St Luke's Lottery

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HOW DID THE LOTTERY START?

Margaret Parry was a local lady who was very involved with her church, and she remembers watching a programme on the television regarding the Hospice movement. This particularly stuck in her mind because they were talking about the effects of smoking and how a gentleman was made to smoke outside his own house. Margaret related to this as her sister whom she lived with always made her smoke outside. With interest she attended a number of meetings including one at Winnington Hall where she remembers listening to a gentleman called Bill Crafter.

Margaret then became involved with a support group in Northwich where she came up with the idea of running a (little) Lottery in her local area. She felt that this may be the way forward to increase funding for St Luke's Hospice, on a regular basis. At that time you could purchase a Lottery ticket for the sum of 20p per week, and tickets were sold through the local community. 1st Prize was a grand sum of £50.

The draw was organised by having a bag of ping pong balls with numbers written on each of them, and then these were drawn out each week to produce the winning numbers. The Lottery developed into a very successful fundraising event, so successful that it had to be brought into the Hospice in 1994 to manage its escalating numbers.

July 1994 saw the start of the Lottery as we know it now. A small team of people worked together to develop and promote the Lottery with the aim of increasing the membership, and raising the level of funding for the Hospice. Working in conjunction with Starvale, Sterling and the Gaming board, the Lottery was established with the benefit of inheriting a number of members from Margaret Parry's support groups Lottery. Ticket price was set at £1 per week with total weekly prize money of £2,500.

There were 150 winners each Friday, with the 1st prize set at £1,500. Amongst our present playing members we have 1,822 who have continued to support us from the very first official draw in 1994.

On the 2nd July 2004 (Our 10th Anniversary).

Total Membership stood at: 15,264*

Total Playing members stood at: 14,642*

Collection efficiency stood at: 95.93

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO THE HOSPICE?

St Luke's needs to raise over 1.4m each year, which equates to £4,000 per day. Since its inception the Lottery has contributed over £2.25m to the main Hospice fund. In 2003 the Lottery brought in £358k profit and this entire amount is transferred into the main Hospice fund. The target for the end of 2004 is £400k, which represents more than one third of the overall Hospice income. Currently we have approximately 15,000 members but we are hoping to increase this to 16,000 by the end of 2004 with your help.