North Carolina Lottery Winner Donates Windfall To Charity

When it comes to lottery winners, I think we all will admit that a common curiosity we all have is, what are they going to do with the money.  It's almost as if we can kind of live our life through theirs.  What would we do?  Would we buy?  A new house?  A new car?  Would we pay off debt?  Would we simply put it into savings?  That's boring.  Responsible, but boring.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say very few of us would make the decision that Charlotte's Barry Shipp has.  Mr. Shipp has a monthly ritual of purchasing a scratch off lottery ticket.  On the latest occasion, it came up a winner.  All of the sudden there was a what to do with $200,000 decision to make.  Well, after taxes, it was a $143,000 decision to make.  And Barry Shipp chose to donate it to charity.

Specifically, Shipp is donating a large portion of his lottery windfall to HIS charity, Pivot Point.  It is a non-profit that aims to set up the homeless in small homes.  Shipp tells WCCB, “Everybody’s talking about affordable housing and low-income housing. This is for no income.  I know that a person walking through those doors and they’re able to sit down every night, they don’t feel like they’re homeless anymore.” 

Shipp comes to this from a genuine place of empathy as he was once homeless himself.  It's nice to know that there are Barry Shipps out there in the world.  I know he's a better person than I'll ever be.

You can fantasize all you want about what you would do with a $200,000 lottery windfall, but there's no way you can criticize what Barry Shipp decided to do with his, donate it to charity.

There are some states that are luckier than others. There is no doubt about it. North Carolina made the list of 15 lucky states in the United States, according to OLBG. Everyone has fantasized about winning the lottery, whether it's the Mega Millions or the Powerball. Whether you're planning a lavish vacation, buying a house, treating a loved one, giving to charity, or all of the above, when we buy a ticket we always have a little bit of hope and our imaginations go wild when we hear about the unclaimed winning ticket...

When it comes to winning big on the lottery, which states are the luckiest? To determine where in America has the greatest likelihood of winning the big bucks, OLBG analyzed all lottery winners in the U.S. with a jackpot of $300 million or more. You can see the top 15 states below.

California was ranked 12th luckiest state despite having the highest number of big lottery winners, primarily because the state has such a large population that there are very few lottery winners, and the average winning ticket for a California winner is only $190.5 million.

North Carolina has won a whopping $1.1 billion between both lottery winners, making its average winning ticket $550 million, the highest in the country. As a result of its higher population, North Carolina didn't quite capture the title by itself, with a lower percentage of its population winning than New Hampshire.

In terms of lottery jackpot winners, New Hampshire and North Carolina share the gold for the luckiest states. Residents in New Hampshire have won a total of $693.7 million, which is an average of $346.85 million per winning ticket. As one of the states with the highest percentage of people who have won over $300 million, New Hampshire has the third smallest population.