related to a person involved in a road traffic incident).

Also... if you do decide to do a charity one online (it's still not clear to me whether you intended any or all of the proceeds to go to charity, or this was just a form of selling something)... then you can still do that, but it's best to do the draw in public, i.e. a pub where others can come and witness the random selection.

Finally if it's done online, there needs to be some verification of the donation. LCEF was fine, they organised it and benefited and effectively charities, clubs, societies can do that and that's cool. For LFGSS I received a thank you note from the charity which I shared. Something needs to say, yup... the money (correct total) really did end up with the cause.

And not all of this is aimed at you, part of it is just here for the next person who comes along thinking that they can do a raffle when it's likely to land them in a serious mess.