How Giveaways work

1. When to use a giveaway (vs. First-to-ask)

Anything you mark Free for gifting on MaStuff has two modes for picking the lucky recipient:

They're siblings, not parent/child. Picking giveaway isn't "First-to-ask plus a timer." It's its own mode. While a giveaway is live, the "🎁 Free if you ask" affordance is suppressed — the only path to the item is through the giveaway. When the giveaway ends, the item drops back to plain inventory; you turn Free gifting back on deliberately if you want another round.

2. Setting one up

Two paths get you there, both as the owner:

From the Add Item form (new items)

1. Tap 📦 Add Stuff.
2. Scroll to the Where is it offered? section.
3. Tick 🎁 Free for the asking. The yellow giveaway sub-panel appears.
4. Leave "Use a Giveaway" checked (it's on by default for new gifts). Uncheck it if you'd rather use First-to-ask.
5. Configure the When / Who / How-many controls (below).
6. Save.

From an existing item (any item)

1. Find the item card.
2. Tap 🤝 Send Offer → in the Type dropdown pick Giveaway.
3. The yellow giveaway setup panel takes over — same controls as the Add form.
4. Tap Publish giveaway.

The controls explained

⏱️ When does it run?

• Schedule for later: leave unchecked to start now. Tick it to pick a future start time (great for "Whacky Wednesday Whisky" drops or Sunday-night family raffles).
• Run for a duration (default) — pick minutes / hours / days. The live preview at the bottom of the section shows the resolved close time so you don't confuse "5 hours" with "5 minutes."
• End at a specific time — pick an exact close timestamp instead of a duration.
• Minimum 30 minutes; maximum 30 days.

👥 Who can enter?

• Same as item's sharing (default) — whoever can already see this item. If you have it shared with Family + Bro's group, those folks see the giveaway.
• Specific groups — override the item's normal sharing just for this giveaway. Useful if the item is broadly shared but you only want, say, the immediate family in the draw.
• 🌍 Public — every signed-in MaStuff user during the giveaway window. The item also needs to be on the Marketplace for discovery; we don't email the whole platform.

📣 Notify groups now? (Send Offer flow only)

• One email per in-scope group, rate-limited to once per group per item per day. Goes to group members whose Mail Mimic preference is on for that group.
• Disabled if the item isn't shared with any of your groups — there's nobody to notify.

🔢 How many units? (multi-quantity items only)

• If you have 5 of an item, you can run a giveaway for 1 of them (default) or up to all 5. The giveaway picks that many distinct winners at draw time.
• The units in the giveaway are reserved — they can't be lent, sold, rented, or directly given to anyone else while the giveaway is live. The remaining un-reserved units stay transactable as normal.

3. Entering one

If a giveaway is open and you can see the item, the card shows a yellow chip:

Tap it.

• If you have no bonus tickets, you're entered immediately with your single base entry.
• If you have bonus tickets, a prompt asks how many you want to pledge (default 0 = base entry only). Each pledged ticket = one extra weighted entry. The 10% cap protects you from over-pledging — see section 4.

Once entered, the chip flips to green:

Tap that chip any time before the close to adjust your pledge (add more tickets if you've earned more, reduce if you want some back) or withdraw entirely. See section 7 for the manager.

"Not interested" (persistent dismiss)

If the giveaway isn't your thing — say you already have 14 of that item — there's a Not interested dismiss in the header 🎁 pip's giveaway modal. That hides it from your view for the rest of the window without affecting anyone else.

4. Bonus tickets — earning, pledging, the 10% cap

Every account starts with zero bonus tickets. You earn them; you spend them as pledges to boost odds in giveaways you want to win more.

How to earn them

Check your balance + full history any time via the N Free Tickets pill in the account menu. The history shows every grant + spend with a friendly label ("Milestone — 25 items," "Referral — Christine hit 5 items," "Pledged to giveaway: Wawa Gift Card," "Refunded — over-cap").

How to spend them (pledging)

When you tap Enter me on a giveaway and you have bonus tickets, a prompt asks how many to pledge. You can pledge 0 (base entry only) up to your full balance.

At draw time, each entry's weight is:

So pledging 3 tickets = 4 weighted entries vs. someone else's 1 weighted entry. Bigger pledge, better odds.

The 10% cap

To stop one person from steamrolling a draw, no single entrant's effective weight can exceed 10% of the total pool at draw time. Any over-cap tickets are refunded to your wallet right before the draw runs — they didn't lose; they just couldn't be used.

5. The draw — what happens when the window closes

A background job checks for giveaways that have closed and runs the draw within ~5 minutes of close time.

Step by step

1. Pool snapshot. The system collects every "surviving" entry — entered, not withdrawn, person account still active.
2. Apply the 10% cap. For each entry, effective weight = min(raw weight, ⌊10% × total pool⌋). Over-cap tickets refund.
3. Weighted random pick. The system samples one winner per available slot (giveaway_quantity). For multi-winner giveaways, one entrant can only win once — they're removed from the pool after they're picked.
4. Auto-accept gift. Each winner gets a give transaction created in the accepted state — no "do you accept?" extra tap. Tapping Enter me was already your consent to receive.
5. Notifications fan out.
   • Each winner: "🎉 You won the giveaway for X" (in-app + email + web push).
   • Owner: who won (so they can coordinate handoff).
   • Non-winners aren't individually emailed (would feel like a loss); they see the result if they revisit.
6. Item state clears. Both Free gifting and Giveaway flags drop off the item. The item is back to plain inventory.

Co-existing transactions

On multi-qty items, the un-reserved units stay transactable during the giveaway. So an item with 5 units and a giveaway of 2 keeps the other 3 available for lend / sell / rent / direct gift while the giveaway runs.

6. Winner declines? Underfilled? Cancelled?

Winner declines

The winner's give-txn is auto-accepted, but they can still cancel it from their inbox (changed their mind, never got it, whatever). When they do:

• The system detects the cancel was on a giveaway-spawned give-txn.
• It re-draws from the remaining entrant pool (everyone who entered, didn't withdraw, hasn't already won this giveaway).
• The new winner gets a give-txn + a special "you won the re-drawn giveaway" email mentioning that the original winner declined.
• The owner gets a heads-up too.
• If the pool is exhausted (no one left to re-draw), the item drops to plain inventory and you (the owner) get a "no re-draw available" notice.

Underfilled draw (fewer entrants than slots)

You ran a 3-winner giveaway, only 2 people entered. The draw picks both of them as winners. The 3rd unit drops to plain inventory — it's not auto-leftover-FCFS'd; giveaway is a discrete mode, and ending it ends it. If you want to run another giveaway on the leftover unit, turn Free gifting back on deliberately.

No entries at all

Same outcome — item drops to plain inventory. You get a "nobody entered" email.

Owner cancels mid-giveaway

Tap the giveaway chip on the item card → opens the entrants modal → scroll to the ⛔ Cancel this giveaway section.

• Reason is required when there are surviving entrants (they get an email with your reason verbatim — "Lost it under the couch," "Sold it to my neighbor first," etc.).
• Reason is optional when nobody's entered yet (scheduled giveaways, or live ones still waiting for their first entry). The audit log gets a placeholder.
• All pledged tickets refund to entrants' wallets.
• The item drops to plain inventory.

Owner toggles Free gifting off mid-giveaway

Same as a cancel — it routes through the same internal helper. Refunds + entrant emails + your summary email all fire.

Owner deletes the item mid-giveaway

Same again — implicit cancel happens before the delete, so entrants get notified and their tickets refund.

7. Managing your entry

Once you've entered a giveaway, the ✓ Entered chip on the item card is your entry point. Tap it.

The Manage Giveaway Entry sheet opens, showing:

• The closing countdown + current pool size.
• Your current pledge ("1 base + N tickets — about X% of the current pool").
• An input to adjust your total pledge. Set higher to add more tickets; set lower to refund some back to your wallet.
• A live preview: "+N tickets debited at save. Projected pool: Y → you'd be at Z%" — also warns if you'd exceed the 10% cap so you can size it correctly.
• ↩ Withdraw from this giveaway as a secondary action: removes your entry entirely, refunds all your pledged tickets.

You can update or withdraw any time before the close. After the close, no changes are possible.

Earned more tickets while you're in a giveaway?

When new tickets land in your wallet, the app surfaces a toast: "+N tickets! Boost your odds on 'X'?" — tap it to open the manager for the soonest-closing entry you have.

8. Owner controls

Edit a live or scheduled giveaway

From the item card, the 📅 Giveaway starts X chip (or the in-progress giveaway chip if it's already running) opens the entrants modal where you can see who's entered, cancel the giveaway, etc. To change the timing or audience, tap the Edit button on the card.

See who's entered (without seeing pledges)

From the entrants modal, you see each entrant's display name + when they entered. You don't see how many tickets they pledged — that's the entrant's private choice. After the draw, you see who won.

Re-running a giveaway on the same item

Once a giveaway has drawn (or been cancelled), it's done. To run a new round on the same item:

1. Edit the item.
2. In the Free gifting section, you'll see "Previous giveaway drawn — won by X" above the radio options.
3. Pick Giveaway — random winner again and set fresh times.
4. Save.

Re-enabling clears the prior entrants so the new round starts fresh.

9. Edge cases + FAQ

Can I enter my own giveaway?

No. The owner is blocked. Household members CAN enter the owner's giveaway though, since households are treated as independent Persons.

What if I'm in 5 groups but only some of them see the item?

The "Same as item's sharing" audience option respects the item's actual scope. If the item is shared with 3 of your 5 groups, only those 3 groups' members see the giveaway. To open it wider, switch to "Specific groups" or "Public" at giveaway setup.

I joined a group with a giveaway already running. Can I still enter?

Yes, as long as the window hasn't closed. The invite-accept screen flags any live giveaways in the group you just joined (" Heads-up: 2 free-gift giveaways are already running in this group — open the app fast to enter") so you have time to act.

What happens to pledged tickets if I leave a group?

The pledges stay on the entry. You'd still win (if drawn) but you'd lose visibility of the result in your feed since you can't see the item any more. Pledges are tied to the entry, not the group membership.

Why didn't anyone get notified when my public giveaway activated?

Public giveaways skip the per-group email blast on purpose — emailing every signed-in MaStuff user would be spam. Public giveaways surface via the Marketplace tab + the header 🎁 pip's "giveaways you can enter" modal, which is the right discovery channel for a broad-audience drop. If you want emails fanned out, switch the audience to "Specific groups" instead.

Can I run more than one giveaway on the same item at the same time?

No — one giveaway per item at a time. On a multi-quantity item you can configure the giveaway to give away N of M units, but it's still a single giveaway.

Why did my "Free if you ask" chip disappear when I turned on a giveaway?

By design. Giveaway and First-to-ask are sibling modes, not parent/child. While a giveaway is live (scheduled or in-progress), the FCFS affordance is suppressed so it's clear there's only one path to the item right now. When the giveaway ends, you can turn Free gifting back on deliberately.

What's the smallest giveaway duration?

30 minutes. The largest is 30 days.

What if the cron is down?

The draw fires when the cron next runs after closes_at ≤ now. If the cron is delayed by an hour, draws fire an hour late but the math is unchanged. Entrants can still withdraw between close time and draw time — once the draw fires, no more changes.

Questions / weird behavior / "this is broken"? 💬 Send feedback from the hamburger menu in the app — goes straight to me. I read every one.

— Kevin

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