One of these bets
has actual odds.
North Carolina's Education Lottery put 16 cents of every dollar toward schools last year. Seventy-six cents went back out as prizes. Put that same dollar on a kid instead and every cent of it lands on the kid.
What does the habit actually cost?
Move the slider to whatever a week of tickets looks like in your house. Nobody thinks of it as a big number, because it never arrives as one.
It is called the Education Lottery.
Here is how North Carolina split each dollar of lottery revenue in fiscal year 2025, according to the State Auditor's performance audit — the first one done on the lottery since 2008.
The education share was 23% two years earlier and 22% the year before this one — the trend is downward while sales climb. And the money is thinner than it sounds: of $12.3 billion in total K–12 funding in 2023–24, $407 million came from the lottery. That is 3.3% of what North Carolina spends on its schools. The original law required 35% of revenue go to education; in 2007 the legislature softened that from a requirement to a guideline to be followed "to the extent practicable."
We built the simulators so you don't have to fund the lesson.
Real draw results, real prize tables, a fake bankroll. Pick your numbers, run a few hundred drawings, and watch what happens to the balance. It is the cheapest tuition in this whole conversation.
Put it somewhere it compounds.
We run afterschool programming for young people in Winston-Salem — entrepreneurship, workforce readiness, and the part most programs skip: getting your mind right first. Consumers become creators. That is the whole bet.
Afterschool Program
Weekly sessions where students build something real and learn how to run it. Curriculum, mentors, and a cohort that shows up for each other. See what a term looks like and how to enroll.
SEE THE PROGRAMStart Creating
Already have an idea, or want one? This is the front door. Bring a notebook and a problem worth solving, and we will help you turn it into something you can put your name on.
GET STARTEDSponsor a seat.
Every sponsored seat covers a student's spot in a term — materials, mentorship, and the showcase at the end. If you do hit a jackpot one day, you know where to find us. If you don't, a seat costs a fraction of a season's tickets and a student actually gets it.
SPONSOR A SEAT⚠ Before you play anything
Lottery products are engineered to be hard to stop. Frequent small wins, near-misses, and a jackpot you can picture are the same design pattern used in slot machines, and it works on ordinary people with ordinary self-control. If gambling has stopped being fun for you or someone in your house, the National Problem Gambling Helpline is free, confidential, and open every hour of the day: 1-800-GAMBLER. Our simulators use play money and never accept a real wager. You must be 18 or older to buy a lottery ticket in North Carolina.