Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Participating in the UK Lottery

By Susan Renolds

National lotteries like the United Kingdom's allow citizens to participate in raising funds for community causes in return for the opportunity to win cash prizes. The focus, however, tends to be on the winnings rather than the giving. Take a moment to learn who is benefiting from the UK National Lottery.

You may already know that 28p from every 1 raised by the lottery goes to Good Causes through lottery grants, a total of over 22 billion to date. In fact, most UK residents live within a few miles of a lottery-funded project. Good Causes are chosen as recipients of lottery funds because they serve a charitable or socially beneficial purpose. The Big Lottery Fund is the largest distributor of lottery funds in the UK. It handles more than half of all the funds the lottery brings in for good causes. A wide range of projects benefits from the Big Lottery Fund, including large-scale community revitalization projects, charities, health, education and environmental projects.

In addition, Good Causes have three specific categories: arts, sports and heritage. Each of these categories receives 16.67% of the Good Causes funds.

Group of four National arts councils and two film councils are Granted ,for funds awarded related to the arts and cinema.For example, a grant to the Yorkshire Film Archive will improve the accessibility of this highly popular collection of historical amateur and professional video via an online database,3m was granted to myfilms.com,high-quality website that will help individuals ,non-mainstream films from the past and present.

The lottery distribution entities, five in number, and the Big Lottery Fund disburse the funds to the sport category. Expenses for purchase of land, building and equipment and construction are met from the grant funds. Local community needs are fulfilled by these projects and it is also intention that the source of funding cannot be only from the lottery. The Inclusive Fitness Initiative is a project devised with this intention and is responsible for making facilities and services available to the many disables persons.

The Lottery Fund has granted more than 39 billion to many of the heritage projects since 1994 and this is due to keeping hold of heritage of the UK with museums, other buildings, certain language or tradition. The AN in Wales has 365,000 to bring important manuscripts.

Go to the Department of Culture, Media, and Sport fo a total list of projects that are funded by the lottery.

There are two problems associated with a lottery that goes to a charitable cause. Opponents say masking it as a charity instead of gambling is a gimmick to get more people to play. While a good cause truly is a great marketing message, the money really does go to good causes.

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