The social arm of The Big Issue has invested £1.5 million in St Helena Hospice’s fundraising lottery which supports hospices and the wider charity sector.
Big Issue Invest (BII) made the investment into St Helena in order to grow its lottery services, to allow the Essex hospice to generate more income to support not only its own services, but those of 13 other hospices and seven charities across the UK.
St Helena runs a successful in-house fundraising lottery which they opened up to other hospices to run on their behalf as Your Hospice Lottery, back in 2011. It now has more than 60,000 numbers in play across 14 hospices in its weekly draw, and has so far raised over £9m for hospice care. In 2017, St Helena set up Make a Smile, a lottery product to reach the charity market beyond just hospices.
Currently the lottery achieves an annual gross income of just over £4m and makes around £1 million profit for St Helena, additionally contributing over £1 million to other hospices and charities.
Brian Bolt, Director of Finance at St Helena, said: “With this investment, we have the opportunity to work on attracting new partners and new lottery players, which will raise the profile of St Helena and its charitable partners and provide more jobs as the lottery grows.
“The Big Issue name is well recognised and helps organisations like ours to look after themselves and be here for our communities in the long term. We are delighted it is keen to support the work we do by helping us become more self-sustainable and more self-sufficient.”
Jonny Page, Investment Manager at BII, said: “We are so pleased to invest into St Helena to facilitate further growth of their highly innovative and wide-reaching lottery business. We are excited to continue to work with St Helena as they generate income for not only their own hospice, but the wider hospice and charity sector.”
For more information visit St Helena Hospice
Leave a Reply