The Institute of Fundraising has called for increases in ticket sales and prize money in society lotteries, in response to a consultation by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
The IoF is among several organisations to call for more liberal regulation, including the Lotteries Council, the Hospice Lotteries Association and the People’s Postcode Lottery.
The IoF comments came in a statement published at the same time as its response to a DCMS call for evidence, which was published on 11 December.
The IoF calls for “an increase in the permissible amount of ticket sales for a single draw from £4 million to £10 million, enabling the bigger, more popular charities to raise more money for little extra effort” and “an increase in prize values from £25,000 to £100,000 and from 10 per cent of the proceeds to 50 per cent to give operators flexibility on prize values in order to maximise the overall amount raised through increased ticket sales.”
The IoF also called for an increase in the annual income cap on any society lottery from £10 million to £100 million to enable the bigger charities to reach economies of scale and maximise their fundraising.
And it calls for flexibility in the application of the “80:20 rule” which governs how much of a lottery’s profits can be distributed to good causes, to allow the minimum contribution to be aggregated across all draws. It also says the contribution should be allowed to be met over a longer period of time, ideally up three years.
“This will remove barriers that charities face in starting society lottery fundraising, allow further investment in lottery programmes and reduce risks,” it said.
“Society lotteries provide valuable income to good causes - £175 million in 2013/14 – income which goes directly to support charities in delivering vital services to communities,” the IoF said in a statement accompany its response. “Fundraised income through society lotteries has seen growth in recent years, but we believe that there is potential for them to even more successful and make a greater contribution to the income of the sector.
“By relaxing and simplifying some of the present restrictions on revenues, individual prize draws and the minimum contribution (the ‘20% rule’) society lotteries can deliver significantly more for good causes.”
Public support deregulation, says research
Research published today by consultancy nfpSynergy found that just under three in four people feel charity lotteries should be free to raise as much money as the National Lottery.
In a report entitled Just the Ticket: Public attitudes towards the regulation of charity lotteries, nfpSynergy said the survey of 1,000 people found 74 per cent of respondents felt the law should not prevent charities from raising as much as the National Lottery.
The report said the National Lottery does great work, but is “too big, too well-known and too well-established” to need to worry about its charity counterparts and does not need protecting.
It criticised the existence of regulations as they should be reserved “to support the weak and the vulnerable, not those too strong and dominant to need it.”
