Giving has its seasons
In France, generosity follows a calendar of remarkable stability. The 2025 Baromètre de la générosité, published by France générosités, illustrates this: the final quarter alone would account for close to 41% of the annual funds raised by associations and foundations, and the month of December alone for around 23%. From one year to the next, the pattern repeats: a long crescendo towards the holidays, carried by the end-of-year surge of solidarity and, probably, by the tax deadline. Summer, conversely, cuts a pale figure, and giving slows to a crawl.
Generosity concentrated at the end of the year — estimated share of the annual funds raised
The 2026 RaiseNow study carried out in the German-speaking region (by iRaiser, covering more than ten thousand organizations) points the same way: over the third quarter, charities there would collect barely more than a fifth of their annual volume. This seasonality is not, however, inevitable: organizations that run events — sports and leisure clubs in particular — partly escape it, since a major share of their fundraising takes place between spring and autumn. The giving calendar is therefore not dictated by the season alone: it also depends on what the organization offers, and on the moment it chooses to offer it.
On the raffle side
The raffle, precisely, ignores the calendar of conventional giving. Where donations wait for December to peak, a raffle can reach its high point in the middle of August, because it answers to a different logic. Unlike a donation, which has neither a beginning nor an end, a raffle has a defined duration, with a launch and a fixed closing date.
The campaign reports on GoTombola since 2022 confirm it: whatever the season, the bulk of the money comes in during the very last days, as the draw approaches. A school raffle that ends at the late-May fair sees its sales surge in the home stretch; a large summer campaign closing at the end of August follows the same curve. Timing and exclusivity thus work in favor of fundraising, thanks to a well-known human impulse: scarcity creates urgency, and urgency triggers participation. Entrants have no guarantee, after all, that the prizes on offer will be on offer again on another occasion. This is a lever that conventional giving, with no deadline, cannot draw on.
From this follows the whole point of summer. Since a raffle manufactures its own peak, it does not need to wait for the high season of generosity: it can turn a slack month into a fundraising high point. It remains to be understood why summer lends itself so well to this.
Summer reshuffles our relationship with money
On vacation, we no longer quite count the way we do the rest of the year. The money set aside for summer forms, in our minds, a separate envelope: into it go the meal on a terrace, the ice cream on the harbor front, or the small extra we would deny ourselves in December. Behavioral economists, following Richard Thaler, speak of “mental accounting”: we file our spending into watertight drawers, and summer's “pleasure” drawer is, by nature, more generous. The raffle ticket settles into it readily — experienced as a small leisure expense, a tiny risk accepted for the thrill of a possible win, all the more so when it is part of a memorable experience.
Letting go, that quiet ally of engagement
In summer, life slows down. We make time for outings and activities impossible to fit in during the rest of the year; we are more available and, above all, more receptive: we linger over a news feed, we finally answer the message from someone close that had been left hanging. This availability of mind changes everything, because it multiplies the occasions on which a cause can be encountered. And when the occasion arises, nothing holds it back: entering online takes a few moments — the time to choose your tickets and pay from a phone — before returning to whatever you were doing.
To this receptiveness, summer adds its most precious ingredient: reunions. Family meals, time among friends — all occasions on which a cause travels by word of mouth, carried by the enthusiasm of someone close, a channel far more convincing than an email campaign.
Emotion as a factor of success
Summer, finally, is the season when associations are most visible. Festivals, open days, village fairs, sporting events: wherever people gather, the cause stops being a box to tick on a screen and becomes a lived experience. Organizers observe that an audience that is moved, concerned and present takes part more readily.
The raffle then adds itself to the emotion of the moment, in a gesture that benefits the cause. Arrangements that bridge paper and digital — a ticket bought at a stand, activated by a code to scan — make it possible to turn that impulse into funds without stripping it of its spontaneity, and to capture generosity at the precise instant it arises, without the coldness of an administrative procedure.
The real question to ask
Launching a raffle in the middle of summer is therefore not swimming against the current: it means capturing a collective energy that the rest of the year does not offer at this intensity. For an association, it is a chance to surf the trough of the donation wave and emerge from it with an energetic jump, while the vacationers enjoy the show from the beach.
The real question, then, is not “when” but “around what”: which event will bring the community together? A fair, a festival, a highlight of the new school year? Many of these dates can, with a little regularity, become an annual fundraising fixture and turn a month with a reputation for being slack into a success.
Sources
- Baromètre de la générosité for the year 2025, France générosités.
- RaiseNow study published by iRaiser, on digital fundraising, German-speaking region (more than ten thousand organizations).
- Richard H. Thaler — work on mental accounting, behavioral economics.