The social arm of The Big Issue has invested up to £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 north east Essex hospice to generate more income to support not only its own hospice services across Colchester and Tendring, but those of 13 other hospices and 7 charities across Great Britain.

St Helena runs a successful in-house fundraising lottery, which was opened up to other hospices to run it on their behalf as Your Hospice Lottery, back in 2011.

Your Hospice Lottery 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.”

St Helena provides a wide range of expert care and support for people with an incurable illness regardless of condition, as well as supporting the family around them, and last year it supported 3,869 patients and families. St Helena has to raise £6.2m of the £8.9m needed every year to provide its services.

BII made the investment in September this year from the Big Issue Invest Social Enterprise Investment Fund II LP (SEIF II), a £23.8 million investment fund that follows on the success of Big Issue Invest’s first (SEIF I) fund which is now fully committed having invested over £8 million into 21 social enterprises.

The scheme builds on BII’s significant expertise in social impact investment which, since its launch in 2005, has seen the organisation directly invest over £30 million in more than 300 social businesses. BII’s SEIF II invests in social enterprises and charities that are working to tackle tough social problems such as homelessness, social and financial exclusion, and youth unemployment.

To play St Helena Hospice’s lottery visit sthelena.org.uk/lottery or call 0800 285 1390.

Posted: 30th October 2019