AR Lottery Scholarship Funding Nears Five-Year Low

Jerry Cox, Contributing Author: Last week the Arkansas Lottery released its financial statements for the month of July.

The report shows the Lottery took in over $41.2 million last month, but gave only $4.5 million to college scholarships — 11% of the Lottery’s total revenue for the month.

The Lottery’s scholarship budget for a single month hasn’t been this bad since February of 2016, when the Arkansas Lottery paid less than $4.5 million to scholarships.

As far as we can tell, July was the Arkansas Lottery’s third-worst month in the past five years when it came to scholarship funding.

The Arkansas Lottery made, on average, over $1.3 million every day last month. There’s simply no good reason the Lottery can’t give students more than 11 cents out  of every dollar.

Below is a breakdown of Arkansas Lottery revenue and scholarship funding from the past five years.

Month	Gross Lottery Revenue	Paid to Scholarships	% Gross Revenue
July, 2014	30,925,067.43	5,928,447.99	19.2%
August	31,571,412.10	5,296,965.80	16.8%
September	30,710,493.31	4,317,227.10	14.1%
October	32,959,739.29	5,939,625.59	18.0%
November	30,617,278.28	5,577,035.16	18.2%
December	34,507,731.54	5,474,318.77	15.9%
January,	35,433,619.67	7,287,773.28	20.6%
2015 February	41,770,314.46	6,161,343.01	14.8%
March	37,367,453.25	6,898,524.35	18.5%
April	33,866,970.54	5,881,005.95	17.4%
May	35,689,036.10	5,409,050.48	15.2%
June	33,815,559.59	8,278,928.14	24.5%
July	31,665,651.14	5,784,683.09	18.3%
August	31,265,177.55	5,490,094.00	17.6%
September	36,134,389.63	6,624,967.11	18.3%
October	35,261,533.80	6,020,642.32	17.1%
November	32,226,599.28	5,725,139.09	17.8%
December	38,670,746.09	6,425,754.66	16.6%
January, 2016	58,746,249.00	13,831,359.75	23.5%
February	40,790,144.05	4,474,356.06	11.0%
March	40,579,421.05	5,758,892.84	14.2%
April	37,516,802.47	7,392,837.00	19.7%
May	38,485,146.05	6,606,164.94	17.2%
June	34,983,951.24	11,249,220.37	32.2%
July	38,237,293.92	8,714,386.39	22.8%
August	35,091,022.09	5,498,714.86	15.7%
September	33,113,391.64	5,773,076.42	17.4%
October	34,061,993.14	5,165,040.54	15.2%
November	37,042,079.72	6,570,979.51	17.7%
December	35,352,159.35	4,596,532.22	13.0%
January, 2017	37,062,291.39	7,947,546.21	21.4%
February	41,176,854.60	6,698,099.62	16.3%
March	43,405,541.56	6,204,704.75	14.3%
April	38,671,617.14	7,845,827.56	20.3%
May	38,185,263.61	7,068,770.18	18.5%
June	38,517,227.85	13,193,652.18	34.3%
July	36,885,396.81	6,661,762.99	18.1%
August	49,320,459.23	8,912,741.54	18.1%
September	36,405,731.14	6,755,333.93	18.6%
October	39,802,740.53	5,667,305.74	14.2%
November	36,186,107.78	6,691,228.00	18.5%
December	44,716,219.32	6,583,355.77	14.7%
January, 2018	44,063,056.11	8,230,861.00	18.7%
February	39,389,927.57	5,947,647.50	15.1%
March	53,523,320.61	7,945,570.02	14.8%
April	42,064,194.78	7,192,997.10	17.1%
May	40,447,182.69	8,037,624.80	19.9%
June	37,685,874.97	13,364,612.64	35.5%
July	42,413,352.70	5,066,628.73	11.9%
August	40,343,279.62	6,175,998.40	15.3%
September	35,198,809.72	7,783,450.82	22.1%
October	57,575,285.62	11,259,040.31	19.6%
November	37,700,016.00	6,821,411.01	18.1%
December	45,859,642.73	6,650,791.54	14.5%
January, 2019	40,574,813.28	7,848,495.62	19.3%
February	41,060,111.75	8,198,257.31	20.0%
March	51,988,380.67	8,552,307.04	16.5%
April	43,951,257.94	8,176,383.34	18.6%
May	41,158,346.08	8,396,193.42	20.4%
June	38,413,526.87	13,482,789.59	35.1%
July	41,239,173.79	4,523,930.75	11.0%

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Jerry Cox is the founder and president of Family Council and the Education Alliance and a contributing author to the ARRA News Service.

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