TENOVUS, the cancer charity, has been forced to abandon its fund-raising lottery because it cannot compete with the National Lottery. Only one of the three medical research charities that operated lotteries at the end of last year is still doing so, and income from that scheme is estimated to have dropped by 25 per cent.
Tenovus has research centres in Cardiff and Southampton, and supports other university-based projects. In 1994 more than half of the charity鈥檚 拢3 million annual income came from its lottery. David Manning, chief scientific officer with Tenovus, says the charity has enough money to cover existing projects for two years, but is refusing all new applications for funding.
鈥淚f Tenovus鈥檚 income from non-lottery sources does not improve, we shall have to lay off staff,鈥� says George Stevenson, professor of immunology at the University of Southampton. His team, which gets most of its funding from Tenovus, is in the early stages of testing an antibody against lymphoma which is particularly potent at killing cancerous cells. 鈥淔unding for cancer research is such a competitive area that it is extremely unlikely that we will get funding from another source,鈥� says Stevenson.
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The National Lottery Charities Board has not ruled out giving money to medical research charities, but they will have to stand in line with other 鈥済ood causes鈥� such as a new scout hut. Academic research is not one of the board鈥檚 priorities. Medical research charities must rely on charity shops and individual donors, but income from these sources has also fallen since the National Lottery started in November.
In a report published last week, the National Council for Voluntary Organisations says that the proportion of people giving to charity has fallen from 81 per cent to 67 per cent and that donations have dropped by 拢71 million.