Donate £10 to Lumos and have dinner with JKR

[fromorbit]

JKR has made a very generous offer on Twitter:

J.K. Rowling
https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1929113511004664078

I mean this, by the way. Donate £10 to lumos, I'll draw three names out of a hat and we'll have dinner. It could be KFC, but the wonderful JamesChiavarini has just suggested his restaurant, so it might be there instead (travel and accommodation on me if you're not in London).

Offer stands! Applications close at midnight on Monday. A £10 donation means your name will go into the draw.

https://wearelumos.org/how-you-can-help/donate/

If your name’s chosen and you’re outside London (or the UK) I’ll pay for travel and accommodation.

Once donations have been verified with Lumos I’ll select three donors’ names at random (can’t promise a literal hat, but who knows).

I’ll match the total sum donated to Lumos between first offer and midnight Monday.

And once my three fellow diners have been chosen, we’ll have a vote on whether we’re having KFC or going to Il Portico.

Additional offer from John Boyne:

John Boyne

£10 donated to Lumos. Whoever has the good fortune to win the raffle and have dinner with you, I'll donate £1,000 to the charity of his or her choosing.

This was inspired by JKR's ongoing twitter spat with Jolyon:

I've never sought to auction dinner with myself at a Michelin-starred restaurant with ‘a selection of wines from [my] own cellar’ as you have, Jolyon, but if anyone wants to bung Lumos £10, I'll draw a name out of a hat and we'll split a KFC bargain bucket.

Small fantasies of a KFC with JKR helping me get through the week <sighs wistfully>

I donated yesterday and asked for gift aid information but so far haven’t received anything. I was surprised that there was no option to have the donation treated as gift aid as there normally is when making donations to other charities. An additional 20% is a lot, so I hope all our donations can be ‘upgraded’.

You can’t claim gift aid when there is a raffle or prize involved iirc. They may have turned it off due to this.

Interesting, thank you.
There’s no mention of any raffle on the Lumos website, though. I wonder if it’s usually there and they have turned it off, as you suggest.

This would be terrible as they would lose 20% they would otherwise have got back from HMRC. This seems very odd.

Not really. There are rules they have to follow by law.

The donations would not otherwise have come in, so they are still winning.

I've donated. I'd love to send my Harry Potter loving captured daughter along. I'm really worried about her.

but that would mean any donaion at this time being treated as a raffle entry. If I write to them and say please dont enter me in the raffle can I then gift aid it?

The raffle donations finished Monday at midnight iirc

But perhaps there should have been an announcement on the site that all donations during that time were towards the raffle and not eligible for gift aid.
I imagine some people who have donated weren't aware the raffle was taking place.

Right now I'm just busy fantasising about winning and wondering what I'll wear 😀

Done. What an exciting thing - if I won !

Why is it odd? Are you saying you have never heard of a charity doing a raffle rather than just asking for donations?

Is it a formal organised raffle? Or is it something JKR is doing off her own bat?

Pretty sure donations have gone up enough to counterweight any loss of gift aid in the mean time.

I wouldn't stress. Anyone offered the prize who doesn't want it isn't obliged to take it. And then can presumably offer to gift aid their donation instead.

Has anyone else had an email?

Not saying they've won. But that we didn't need to donate to be in the draw!

Yep. But would be pretty shabby to ask for a refund IMO

Update here

https://nitter.poast.org/jk_rowling/status/1930967953991688389#m

She’s also increased the winners to 6 people.

You’re entered if you did donate, though.

The letter also gives a simple link to click if you want to withdraw your donation, but still be entered into the prize draw.

IIRC, there are legal hoops to jump though if you want to set up a raffle. If that wasn’t done, given what might have been a spontaneous offer by JKR, it might be necessary to do it this way, ie not making prize draw entry conditional on payment of £10+.

Edited to add: I’ve now read the Twitter/Nitter post: my slow typing meant the link wasn’t there when I started this post. There are indeed reasons for the change, to make this legally compliant.

That link doesn't work for me. Is the site overwhelmed with traffic?

Screenshots instead (once they are approved!)

It’s worked for me, twice. Perhaps it depends on your internet connection.

Gargh, I ticked all the boxes and didn't twig that the middle one wasn't just confirmation that "I made a donation" but was "...and I want a refund". Hopefully there is some way to cancel a refund request - best to donate again just in case isn't it?

Ah, looks like they should have had a lottery licence or summat.