Charity event poster: what it must say to sell a ticket

A charity event poster has one job: to turn somebody walking past into somebody holding a ticket. Most fail at it quietly. The logo sits neatly at the top, there is a photograph of last year’s gala, and the two or three facts a reader needs before committing £75 and a Saturday night are nowhere to be found.

I am Kevin Durham. I work the floor rather than the podium at 60 to 80 charity events a year, so I read these posters in the foyer on my way in. This is about the poster itself: copy, regulated wording, design. The wider build-up sits in my guide to promoting an auction.

What should a charity event poster say?

A charity event poster should answer six questions in three seconds: what is it, who is it for, when, where, how much, and how do I book. The rest is decoration.

Put the event name and the cause in the largest type on the page. Then the date, including the day of the week, and the start time. Then the venue with its town, because people genuinely do not know where “The Assembly Rooms” is.

Price comes next, and price needs company. “£75” alone makes a reader hesitate. “£75 includes a three course dinner and a welcome drink” does not. Selling tables? Say what one costs and how many it seats.

Then one booking route, the easiest you have. Two split the traffic and double the chance one is broken in the week it matters.

The information people actually look for

The six essentials get someone interested. A different set gets them to commit, and organisers leave these off because they feel like small print.

• Finish time. People are arranging babysitters and taxis.
• Dress code, in plain words. Say “black tie” if you mean it.
• Whether dinner is included, and whether there is a vegetarian option as standard.
• Parking, the nearest station, and whether the venue is step-free.
• Card or cash on the night, and whether under-18s can come.

Code 10.2.1 goes further than courtesy: event materials must be clear about how donations will be used. One line does it. “All profits go to our respite service” beats a paragraph of mission statement.

I learned how much that line matters at an MS UK event. The year before I came in, an external auction company grossed around £13,000 and the charity saw about £1,300. I opened by telling the room exactly where every pound was going. I did not trash anyone, I just turned the lights on, and the money followed the transparency. A poster is your first chance to do that in writing.

Do you have to put your registered charity number on a poster?

In England and Wales, a registered charity whose gross income last financial year was over £10,000 must state that it is a registered charity on any notice, advertisement or other document asking for money for its benefit. That is section 39 of the Charities Act 2011, and it applies whether the request is express or implied and whether or not the donor gets anything back. A ticketed fundraising event is exactly that. The statement must be in English and in “legible characters”. Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own rules.

The number itself is not strictly what the section demands, but “Registered charity number 1234567” is the cleanest way to satisfy it, and it is what readers look for.

Footer. At a size somebody can read.

Two more things belong down there. Say what the appeal is for, including any secondary purpose, which is the CC20 advice to trustees. And if you name a target for a restricted appeal, Code 1.2.2 wants you to say what happens if you raise more or less than that.

How should a charity event poster word a raffle?

Word it to match the lottery you are running, because the two common types allow completely different advertising.

Get this wrong and the poster is the evidence.

A raffle at your event is normally an incidental lottery. No licence needed, but tickets can be sold only at the venue and only while the event runs. Advance sales and online sales, social media included, are not allowed. So a poster can say “raffle on the night, tickets from the welcome desk”. It cannot say “buy your raffle tickets now”.

Sell in advance and you are into a small society lottery: registered with your licensing authority for a £40 fee, at least 20% of proceeds to the cause, proceeds under £20,000 a draw and £250,000 a year. Every ticket must carry four things: your society’s name, the ticket price, the organiser’s name and address, and the draw date. If your poster doubles as the ticket, those four go on it.

Advertising rules sit on top. CAP Code 8.17 wants the significant conditions stated clearly: how to enter, a prominent closing date, the prizes, any age or geographical restriction, any free-entry route, and the promoter’s name and address. Rule 8.18 saves posters: where space is limited, point readers to the full terms. “Full raffle terms at ourcharity.org.uk/raffle” is enough. The law behind this is in my guide to charity raffle rules.

When does a poster need a solicitation statement?

A poster needs a solicitation statement when the person or business doing the asking is paid for it. Section 60 of the Charities Act 1992 covers solicitations in general, not only spoken ones.

Two situations catch event posters. The first is a professional fundraiser running the appeal: the statement must name the charity, say how their payment is worked out, and give the notifiable amount. From 30 September 2026 the thresholds are £15 a day, £1,500 a year or £1,500 from a single venture. The Regulator’s own plain-English page still showed the older £10 and £1,000 figures on 24 October 2026, so work from the legislation.

The second is a commercial participator. If a company sells the tickets, or sells anything on the promise that part of the price goes to you, the poster must name the charity and state the notifiable amount: “£5 from every ticket goes to St Luke’s Hospice”, not “proceeds to charity”. Vagueness there is a Code 1.2.1 problem too, since unclear information and omissions both count as misleading.

Where do charity event posters still work?

Posters still work where a specific audience has a standing reason to look at a wall. They do little where strangers hurry past.

The places that earn their print run:

• Clubhouses, pavilions and gym noticeboards, where the same 400 people pass every week.
• School gates. Church porches.
• The staff kitchen of a corporate partner, which in my experience is the quietest high-performing channel an organiser has.
• The table plan area on the night, pointing at next year’s date.

Where they disappoint: a town-centre lamppost, a board with 40 other posters on it, anywhere nobody stops. Pair the poster with a person. The clubhouse one works because the secretary mentions it on Thursday.

And treat it as the opening move. Jigsaw Trust expected £14,000 from their live auction. It did £27,000, and a live pledge nobody had planned raised another £30,600, which is a powerful team behind a powerful charity. The posters got people in the room. The pledge is where the real money lives, and that is the argument for settling your fundraising strategy before you brief a designer.

Contrast, type size and QR codes

Design decisions are accessibility decisions here. A poster gets read standing up, at an angle, in bad light.

Use a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 for body text and 3:1 for large text, where large means 18 point, or 14 point bold. Those are minimums and should not be rounded up, so 4.4:1 fails. Pale grey on white and gold on cream both fail, and both are popular in charity design.

On type size, the government’s inclusive communication guidance sets 12 point as the floor, 14 point where the audience includes people with sight loss, and 16 point and above for large print. Your charity-number footer is not exempt.

QR codes earn their place if you handle them properly. The NCSC reckons codes in enclosed venues are probably fine while codes in open spaces such as stations and car parks carry more risk, and it advises using the phone’s own scanner. So print a short web address beside the code, keep it at least 25mm square, and scan it yourself from two metres before signing off the artwork. A code behind glass in a dim corridor will not read, however good it looks on screen.

A charity event poster checklist

Run the artwork past this before it prints:

1. Event name and cause, largest type on the page.
2. Day, date, start and finish time.
3. Venue with town, parking and step-free access.
4. Price, what it includes, and the table price.
5. One booking route, tested that week.
6. One line on where the money goes.
7. Registered charity statement and number, legible.
8. Raffle wording matching your lottery type, plus a link to full terms.
9. Any solicitation or commercial participator statement.
10. Contrast checked, nothing under 12 point, QR code scanned from two metres.

Get those ten right and the poster has done its job. More on the night itself in my notes on planning a gala and on what a charity auctioneer actually does. For a hand with the programme behind the poster, call 07596 851647.