Edinburgh Zoo raised £76,863 in 14 days by turning a private night at its own zoo into a prize draw

On 2nd March 2021, with Edinburgh Zoo barely reopened after more than 5 months of pandemic closure across 2 lockdowns, the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland put its own zoo up as a prize: the building itself, after hours, opened up for 1 winner and 3 guests. The Crowdfunder campaign closed 14 days later having raised £76,863 from 4,654 supporters at £5 an entry. The winner was drawn by computer on 17th March.

The prize was a thing nobody could buy at any price. The winner got the entire zoo to themselves from 6pm to 10pm on a date of their choosing, fed the animals (the campaign named the lions, the tigers and the famous giant pandas), took a personally guided behind the scenes tour with RZSS chief executive David Field, had dinner in the zoo's Mansion House, and finished with an overnight stay at the Caledonian, Edinburgh's Waldorf Astoria hotel, which partnered on the draw. Almost all of that came out of assets RZSS already owned: its site, its animals, its keepers, its chief executive's evening. The marginal cost of the core prize was staffing a night.

Most charity prize draws start with a procurement problem: find a prize good enough to sell tickets against, then persuade someone to donate it. RZSS skipped it, because an attraction with a gate and animals behind it already owns the scarcest prize in its market: access nobody else can grant. The £76,863 was raised at a moment of genuine crisis (the closure had cost the charity more than £2 million, against a food bill of over £60,000 a month) and it was raised fast, unrestricted, and from thousands of people rather than 1 funder. RZSS then ran the same mechanic again across both its parks for at least 4 years; that story is told at /draws/rzss-repeat-draw-programme/. This page covers the first draw in the detail the programme view leaves out.

At a glance

• Raise: £76,863 for RZSS, the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland (Scottish registered charity SC004064)
• Supporters: 4,654 in 14 days, funded 16th March 2021, winner drawn 17th March 2021
• Platform: Crowdfunder, on the charity's own Crowdfunder account
• Mechanic: paid entry prize draw, £5 per entry, bundles at £20 for 5, £40 for 10 and £100 for 25, with the free entry route as the legal compliance layer
• Prize: exclusive after-hours access to Edinburgh Zoo (6pm to 10pm, winner plus 3 guests), feeding the animals, a guided tour with the CEO, dinner in the Mansion House, and a partnered overnight stay at the Waldorf Astoria Edinburgh, The Caledonian
• Context: pandemic recovery; the closure had cost RZSS more than £2 million, with a £60,000 a month animal food bill; the campaign promised 100 per cent of ticket fees would go directly to feeding the animals
• Afterwards: the model was repeated across RZSS's 2 parks; 8 verified draws are compiled at £201,908 in our programme case

What the draw was

It was a single prize and a single campaign, open for 14 days. People entered by buying £5 entries on Crowdfunder, with discounted bundles encouraging multiple entries. The draw closed at 23:59 on Tuesday 16th March 2021 and the winner was selected by a computer process the next day. Entrants had to be 18 or over, and the prize was redeemable until 30th September 2022. Full terms sat on the zoo's own website rather than the campaign page.

It is a paid entry prize draw. The product being sold is paid entries, and every element of the page (the £5 price point, the bundle ladder, the "100% of your ticket fee will go directly to feed the animals you love" promise) is built to convert them. The free entry route that sits underneath draws of this kind exists because UK law requires it to keep the draw outside the Gambling Act 2005. Nothing on the page sells it.

RZSS ran this draw itself, on its own Crowdfunder account, and not through a celebrity supporter or third party fundraiser. The charity owned the audience, the asset and the campaign.

The prize

The prize had 2 layers. The core was pure own-asset: the zoo after closing time, the animals, the keepers, the Mansion House, and 4 hours of the chief executive's evening. None of that had to be bought, negotiated for, or shipped. Nobody else could buy it either, so the part of the prize that cost RZSS least was also the part entrants could get nowhere else. Edinburgh Zoo sells admission every day but does not sell the building at night, and the draw made money from that difference.

The second layer was the partnered topper: 2 rooms for a night at the Caledonian, with breakfast and spa access. We have not found a public statement of the commercial terms between RZSS and the hotel, so we will not claim the rooms were gifted, but the structure is the familiar one of a luxury brand attaching itself to a beloved local institution's moment. The hotel rounded the experience into a complete story (the night at the zoo, then the 5 star bed) and gave the campaign a second brand to borrow credibility from. It was an extra on top of the zoo.

Every entrant, win or lose, was also promised a thank you film of the pandas and their keepers, so nobody who paid £5 walked away with nothing. It made a £5 entry feel like belonging to something, and it cost the operator one video.

Si's review of the live campaign also noted a warm, simple explainer video fronting the page, helping entrants visualise an experience that, by definition, no photograph of a past winner could yet show. For a prize nobody had won before, that video carries a lot of the selling.

The audience and the moment

This case has to account for who saw the draw, because its reach was not a normal one. Edinburgh Zoo is one of Scotland's best known visitor attractions, with a membership base, an adoption programme and a social following our records put at over 400,000 across channels. That was the starting point, and on its own it does not explain the number. The draw launched into a news cycle about the zoo's pandemic losses, complete with a Scottish Government plea to China over the cost of keeping the giant pandas, so the zoo was already in the national news the week it went live. Local press covered the launch. And the £60,000 a month food bill gave every £5 entry a concrete, emotional job: feed the animals you love.

So the draw did not create demand from nothing. It turned affection people already had into entries, at a moment when the crisis had sharpened that affection and the press was already covering the zoo, and it gave people something thrilling in exchange for helping. David Field, the RZSS chief executive, framed it exactly that way at the time: supporters had been fantastic through the closure, and the draw was a way to "thank them by giving them something to really look forward to".

The numbers say the conversion was efficient. The average supporter contributed £16.52 (£76,863 across 4,654 supporters), more than 3 times the single entry price, which points to the bundle ladder doing a lot of the work, though Crowdfunder supporters can also top up above the entry price, so the average does not isolate it. That is a derived figure (our arithmetic on the campaign page totals), but the inputs are primary.

Nobody should read £76,863 as the going rate for an after-hours draw. The size of the raise came from how many people saw the draw in 14 days, and in March 2021 that was a large warm following plus a national news moment. A smaller attraction starts with a smaller list. Whether it ends with a smaller reach depends on the prize being one the press will run with and on who else will put the page in front of their audience. RZSS's own later draws show what the mechanic raises in calmer times, and those are the figures to plan from.

What happened next

Night at the Zoo was the first of a series. RZSS ran the same mechanic at Highland Wildlife Park that spring (£41,270), then against a sculpture trail, a departing pair of pandas, a cheetah, a newborn pygmy hippo and a rescued lynx. We compiled the 8 draws with individually verified final totals at £201,908, and the table, the dates and what a smaller attraction should plan from are all in our programme case. In short, the mechanic was the same every time, the totals followed how many people each draw reached, and the draws carried on long after the crisis that started them. The pygmy hippo draw in late 2024 had nothing to do with lockdown.

What attraction and charity teams should take from this

1. The best prize you can offer is probably not for sale. RZSS sells admission every day and does not sell the building at night, and the draw made money from that difference. Any site with a door it locks at night has the same thing to offer. The 4 kinds of own-asset prize, and what they look like without animals, are set out in the programme case.

2. The money had a job people could picture. Every £5 here had a concrete destination: feed the animals you love, against a food bill the press had already reported. An entrant who does not win still knows what their £5 did. On a draw for an attraction, say plainly where the money goes and make it something a person can picture.

3. The evidence points to the bundle ladder doing much of the work. The average supporter gave £16.52 against a £5 entry price, and the page made 5, 10 and 25 entry bundles the obvious upgrade. The average cannot separate bundles from top-ups, but a draw priced only at its single entry would have needed nearly 3 times the supporters for the same raise. The ladder costs nothing to add.

4. Nobody walks away with nothing. Every entrant was promised a thank you film of the pandas and their keepers, and the page carried an explainer video for a prize no photograph of a past winner could show. Each cost the operator a video. Both are the kind of detail that makes a £5 entry feel like joining in rather than buying a ticket.

What this case study doesn't claim

• We do not claim £76,863 as a planning baseline for an attraction prize draw. The raise rode a famous brand, a large warm following and a national news moment. RZSS's own later draws (£6,230 to £41,270) are the more transferable reference points.
• We do not claim the Waldorf Astoria element was donated. The hotel is described on the campaign page as a partner; the commercial terms are not public.
• We do not claim the exact count of subsequent RZSS draws. The 8 individually verified draws are compiled in the programme case; the figure of 12 or more is The Prize Draw Company's record of the operator's Crowdfunder activity rather than an enumerated public list.
• We do not know who won, and no supporter-level data beyond the campaign totals is public. The £16.52 average contribution is our arithmetic on the page's displayed totals.
• We keep this campaign fully separate from 2 near neighbours that press coverage sometimes blurs into it: The Cheeky Panda's £50,000 donation, which went to a different RZSS crowdfunder launched on 16th March 2021, and the Win Your Own Giraffe draw, which is a separate 2022 campaign with its own case study and its own figures.

Sources

Verified 2026-06-12. Reliability noted where it matters.

• Crowdfunder campaign page, "Win a once-in-a-lifetime night at Edinburgh Zoo!", at crowdfunder.co.uk/p/nightatthezoo. Live page is Cloudflare protected; figures taken from the Internet Archive snapshot of 17th May 2025 (web.archive.org/web/20250517184452), which displays "On 16th March 2021 we successfully raised £76,863 with 4654 supporters in 14 days", the £5 entry price, the bundle ladder, the full prize description, the closing and draw dates, and the redemption deadline. Primary source. Si's first-hand read of the live campaign page (final totals as displayed) matches at £76,000 rounded.
• RZSS Edinburgh Zoo news announcement, 2nd March 2021, "Win the keys to Edinburgh Zoo for a night", at edinburghzoo.org.uk/news/article/19113 (via Internet Archive snapshot of 2nd March 2021). Primary source for the launch date, the £5 ticket price, the more than £2 million closure cost, the £60,000 a month food bill, and David Field's quotes. Self-reported, reliability High for its own campaign mechanics.
• Edinburgh Evening News, 16th March 2021, "Charity funds boost for Edinburgh Zoo following Scottish Government's plea to China", at edinburghnews.scotsman.com (via Internet Archive snapshot of 26th May 2022). Independent corroboration: quotes David Field stating the prize draw "raised more than £70,000" with the winner announced that week, and establishes that The Cheeky Panda's £50,000 went to the separate experiences crowdfunder. Reliability High.
• Edinburgh Evening News, March 2021, "Edinburgh Zoo launch prize draw for once-in-a-lifetime exclusive after hours experience where the winner can feed the animals", at edinburghnews.scotsman.com. Launch coverage; paywalled or blocked on fetch, headline and indexing verified in search engines only.
• Crowdfunder campaign page, "Win an exclusive night at Highland Wildlife Park!", at crowdfunder.co.uk/p/NightAtHighlandWildlifePark (via Internet Archive snapshot of 5th September 2025). Source for the £41,270 raise, 2,511 supporters, funding date of 31st May 2021 and the Macdonald Aviemore Resort partnership. Primary source.
• Crowdfunder campaign page, "Win! Feed a giant panda, February Draw", at crowdfunder.co.uk/p/feed-a-giant-panda-february-draw (via Internet Archive snapshot of 1st January 2026). Source for the £13,805 raise and 1,250 supporters. Primary source.
• RZSS Edinburgh Zoo news, 1st February 2023, "Win the chance to feed a giant panda", at edinburghzoo.org.uk/news/win-chance-feed-giant-panda. Source for the monthly draw series running February to June 2023.
• Crowdfunder campaign page, "Win a baby pygmy hippo experience!", at crowdfunder.co.uk/p/baby-pygmy-hippo-experience (via Internet Archive snapshot of 24th May 2025). Source for the £17,420 raise, 1,337 supporters and the 18th November 2024 funding date. Primary source.
• Scottish Charity Register (OSCR), entry for the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland, charity number SC004064, at oscr.org.uk. Source for charity registration. Reliability High.
• Crowdfunder UK Help Centre, "Prize Draws", at help.crowdfunder.co.uk/en/articles/5367006-prize-draws. Source for the platform's prize draw product and the role of the free entry route.