Talk is cheap, let’s gamble!

 Socially responsible gambling, sounds like a ridiculous concept at face value, but – maybe it’s not.

What if you could enter a lottery, but if you didn’t win, the company profits went to supporting socially responsible organisations that are striving for social change….like Homefulness!

Through partnerships with organisations trying to support our inaugural social issue, Homelessness – we can start to make more of an impact. We can harness the pool of wasted losses from traditional lottery based games into helping, not just homelessness, but anything!

This is happening around the world already, why not in Australia?

“BIG Lottery Fund (http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/index) in the UK is operating this model to great success in partnership with The National Lottery.

Of each pound spent on The National Lottery each year, BIG Lottery Fund receives about 13 percent, it has contributed 3.6 Billion Pounds, and that’s with a B, since 2004 (http://www.biglotteryfund.org.uk/index/about-uk/about_blf.htm).

For the financial year 2011, Tatts Group Limited generated approximately AUD 1.6 Billion in revenue within its lottery arm (Tatts Group Limited FY11 Annual Report), if we tap into only half of the slice which BIG Group can access in the UK at 6.5%, that’s $104,000,000.00 per financial year that can be obtained for organisations who can effect social change.

Of course we have to acknowledge that gambling irresponsibly can cause many of the social issues that we as a society face, so it is an approach that isn’t for everyone – we support responsible gambling, responsible everything for that matter and want to harness this otherwise in the most part wasted revenue stream into helping the Homeless to begin with – but this certainly can begin to serve other very very worthy causes.

In the US, the California State Lottery is supporting schools, always a great cause, but especially in the current economic climate where the US as a whole has a small debt to GDP issue which means there might be a little less to throw the way off poor students!

Call us crazy, but – harnessing this huge potential for socially responsible causes could change the face of social venture capitalism in this country – problems that were insolvable, could become solvable due to funds that were previously unattainable, becoming suddenly available – issues that received absolutely no air-play could now be highlighted with the support that we can help deliver.

Who knows, because we love to gamble, Homelessness could be a thing of the past – we could all soon be, Homeful.

Nick