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, 2015 | 35,433,619.67 | 7,287,773.28 | 20.6% |
| 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% |
