The lottery’s main objective is to make money,to turn a profit, by enabling players the chance to win various amounts of money, from a dollar or two, to millions of dollars. So players are definitely benefactors of the lottery.
However, who else really benefits from lottery sales, other than the lottery operator and federal, state/provincial/municipal governments?
Charities
Charities are the number one benefactors of lottery profits by far when all lotteries are combined.
Charities may directly support lottery and bingo operations by selling tickets, running bingos, sponsoring specials draws, or contributing to lottery sales in some other way. As such, charities receive a hefty portion of lottery profits to put into their operations.
Organizations and agencies that help the homeless, deal with the mentally ill or substance/alcohol abuse, assist the physically and mentally challenged and low-income community members, run food banks, and generally provide some kind of support to members of the public, use their portion of lottery income to afford the products and services they provide.
Health and Education
Education is the next one on the list. For instance, lottery proceeds may be used to improve school buildings and hire more teachers, support lunch programs, or to purchase textbooks and supplies, and even support or create scholarships.
Health agencies use their lottery portion to support medical clinics and hospitals, transplant and donor programs, blood collection, prescription affordability, and medical equipment.
Culture and the Economy
Museums, heritage organizations, orchestras, choirs, sporting events and clubs, parades and community events also receive lottery income money.
Economic development initiatives can also be benefactors of lottery profits as well. These initiatives go to support job creation and business support programs, business loans, skills training, and Native programs.
Responsible Gambling
Some people consider this benefactor to be the most important: the allocation of a portion of lottery, and in fact all gaming revenue, placed back into the gaming industry and associated agencies and programs to support the efforts of problem and responsible gambling.
This includes gambling addiction and counselling agencies, advertising, public service announcements, brochures and other media, to work towards treating and beating gambling addiction through research, public awareness, prevention, and treatment.
So players are not the only ones who can play the lottery and win. When you buy a ticket, you are not only buying a ticket for yourself, but contributing to the welfare of those who may not be as fortunate as you.
Even if you don’t win, there will be someone out there who will benefit from your lottery purchase. And when you think about it, the allocation of lottery profits back into the community to help those less fortunate is really the jackpot everyone is looking for.