I live in Washington State, one of the jurisdictions that monitors raffles and which requires a permit and accounting, and yes raffles are lumped in with gambling and pull tabs and things like that.
Many groups around here will do auctions at fund raisers as easier than raffles, but guilds particularly do have raffles usually associated with their shows. I very rarely see raffles other than that -- the big one here is for an organization that raffles a designer house that has TV ads even.