Sunday, November 30, 2008

Becoming involved in the United Kingdom's lottery

By Susan Renolds

See who benefits from UK's National Lottery. It allows citizens to join in raising money for local causes while buying a chance to win money for themselves. But their man focus is on winning, not contributing to the community.

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.

Granted by 4 national councils along with the 2 film councils, cost given here are for projects in both arts and cinema. This is like the grant to the Yorkshire Film Archive to improve the ease of access to the amateur and professional video over the internet.

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.

Thousands of heritage projects have been funded by the Heritage lottery fund since 1994. All-in-all, the fund has granted more than 39 billion. The preservation of United Kingdom heritage is the focus of these projects. This is done through many venues including natural heritage, museums, buildings, language or tradition. In Wales, The Archives Network was awarded 365,000. They used this to collect historic manuscripts, records and archives. These documents came from thirteen local governments, some universities and national institutions. They were put into an online site.

For a complete list of lottery-funded projects, you can visit the Department of Culture, Media and Sport.

Opponents have few reasons with the truth that lottery generated money go to charity. Many claim that coloring is a contribution apposed to gambling and encouraging more to gamble. While it is true that positive causes create a powerful marketing message, these types of monies do help fund these charitable causes.

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