What is the difference between a raffle and a lottery?
I think that a lottery requires money from the seekers while raffle doesn't. Right?
The fundamental difference in between a raffle and a lottery is that a raffle always has a winner (i.e. all the purchased tickets are entered into a raffle draw) while a lottery may return a non-winning result (i.e. a combination of number that nobody has selected for their entry).
Source
I (native British English speaker) would tend to characterise a lottery as having monetary prizes, and a raffle as having non-monetary prizes.
Collins in its "English" section (you need to click on the relevant tab) tends to agree with me:
lottery
a method of raising money by selling numbered tickets and giving a proportion of the money raised to holders of numbers drawn at random
a similar method of raising money in which players select a small group of numbers out of a larger group printed on a ticket. If a player's selection matches some or all of the numbers drawn at random the player wins a proportion of the prize fund
raffle
- a lottery in which the prizes are goods rather than money
However, in its "American" section (again, you need to click on the relevant tab) there is no such distinction:
lottery
- a game of chance in which people buy numbered tickets, and prizes are given to those whose numbers are drawn by lot: sometimes sponsored by a state or organization as a means of raising funds
raffle
- a lottery in which each participant buys a chance or chances to win a prize a lottery in which each participant buys a chance or chances to win a prize