Read the fine print on any ChaiRaiser prize campaign and you'll find a sentence that puzzles first-time organizers: entry is available without any payment — a free route, plainly posted, honored identically to every other entry. Organizers ask the natural question ("wait, people can enter the prize draw without donating?"), and the answer is one of the platform's load-bearing design decisions, worth understanding rather than just accepting: the free entry path is what keeps prize-linked giving structured as a sweepstakes — a promotion, not a game-of-chance product — and it protects the organization, the donors, and the whole category's future in the community. Here is the plain-language explanation.
The structure, in plain language
Prize-linked anything lives near a legal and ethical line that societies have drawn for centuries: arrangements where people pay for a chance at a prize are regulated as chance-for-payment products nearly everywhere, while promotions where the chance is free — where payment is never the price of entry — live under sweepstakes rules instead. The classic three elements are prize, chance, and consideration (payment); remove any one and the arrangement changes category. Donation games remove consideration: the donation is a donation (real, voluntary, yours to the cause regardless), and the prize chance attaches to participation that anyone can also reach through the posted free route. This is the same structure behind every "no purchase necessary" promotion — mature, well-understood machinery, applied to tzedakah. The platform's own copy rails enforce the vocabulary that keeps the structure honest: an entry is never conditioned on payment, nothing is ever "buy a chance," and the engine contract mints entries at pledge creation on terms the free path matches exactly. (And the standing disclaimer, honestly given: this page explains a design, not the law — organizations with jurisdiction-specific questions ask their own counsel, and the platform's structure is built to make that conversation easy.)
How the path actually works on a campaign
Mechanically, the free route is boring by design — which is the point. Every prize campaign's rules page states the alternate entry method (the mail-in or free-form route, per the campaign's posted terms), each free entry carries the same weight as any other entry (one entry is one entry — the platform's one-play-one-entry architecture makes equality structural rather than promised), and the drawing machinery makes no distinction whatsoever (the sealed-outcome engine draws from the pool of entries; provenance is invisible to it). Organizers sometimes worry the free path will swamp the campaign — the experience across the category is the opposite: the free route is used lightly (most participants are donors who came to give; the game is the texture of their gift, not its motive), while its existence changes the campaign's entire legal and ethical posture. The path is like a fire exit: rarely walked through, absolutely required, and its presence is what makes the building safe to fill.
The free entry path is the sentence that lets everything else be true: the donation stays a donation, the game stays a game, and the prize stays a promotion — three clean categories instead of one blurry one.
Why it protects everyone
The organization is protected because its campaign runs on promotion structure rather than in the regulated-chance category — the difference between using established machinery and improvising near a line that state authorities actually police. Community organizations have no business owning that risk for a fundraiser, and the structure means they don't. The donor is protected because the architecture keeps the gift's meaning clean: money given is tzedakah, full stop — deductibility questions go to the donor's own accountant per the campaign's receipts, but the structural point stands that no one "paid for chances." The community is protected because the category's reputation is a commons: one badly-structured prize campaign in a community poisons the well for every future one, and the platform enforcing the structure at the engine level (rather than trusting each organizer's fine print) means the commons is defended by architecture. And the games themselves are protected — from becoming what they must never become: the anti-slot design rules and the free path together are the difference between donation games and the chance-for-payment products this community rightly refuses, a difference this community would rightly enforce socially even where no regulator did.
What organizers actually need to do
Almost nothing — which is the platform's job working. The rules page generates with the campaign (the free route stated, the terms posted); the copy rails keep the campaign's own language inside the structure (the lexicon that bans pay-for-chance phrasing is enforced platform-wide); and the drawing runs on the engine's sealed machinery with its records retained. The organizer's real obligations are honesty-adjacent: don't editorialize the structure away ("wink, everyone really pays" jokes at the mic undo in one sentence what the architecture builds), honor free entries with exactly the posted process, and route the occasional donor question to the rules page's plain answer. Organizations that want the deeper diligence — their own counsel reviewing the structure for their jurisdiction — get clean documentation to hand over, which is itself a platform feature: the campaign that can survive a lawyer's afternoon is the campaign that deserved the community's trust in the first place.
Frequently asked questions
Does the free entry path mean donations aren't really connected to the games?
The donation and the play travel together in experience — you give, you spin — but the structure keeps their meanings distinct: the gift is unconditional tzedakah, and the prize chance is a promotion open identically through the free route. Both things are fully true at once; that duality is the design.
Won't people just use the free route instead of donating?
The category's consistent experience says no: participants come to support the cause, and the game is their gift's texture. The free route sees light, legitimate use — and every free entry honored is an advertisement for the campaign's integrity, which raises more than it costs.
Is this the same as a shul's licensed event under its own charitable gaming rules?
Different machinery: some jurisdictions license charitable chance events directly to organizations, and communities use those where they hold them. The sweepstakes structure is the platform's general-purpose architecture precisely because it doesn't depend on per-organization licensing — ask counsel which applies to your specific situation.
Where can a donor read the actual terms?
On every prize campaign's rules page, linked from the campaign itself — the entry methods, the drawing process, the prize terms, all posted before anyone plays. If a campaign anywhere lacks that page, that absence is the answer; on this platform it generates with the campaign.