Over the past couple of decades, charities have seen some drastic changes, with budget cuts and other financial restraints hitting them from every direction. No longer is a group of volunteers armed with charity boxes and buckets able to generate the revenues required to sustain a modern charitable organisation. This has led to the exploration of other money raising avenues.
For years, charities have been ‘thinking outside of the box’ in a bid to maximise their fund raising efforts, with a whole host of activities and enterprises. Many charities offer prize draws and lotteries that are designed to offer low-cost or nominal prizes, while generating the maximum money for the organisation. However, paying £1 for a raffle ticket into a draw that has thousands of players and a top prize consisting of a bottle a cheap blend whiskey is hardly the most appealing offer to the punter. Likewise, the chance of winning ‘a few bob’ playing a charity lottery game is also not all that appealing. So, what else can a modern charity to do to raise revenue?
Modern Charities
Over the last three to four years, charities have faced more pressure than ever, as they have strived to be able to continue to offer the vital services that they provide. As local authorities struggle to make their books balance at the end of each year, more and more charity funding is axed, as too are many of the services that they once funded. National charities including names like Age UK and Mind have seen huge reductions in their funding over the past few years. In fact, charities have had it so bad the specific services have been set up to assist with the complicated closing procedures involved with folding a charity, for those who have not been strong enough to survive the recent economic pressures.
So, in a time when charity funding is being cut, at a time when people have less spare cash to donate and at a time when online bingo is booming, it seems a logical progression for charities to explore the possibility of launching their own bingo sites.
How Charitable are such Bingo Sites?
Unfortunately, many ‘charity bingo sites’ are not owned by charities. Instead of being great revenue raising machines for worthy causes, many of these sites are revenue raising operations for private pockets, with just nominal donations making their way to the charities that they are supposed to represent.
Charity bingo sites are nothing new; there are plenty of them to be found across the internet these days. Sites such as Rehab Bingo, Bingo Giving and Charity Bingo have been offering online bingo games, while donating money to charity, for years. However, these operations aren’t always that transparent and very often they raise more money for the operator than they do for the charity that they’re representing.
Bingo Giving claims to give 10% of every jackpot to their charity of the month. However, when we visited the site on 5th March 2014, the site was still displaying details of November’s charity, with absolutely no indication of this month’s charity or if ANY monies will be donated.
Over on the 15 Network, the supposedly philanthropic bingo site – Charity Bingo – also supports various charities by donating £1 from every deposit of £20 or more to their current charity of the month. During February 2014, Charity Bingo donated a total of £358 to the British Heart Foundation.
Doubts
As players have uncovered these startling facts and figures about charity bingo sites, many have become dubious about just how ‘charitable’ these sites are, which has began to tarnish the reputation of charity bingo sites as a whole. Just like when the public hear about charity executives receiving millions as a salary or bonus, many bingo players have concerns about how much money makes its way into privateers hands, while operations take place in the name of charity.
What the charity bingo sub-industry needs to fix this faltering image is a fully transparent, whiter-than-white charity bingo site to restore players’ faith in the whole charity bingo concept.
Tickety Boo Games
At the end of February 2014, a brand new charity bingo site launched and this time things were different. Tickety Boo Bingo is a charity bingo site in the very truest sense of the term. Owned and operated by Marie Curie Cancer Care, Tickety Boo Bingo donates every single penny of its net profits directly to Marie Curie Cancer Care…not 10% of the jackpot or £1 per deposit – every penny that the bingo site makes after costs have been paid goes directly to the charity that the site represents.
This isn’t the first time that Marie Curie Cancer Care has tapped into the online games marketplace in a bid to raise revenue for the charity. The Tickety Boo website at www.ticketyboo.com (not to be confused with Tickety Boo Bingo at www.ticketboogames.com) has been around for years, raising funds for the charity through a number of online games that include weekly lottery draws and massive raffles and prize draws. It would appear as though managers and executives at Marie Curie Cancer Care saw the success of Tickety Boo Games and decided that the move into the online bingo market was a smart one – and it seems to be.
The New Face of Charity Bingo Sites
From our time playing at Tickety Boo Bingo and from our research into their operations and into Marie Curie Cancer Care as a whole, we’re certain that this great new bingo site will be a success and it will raise significant funds for the charity. What we’re not sure about is whether or not this solitary effort of decency will be enough to restore players’ faith in the concept of charity bingo. What would be nice is if other big-named charities followed Marie Curie’s lead and launched ‘their own’ online bingo sites, as opposed to selling their name (and their soul) to online bingo operators, many of whom will generate no significant revenue for the charity concerned. If more transparent charity bingo sites hit the internet, using a similar model to the Tickety Boo Bingo model, the good name of charity bingo could be saved. However, if more operators start cashing in on the concept of giving while playing, charity bingo sites may end up being as unwelcome as the charity chugger who tries to sign you up to monthly direct debit payments every time that you stroll down your local high street!
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