Most national lottery winners experience a feeling of guilt after collecting their lottery winnings. Why? Well simply put, although winning the national lottery UK is a pretty nice feeling many people find it difficult to justify the fact that they didn’t actually earn that money. It isn’t uncommon for national lottery winners to experience a certain amount of shame as they come to terms with their good fortune. It is for this reason that a high percentage of national lottery winners subsequently give a proportion of their winnings to charitable causes. But, how much of your lottery winnings should you give to charity?
Where does your lottery money go?
The National Lottery UK organizer (Camelot) takes just 1% of the lottery revenue generated as profit each year. This sounds like quite a tiny proportion until you begin to understand the amount of money that people in the UK spend on the National Lottery each year.
Since the National Lottery UK began in 1994 an incredible £35 billion has been raised for some 450,000 separate charitable causes. For example, last year (2015) from total ticket sales of nearly £7,300 million…
- £1,800 million was raised for charity and lottery projects
- Just short of £4,000 million was paid out to national lottery winners
- £873 million went to the government in duty
- £333 million was earned by retailers
This is roughly divided out as…
- Health, education, the environment, and charitable causes – 40%
- Sport – 20%
- The arts – 20%
- National Heritage – 20%
All together we are talking a lot of 0’s here. So many in fact that any money you may wish to donate is barely going to register. The National Lottery UK already, by its very nature does more for charity and charitable causes than any other single entity in the UK. By definition of course that means you.
Should national lottery winners give more?
So, do you really need to give more? Well, that’s kind of subjective, isn’t it? The overriding human emotion it seems is to share your good fortune with others. It can be argued that this is either a sign of a good Christian upbringing, high moral standards, a sense of community, or possibly a mixture of all three.
There are of course always going to be some national lottery winners who either because of a sense of entitlement, lack of compassion, or simply because it doesn’t even occur to them, will not give any of their winnings to charity. Working on the basis that Camelot has already done this for them there is no real reason why they should.
Giving to charity should be a very personal thing. My advice would be that if you were lucky enough to win the lottery (any lottery) then look within your own community before distributing your lottery winnings. Small local charities always seem to be way down the list when money is being dished out.
Pay a visit perhaps to local children’s hospitals. Are there children there with a disease that requires special medication or drugs? Does your local nursery require new equipment or teaching aids? Does the church where you were married need a new roof? If a new house with a large garden was on your lottery shopping list, maybe you might want to think about also giving a new home to a dog from the local shelter.
As for how much of your lottery winnings you should give. Well, I don’t really think I can say, but be creative and be as generous as you feel, you will be rewarded for it later.
National Lottery: helping projects around the UK
Watch this little video from the National Lottery about how you’re already helping projects around the UK.
The contents of this site including all blog articles and static pages are designed to be both fun and informative. Nothing in this blog is Intended to show that taking part in any lottery will significantly change your life for the better nor should this be inferred.
