Press releases

April 21 2006

Finally, Britain’s Fairer Lottery is here

The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation set to raise up to £1.2m with monday – the Charities Lottery 

At last – a reason to love Mondays. From April 20 th Brits can take part in a fairer weekly lottery. One that means they are 27 times more likely to win a jackpot than with The National Lottery.

The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation is set to raise up to £1.2m as one of 70 charities partnering with monday– the Charities Lottery. With two draws throughout the year, the Foundation stands to raise £1.2m of unrestricted funding so it can be used immediately or in response to any urgent need.

For every pound spent with monday, 30p goes direct to charity. That’s five times more than with The National Lottery. As well The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, monday will contribute to a wide range of charities including Barnados, The British Red Cross, St John Ambulance, Trees for Cities, Shelter and WWF.

Paul Gauntlett, Director of Development from the Foundation says:

“We are thrilled to be part of the monday lottery, a revolutionary new fundraising initiative with potential to transform our charity and will enable us to reach significantly more beneficiaries. The monies raised will be used to fund our unique research into the early detection of lung cancer which is crucial to providing treatment and thereby saving thousands of lives. Unrestricted funds are so vitally important to our charity because they enable us to support or core work and to accelerate our research programme.”

monday aims to raise £150 million for UK registered charities each year - making it one of the largest charitable fundraisers in the UK. Furthermore, the cash will reach the charities within days of each draw and it’s unrestricted, leaving the most qualified people – the charities themselves – to decide how best to spend the funds raised. And for the first time it’s the players who decide which charity gets their cash.

Because monday’s a fairer lottery in all respects there are some clever twists to normal lottery play:

• There will be two jackpot draws instead of one. So if people don’t win in the first, they can still win in the second
• Because matching all six numbers is near impossible, the player/s with the nearest match to the six winning numbers will get the jackpot
• Because roll-overs don’t seem fair, there are none - so there are guaranteed jackpot winners every week
• Rather than giving crazy amounts of money to one person, monday’s lottery will give bigger cash prizes for matching 3, 4 and 5 numbers

There’s also no chance of losing your ticket and no last minute rushes to the newsagent – as monday is played online at www.playmonday.co m . The first draw is May 8th at 8 o’clock and then on every Monday thereafter.

monday is run by Chariot (UK) plc on behalf of its charity partners. Tim Holley, who ran Camelot until 2001, is Chariot’s Chairman. As he explained:

“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. We like to think that monday is the lottery for unlucky people – the vast majority who have played the lottery since it started but have never won anything. At a pound a week that’s potentially £592 spent with no return. With monday people will have a much better chance of winning.”

Just as players will benefit from the new lottery so will monday’s charity partners. From the larger charities which will receive a much needed source of unrestricted funding, to the smaller ones who find it a struggle to apply for grants and additional funding because of red tape and the time it can take for the money to reach them.

NOTES TO EDITOR

The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation is the only charity in the UK wholly dedicated to defeating lung cancer – the biggest cancer killer in the UK. The charity’s approach benefits current and future lung cancer sufferers alike:

• The foundation funds research programmes to detect lung cancer at a very early stage, which will save lives and is vital to the development of a future therapy.
• The foundation offers patient support, advocacy and an information network providing information, guidance and support relevant to the needs of lung cancer patients and their families.
• The foundation facilitates support groups across the UK that assist sufferers to come to terms with the disease and provide patient advocacy services.
• The foundation operates ‘Quit Smoking’ services for adults (Fag Ends) and its KATS (Kids Against Tobacco Smoke) educational programme which encourages young people never to start smoking.
• The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation runs fundraising events and charity shops, both of which help to generate much needed voluntary donations (public and corporate), on which it relies to continue its fight to defeat lung cancer.

Issued by Weber Shandwick on behalf of The Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation (Registered Charity 1046854). For further media information please contact:

How to play

• You can play monday online at www.playmonday.com
• The draw will take place every week on a Monday at 8pm
• You can choose your numbers, choose your charities, how much you want to play and for how many weeks
• If you have an email address monday will automatically tell you if you win. If you’ve played by subscription, don’t have an email address and have won a jackpot, we’ll contact you by post or phone
• The winning numbers will be published on www.playmonday.com or you can call 0870 77 44 213 to find out which numbers were drawn  
  Winners’ hotline: 0870 77 44 443.

monday - the Charities Lottery, is run by an External Lottery Manager, Sisson Marketing International and is promoted by each of the 70 charity partners. Chariot (UK) plc retails and markets the tickets.

All money monday raises for its charity partners will be in the form of unrestricted funding enabling them to use the money according to their organisation’s individual and immediate needs. This differs from National Lottery funding which is given as restricted funding, something charities can find inflexible and limiting.

Each pound played will be divided as follows:

• 30p will go directly to the players’ chosen charity
• 55p will go into the prize pool to fund weekly prizes
• 15p goes into the development of new products, additional prizes and operational costs.

The ‘monday’ lottery is regulated by the Gambling Commission and adheres to its code of practice.