News

Charities lining up to join new rival to Monday lottery

Fundraising | Gemma Ware | 2 Apr 2008

Hope, a new charity lottery venture led by the former managing director of Chariot, the previous operator of charity lottery Monday, has received expressions of interest from more than 30 charities.

Although the move to rival the existing Monday lottery is separate from Chariot, Philip Evans, non-executive director at the company, is involved in the blueprint for Hope, which plans to have 50 lottery draws each week instead of the five under the current structure of Monday.

Evans said: “36 charities have confirmed their interest in joining us” and added this included a broad range, including “two or three” very large ones. He said Hope was two thirds of the way to reaching its target of getting 50 charities sign up in time for its planned launch in October and was currently in fairly advanced talks with an investor for the project.

However, some charities including the British Red Cross, WWF and RNID said they could not see themselves getting involved with Hope. John Low, chief executive of the RNID, said the charity would only consider joining Hope if there were “fairly compelling reasons to do so”. He accused Chariot’s bosses of, “not dying gracefully as they said they would. They weren’t able to make [Monday] successful, and

I would want to work with successful people.”
Meanwhile, confusion surrounding the future of Monday under its new owner NetPlay TV has led some charities to reconsider their involvement in the game. The British Red Cross decided to withdraw from Monday when its operation transferred to NetPlay at the end of March, citing falling ticket sales. The WWF is also currently in discussions with the company about its legal position and future participation in Monday and has stopped promoting the game to its supporters.

Sarah Bissell, corporate fundraising manager at the British Red Cross, said: “The British Red Cross needs to work on the projects that will allow us to raise the greatest amount of funds and as the scope of the Monday lottery reduced each week we found ourselves unable to sustain the relationship.”

The income generated for the 70-odd charities involved in Monday has been decreasing steadily over the last few months. As PF went to press the latest Monday draw on 9 April had raised £27,424 for its five beneficiary charities, compared with £33,351 on 12 March, the week before the transfer of the lottery’s database from Chariot to NetPlay.

A spokeswoman for NetPlay said “Play Monday is in the process of being improved and many developments are not yet finalised” but said that the lottery would be relaunched towards the end of May.

Tweet

Who's Who: Gemma Ware