Registration draws for parks, camps & schools
Lottery draws for parks departments, summer camps, and school programs. Every family gets the same odds. Any parent can verify the result. Registration day runs itself.
The problem with first-come-first-served
Every year, the ritual repeats. Registration opens at 9am. Parents set phone alarms. Your staff brace for impact. The site struggles under load. Phones start ringing at 9:02. Angry emails arrive by 9:15.
The families who win spots aren't the ones who care most or need them most — they're the ones with the fastest internet and no job that starts at 8:30. That's not a system. That's luck wearing a system's clothes.
Site crashes at peak load. Shared hosting, underpowered servers, or just 400 simultaneous refresh attempts — the result is the same: nobody gets in.
Speed over need. A fast internet connection and a free calendar beat genuine need or community ties every time.
Staff gets the blame. Every question, every grievance, every "but I've been coming for ten years" conversation lands in your inbox.
How it works
Define capacity, registration window, entry fee, and draw date. Connect your Stripe account in about five minutes — payments go directly to you.
Participants submit their entry and payment method during the open window. Cards are held, not charged — no one pays until they win.
At the scheduled time, winners are selected using a randomness seed from a U.S. government-operated service. Any parent can look up that seed and re-run the draw — they'll get the same result. Winners are charged; everyone else's hold is released. Results go out automatically. Your inbox stays quiet.
This is what draw day looks like.
What's included
Draw results, payment confirmations, and waitlist updates go out by email and SMS the moment the draw completes — without your staff lifting a finger. Registration day becomes quiet by design.
Every draw uses a U.S. government-operated randomness service — not your word, not a black box. Any parent can retrieve the seed and re-run the draw themselves. The result is always identical.
When a lottery isn't the right fit, run a virtual queue instead. Positions are assigned in the order requests arrive at open time — not the order families can get to a browser.
ChosenFair never holds your funds. Stripe Connect routes payments directly to your organization's bank account the moment a winner is selected. Losing entries are voided automatically — no chargebacks, no manual refunds, no payment disputes to manage.
Each draw produces a complete audit record: entry snapshot, randomness seed, and shuffle output. Publish the link. There's nothing to hide.
Every draw uses a randomness service operated by the U.S. government — publicly published and independently retrievable by anyone. Not our word. An institution's.
Anyone can download a draw's audit record and re-run it themselves. The result is always identical.
Stripe Connect routes funds directly to your organization's bank account. ChosenFair never touches participant payments. Participant data is yours — we don't share it, sell it, or use it for anything outside your program.
What operators are saying
"We ran a lottery for 480 camp spots last summer. I used to dread the week after registration closed — the inbox, the calls from parents asking how we picked. This year I sent a link to the audit report. Two questions total."
"Registration day used to mean all-hands. Now it runs while we’re doing other things. The draw happens, emails go out, and I check the report after lunch."
These accounts reflect the kinds of outcomes our early operators describe. Named testimonials coming soon.
Founding Operators
We're opening up to a first group of founding operators — parks departments, camps, and recreation programs running three or more registration events a year. Founding operators get pricing locked in for life, no setup fees, and a direct line to the product team.
Tell us about your programs and your current setup. We'll reach out within two business days to schedule a 30-minute call. We'll run a live draw with your program's actual numbers — if it's not the right fit, we'll tell you that too.
ChosenFair costs less than two hours of staff time per draw event — and founding operators lock that rate in permanently.
Book a DemoFor municipal parks departments, summer camps, school enrollment programs, and recreation centers. US programs.