Lotto Love
Brooklyn, New York
Laura Beck is the founder of the first ever social good scratch-off. LottoLove is not your ordinary lotto scratch-off card. Every scratch off card is a winner and gives charitable gifts to one of their partners who support literacy tools, clean water, nutritious meals and solar energy.
What inspired your mission how did your idea turn into action?
A while before I had an actual physical product to show people I talked about the concept and people’s eye lit up and they were intrigued to learn more. Their reaction gave me the initial enthusiasm to move forward. I first started doing product testing in my office by mixing up batches of the DIY scratch-off solution to create a product I could test. Through prototyping and testing, I was able to figure out what was working and where I needed to improve. About that time, someone told me to take a walk around the National Stationery Show and instead I decided to sign up! I put myself in front of thousands of buyers, retail store owners, press and other designers and was able to see if there was a space in the market for LottoLove. Fortunately, LottoLove resonated with people! They loved it! At that point, I revised the product and launched LottoLove officially.
How does LottoLove work?
LottoLove is the first ever social good scratch-off card and the only gifting item of its kind. Everyone is a winner and instead of winning something monetary you win something charitable that is donated to someone in need. We have four preselected Charitable Partners who are represented by the Giving Icons on the scratch-off cards. Cards either give clean water, solar energy, nutritious meals or literacy tools. Recipients must play the game to discover what was donated in their honor. Once the card is purchased we make the donation to whichever charitable partner is the ‘winning prize’ of that card. The recipients do not need to do anything on their end to fulfill the donation, we handle all of that! LottoLove is a gift so each scratch-off comes with a greeting card and envelope to make the gifting super easy!
Why it’s important to support partners who are working towards providing basic needs: literacy tools, clean water, nutritious meals or solar energy.
We launched with our basic needs line to support people who are lacking basic human necessities. That felt like the right starting point for us. Literacy, clean water, nutritious meals and solar energy all have a domino effect on people’s lives. Solar energy replaces kerosene which improves health, it also gives kids more hours of light, so they can study for longer. Improved health and improved education can do so much for the individual’s future! It goes without saying that clean water improves health and gives back the time that would have been spent traveling to a water source. Women can use their time to learn a trade, start a business and earn an income. All of our partners support amazing causes.
How has this work inspired you and what's next for LottoLove?
Working on LottoLove is inspiring. I love watching how excited they are about making giving back fun, easy, and interactive! We are working on expanding our card line to increase the causes we support. We have some exciting partnerships in the pipeline that we hope to announce soon!
photos by: Richard Foulser