Are or Is?

[HarrietSchulenberg]

"The National Lottery ARE giving away money...", or "The National Lottery IS giving away money..."?
From this morning's English GCSE Foundation resit paper.

3(Dad)

Neither of those examples work very well. You have a plural verb (are) matched with a singular article (a/an), which sets off a klaxon in the pedantic mind.

You can replace the 'a/an' with 'the', which drops the Terror Alert Level by one. However, we're still in a state of heightened alert, and not all the troops can be dismissed yet, because there's a reason why you instinctively used that 'a'- it was because company and charity are singular nouns. So the sentences still require "is", purely on account of what follows the verb.

Yes, I felt quite klaxoned by those examples

Hmm - I'm normally a grammar pedant (MFL teacher) but I can't get worked up about this one because it is pretty standard usage.

Manchester United have just won their match.
The government are making a mess of the country.
The band are shortly releasing an album.

Strictly speaking, these are all singular nouns and should use a verb in the singular, but it is perfectly usual in English (unlike in French) to use a plural verb with singular nouns denoting a group of people.

QueenTilly - I agree this is partly about how it sounds rather than any rigid grammatical rule, BUT I'm not sure I totally buy your analysis. For example, we would say:
Mumsnetters are a group of people with strong opinions.
Bananas are a source of potassium.
So plural subject (eg Mumsnetters) has to take a plural verb (are) and the fact that they are complemented by a singular noun (eg group) doesn't change the verb agreement.

3(Dad)

Oi! Doesn't group itself count as a group noun? I'm not sure you are comparing like with like there.

Although I'm going to have to give you source.

Is there such a thing as a group noun? Some of the style guides I looked at talk about collective nouns which could take plural verbs, like band and government. I think "group" is just another example:
The pop group are known for their catchy songs.
In the playground, the largest group is that crowd of girls playing hopscotch.

"Group" must be able to behave as a singular noun, because it has a plural: "groups".

But I think this is the nub of the argument, which nouns are collective and do they function grammatically as singular or plural nouns, or can they take either function depending on context or how it sounds?

Group noun is another term for collective nouns.