Chariot launches 'monday', a new online lottery for charities
Howard Lake | 19 April 2006 | News
Chariot (UK) plc has announced details of its new online lottery. Tickets for “monday – the Charities Lottery” will cost £1 each and charities will receive 30p of this, “five times more than they receive from The National Lottery”.
The new lottery, which will be played primarily online, is also being branded as “the lottery for unlucky people”, as organisers Chariot claim that players face 27 times better odds at winning a jackpot compared to the National Lottery.
Tickets go on sale at playmonday.com on 24 April 2006, and the first will be online on Monday 8 May 2006 at 8pm. Thereafter, the draw will take place every week on Mondays at 8pm.
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There will be two consecutive draws every Monday evening and if nobody matches all six numbers, the player with the nearest numbers will win the jackpot. Players are free to choose which charities their money goes to from a list of five which rotates each week.
The new lottery now has 70 beneficiary charity partners including Barnardo’s, British Heart Foundation, British Red Cross, DebRA, Macmillan Cancer Relief, Rainbow Trust, War Child, Whizz Kidz and WWF.
According to Chariot, income from the lottery “will reach the charities within days of each draw”. Unlike money from the National Lottery, income from monday will be unrestricted, “leaving the most qualified people – the charities themselves – to decide how best to spend the funds raised.”
The company strives to show that its lottery is different to the National Lottery. Explaining how it will divide up its income, it says: “”0p goes to the Chancellor in taxes (unlike with the National Lottery). And 0p will be given to Peruvian guinea pigs or super-sized marquees on the Thames.”
Tim Holley, who ran Camelot until 2001, is Chariot’s Chairman. He said: People want a fairer lottery. This common frustration has led to the creation of monday. We’ve taken three years to develop this and know it will succeed because it rewards players and charities alike.”
The lottery itself will be managed by an External Lottery Operator, London-based Sisson Marketing International Ltd.
The new lottery won’t please those charities left out. However, Chariot indicates that it is willing to consider new charity partners. Above its list of charity partners on its website, the company explains: “We’re always looking for new partners and are happy to consider charities working in any sector, both at home and abroad. However our partners do need to be registered in the UK with the Charities Commission. They also currently need to be of a certain minimum size.”
This minimum is a requirement to have an annual turnover of £500,000 or more, so that will leave a lot of the UK’s smaller charities still feeling unlucky.
In addition, the lottery can only be played by residents in England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland residents are not permitted to play. Not surprisingly this has annoyed some charities based in Northern Ireland. Some income from the lottery however will be applied to projects in Northern Ireland, at least by national organisations such as Barnardo’s.
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.