punting for charity

The gambling world often gets criticised for encouraging the vulnerable to waste their money with not much given back to society. Most charitable efforts by the firms aren't reported, and Betfair and Sportingbet are just two of the firms with quite substantial charitable contributions on their books each year.

But the biggest donations you ever see from punters usually comes from the media when they hire some 'experts' to make a few bets with the winnings (which are definitely not guaranteed!) going to a nominated charity. There may be others I've missed but there is rarely a co-ordinated charity betting campaign of any substance. Until now.....

PuntingAce, a website and forum I write for regularly, have been running a charity challenge for quite a while. They started with a bank of AU$125k two years ago, and are now over AU$55k in profit. And that doesn't include the annual Charity Swim one of the owners does each year to benefit a local school for children with special needs. The full list of donations and causes PuntingAce has supported over the years (over AU$50k) can be found here.

Too much is made of sensationalist stories from halfwit politicians like Nick Xenophon in Australia who see every form of gambling as evil - but of course everything the banks and financial markets do is perfectly credible. Guys like this who spend a significant chunk of their time making money for charity deserve to be applauded. Well done fellas.