Viewers to vote on UK lottery cash

Posted by irishg on April 25th, 2005 at 10:52pm

The UK SocietyGuardian recently reported on plans for a new TV show that will let the public choose which charities receive millions of pounds of lottery cash.

The show is being developed by ITV in conjunction with the Big Lottery Fund and is intended to get people more involved in the lottery. It follows on the success of an earlier BBC2 television series that asked viewers to vote on which historic UK buldings should receive restoration funding.

It seems somehow inevitable in the era of reality tv shows that a format for competing charity causes would emerge. If successful it could encourage the growth of other forms of charity reputation systems, such as online rating systems or “most frequently supported” indexes, along the same lines that Amazon.com uses to make book recommendations to their customers. (see earlier blog post on this topic)

Certainly there are considerable concerns about this approach to governing a fund as large as the Big Lottery Fund..

Critics fear that BLF’s more populist approach will favour children’s charities and government initiatives at the expense of organisations working with the most marginalised groups in society.

The fund has already come under fire for siphoning off £45m of lottery money to set up a new government-led body, the Schools Food Trust, following the media frenzy surrounding Jamie Oliver’s campaign to improve school dinners.

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