Lottery Winners Who Gave Millions to Charity
Winning the lottery can buy houses, cars and a very comfortable life. Some winners decided that still left far more money than they needed — and started giving it away.
The interesting part is what happened next. A few gave almost everything. Some helped people one at a time. Others built trusts or foundations designed to keep making grants for years.
Fact-checked and updated .
Who gave the most lottery winnings to charity?
There is no single honest answer unless you define what “gave” means. Canadian Lotto Max winner Tom Crist publicly committed his entire C$40 million jackpot to charitable purposes through his family foundation. Guinness World Records separately lists Allen and Violet Large, who distributed about 98% of their C$11.26 million win, as its record for the largest lottery win donated to charity.
The Connollys have a bigger reported giveaway — about £60 million by late 2020 — but that figure explicitly includes loved ones and people in need as well as charity, so it is not a like-for-like charitable-donation total.
What counts as donating lottery winnings to charity?
This sounds obvious until you start checking the numbers. Public stories about generous winners often measure different things.
Money already paid to charities
This is the cleanest figure: a documented grant or donation that has reached a charity, non-profit or community organisation.
Family gifts and direct help
Paying a relative’s mortgage or helping an individual can be exceptionally generous, but it is not the same thing as a charitable donation.
Money placed into a foundation
That money may be committed to charitable purposes, but a foundation can hold and invest capital before making grants over many years.
Why we do not turn this into a simple league table
Frances and Patrick Connolly are a good example. Their roughly £60 million giveaway is real and remarkable, but contemporary reporting says it went to loved ones, charity and people in need. Calling all £60 million a charity donation would make the story neater — and less accurate.
Lottery winners who gave millions away: compared
Original currencies are kept because converting old gifts at today’s exchange rate would add a false sense of precision.
| Winner | Lottery win | Best-supported giving figure | How they gave | What the number actually means |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frances & Patrick Connolly | £114,969,775 | About £60m given away by late 2020 | Family help, direct support and charitable trusts | Not a charity-only total; reporting includes loved ones and people in need. |
| Ray & Barbara Wragg | £7,649,520 | About £5.5m over 18 years | Long-term local and personal giving | Included charities, groups and individuals. |
| Colin & Christine Weir | £161,653,000 | Weir Charitable Trust: 733 awards worth just over £5.2m by 19 Dec 2025 | Structured grant-making trust | This is the Trust’s published award total, not a total of every donation made by the Weirs. |
| Allen & Violet Large | C$11,255,272.70 | About 98% of the win distributed | Rapid community giving | Guinness says the money went to community groups including hospitals, churches, fire departments and the Red Cross. |
| Tom Crist | C$40m | Entire jackpot publicly committed to charitable purposes | Family foundation | C$40m is a commitment/foundation-capital figure, not a verified “grants already paid” lifetime total. |
| Roy Cockrum | US$259.8m jackpot US$153.5m cash value reported by Powerball | FY2024 charitable-purpose disbursements: about US$3.99m | Performing-arts foundation | His foundation also reported US$47.28m net assets for FY2024; assets are not the same as grants paid. |
| Gil & Jacki Cisneros | US$266m | At least US$2.1m in clearly documented named university gifts | Scholarships and education | This is a conservative floor from named gifts at USC and GW, not a claimed lifetime philanthropy total. |
A note on “donated” versus “committed”
For Tom Crist and Roy Cockrum in particular, it would be misleading to compare money held by a foundation directly with grants another winner has already paid out. The table deliberately labels the measure used for each story.
Seven lottery winners who made giving part of the win
The amounts are interesting, but the different approaches are more useful. These winners did not all react to sudden wealth in the same way.
Frances and Patrick Connolly: giving became a second life
The Connollys won £114,969,775 on EuroMillions on New Year’s Day 2019. Their first idea was very human: make a list of the relatives and friends they wanted to help. That list was around 50 names long.
By December 2020, ITV reported that they had extended their giving to around £60 million. Some went to family and friends; some went directly to people who needed help; some supported charitable work. The couple also established the Kathleen Graham Trust in Northern Ireland and the PFC Trust in north-east England.
What stands out is how involved Frances became. This was not simply a large cheque and a photograph. The couple funded practical projects during the pandemic, including equipment, devices and local support.
Ray and Barbara Wragg: £5.5 million given away over 18 years
Ray and Barbara Wragg won £7,649,520 on the National Lottery in 2000. Within an hour, Barbara was already talking about helping people who needed it.
That was not a short-lived reaction. Over the following 18 years, the Sheffield couple gave away about £5.5 million. Established charities benefited, but so did hospitals, veterans, children, community groups and individual people whose stories came to their attention.
It is a useful counterpoint to the “set up a foundation immediately” idea. The Wraggs kept giving personally and gradually, learning what mattered to them as the years passed.
Source: The Independent
Colin and Christine Weir: turning part of a £161.7 million win into long-term grants
Colin and Christine Weir won £161,653,000 on EuroMillions in July 2011. The Weir Charitable Trust later became one of the clearest public records of what lottery-funded philanthropy can look like over time.
The Trust’s report for the year ended 19 December 2025 says that, since launch, it had made 733 awards with a combined value of just over £5.2 million to Scottish community groups, charities and community-interest companies.
That is more useful than repeating a vague “millions donated” headline because it is a published grant-making figure. It also shows the point of a trust: the money can be managed under criteria and distributed repeatedly instead of disappearing in one burst.
Sources: Weir Charitable Trust annual reports · Press Association / The Guardian on the £161,653,000 win
Allen and Violet Large: the couple who gave away about 98%
This is the story people usually mean when they ask whether anyone has won the lottery and then given almost all of it away.
Allen and Violet Large, from Nova Scotia, won C$11,255,272.70 in July 2010. Guinness World Records says the couple gave away approximately 98% of their winnings to groups in their community, including churches, fire departments, hospitals and the Red Cross.
The exact prize is worth using because it clears up a common inconsistency: older reports often round the win to C$10.9m or C$11m. Guinness now records the more precise figure above.
Sources: Guinness World Records · CBS / Associated Press
Tom Crist: committing the whole C$40 million jackpot to charity
Tom Crist was already financially secure when he won C$40 million on Lotto Max in 2013. He said there was “no doubt” where the money was going: into his family foundation to support charities.
That makes Crist one of the most striking examples on this page. His plan was not to keep a conventional winner’s share and donate the remainder. He publicly committed the entire jackpot to charitable purposes.
There is still an accounting distinction to make. Putting C$40m into a foundation is not the same as proving C$40m had already been distributed as grants on the day of the announcement. The foundation can make those payments over time.
Sources: Global News · CityNews Calgary
Roy Cockrum: using Powerball money to back ambitious theatre
Roy Cockrum won a US$259.8 million Powerball jackpot in Tennessee in 2014. Powerball reported a cash value of US$153.5 million, and Cockrum said the majority of his prize would go into a foundation supporting the performing arts.
The Roy Cockrum Foundation is a good example of why foundation assets and donations should not be mixed together. Its FY2024 filing, as presented by ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer, shows US$47,279,153 in net assets and about US$3,985,395 in charitable-purpose disbursements for that year.
Those numbers tell a more useful story than an old asset figure: this is a funded organisation designed to keep making grants, not a pot that had already been entirely handed to theatres.
Sources: Powerball · ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer / IRS filing data
Gil and Jacki Cisneros: turning a Mega Millions win into scholarships
Gil and Jacki Cisneros won a US$266 million Mega Millions jackpot in California in 2010 and quickly began funding education.
Two institutional gifts are particularly easy to verify. The couple established a US$1 million scholarship at USC Annenberg. At George Washington University they gave US$1 million for student aid plus another US$100,000 to the Yellow Ribbon Program supporting veteran education.
That gives us at least US$2.1 million in clearly documented named university gifts. Their wider foundation work extends beyond those gifts, but there is no need to inflate the page with a broad lifetime estimate when the named donations tell the story cleanly.
Sources: USC Annenberg · George Washington University
So who really gave away the most?
The answer changes depending on the question you ask. That is precisely why the figures above should not be sorted into one misleading ranking.
Tom Crist
Crist publicly said his full C$40m Lotto Max jackpot would go into the family foundation for charity.
Allen and Violet Large
Guinness records the Larges as giving away approximately 98% of C$11.26m.
Frances and Patrick Connolly
About £60m had reportedly been given away by late 2020 — but that total includes family, friends and direct help as well as charitable causes.
The better question is probably “how did they give?”
Someone planning their own charitable giving can learn far more from the difference between the Wraggs’ gradual approach, the Weirs’ grant-making trust and Cockrum’s specialist arts foundation than from deciding which headline number is biggest.
What can a future lottery winner learn from them?
You do not need to copy any of these winners. Their stories are useful because they show several very different ways to be generous without treating one approach as morally “better” than another.
Decide what stays yours first
A huge jackpot can make almost any donation feel affordable in week one. Your own lifetime costs, family commitments and long-term security are easier to assess before you make irreversible promises.
Keep family support and charity separate
Both can matter enormously, but they create different expectations and different tax consequences. Two budgets are much easier to understand than one giant “giving” number.
You can give in stages
The Wraggs show that generosity does not have to happen in the first year. Spreading decisions over time gives you a chance to learn which causes you understand and which organisations use money well.
A foundation is an organisation, not just a bank account
Trustees, governance, investments, grant decisions, records and administration come with the territory. Cockrum and the Weir Trust show what the long-term version can look like.
Personal experience can give the money a direction
Crist’s family history shaped his support for cancer causes; Cockrum knew theatre; the Cisneroses focused heavily on education. A clear purpose can be more useful than trying to answer every request.
Do not turn another winner’s percentage into a target
The Larges could choose to distribute around 98% because of their own circumstances. A younger winner with children, housing plans and decades ahead may make a completely different decision.
Should you give all your lottery winnings away?
It is possible. The examples above prove that. They do not prove it is the right choice for everyone.
Why a winner might give away most of it
- They were financially secure before the win.
- Their own lifestyle needs are modest.
- They have a cause with deep personal meaning.
- They prefer using the money for social impact.
- They have already ring-fenced their family’s future.
Why there is no need to rush
- Future family, health and care costs are uncertain.
- Promises made in the first emotional weeks are hard to undo.
- A charity may not be ready to use a very large gift well.
- Invested capital can support grants for many years.
- You can always give more later; recovering an over-large gift is different.
Lottery winners and charity: FAQs
Short answers to the questions that are easiest to lose inside the bigger winner stories.
Which lottery winner donated the most money to charity?
It depends on what is being counted. Tom Crist publicly committed his full C$40 million Lotto Max jackpot to charitable purposes through his family foundation. Guinness World Records lists Allen and Violet Large’s roughly 98% giveaway as its record for the largest lottery win donated to charity. Frances and Patrick Connolly have a larger reported giveaway of about £60 million, but that figure includes family, friends and direct help as well as charitable causes.
How much did Frances Connolly donate?
By December 2020, Frances and Patrick Connolly had reportedly given away about £60 million. That should not be described as £60 million donated solely to charity: contemporary reporting says the total included loved ones, charity and people in need.
Did Tom Crist really give away all his lottery winnings?
Tom Crist said his entire C$40 million Lotto Max jackpot would go into his family foundation for charitable use. The important distinction is that money committed to a foundation can be distributed as grants over time, so C$40 million is not the same as a verified total of grants already paid.
Which lottery winners gave away 98% of their winnings?
Allen and Violet Large of Nova Scotia, Canada. Guinness World Records says they won C$11,255,272.70 in 2010 and gave away approximately 98% to groups in their community.
How much has the Weir Charitable Trust given?
The Trust’s report for the year ended 19 December 2025 says it had made 733 awards with a combined value of just over £5.2 million since launch. That is the Trust’s published grant-making total, not a complete figure for every donation ever made personally by Colin and Christine Weir.
Can a UK lottery winner use Gift Aid on a charity donation?
Potentially, but the tax-free lottery prize itself does not create the tax needed to support a Gift Aid claim. HMRC requires the donor to have paid enough qualifying UK Income Tax and/or Capital Gains Tax to cover the Gift Aid reclaimed by charities on their donations.
Is money given to family counted as a charitable donation?
No. A gift to a relative or friend can be generous, but it is a personal gift rather than a donation to charity. This is why some widely reported lottery-winner “giveaway” figures cannot be used as charity-only totals.
Is money put into a charitable foundation already donated?
It can be committed permanently to charitable purposes without having reached an operating charity yet. Foundations commonly hold and invest capital, then distribute grants over a period of years.
Is it better to donate a lottery win immediately or over time?
There is no single best timetable. An urgent project may benefit from a large immediate gift, while staged giving gives the winner time to learn, review results and support organisations consistently. The examples on this page show both approaches.
How we fact-check lottery winner donation stories
Winner stories are unusually easy to distort because one article can say “gave away”, another “donated”, and a third may be talking about assets inside a foundation. We prefer primary records, official lottery sources, charity accounts and named institutional recipients wherever those exist.
When the strongest available source is reputable news reporting, we keep its wording and qualification rather than turning an estimate into an audited figure.
Gift Aid is a separate tax question
Lottery prizes are not taxed as income in the UK, but that does not automatically mean a winner can add Gift Aid to an unlimited donation. HMRC’s rules require enough qualifying Income Tax and/or Capital Gains Tax to have been paid. See our Gift Aid guide for lottery winners before treating the prize itself as the source of Gift Aid capacity.
More on giving after a lottery win
If this is more than curiosity and you are actually planning what a large win could mean, these are the useful next pages.