Rewarding Educators
- Insights Online
- 3 hours ago
- 7 min read
By NASPL Insights
Published April 22, 2025
As you’ll find in our special report this month, lotteries are creative in amplifying their beneficiary awareness in a number of ways, no matter how their revenues are distributed. A few of them demonstrate their commitment to raising revenues through contests and award programs. For example, the Colorado Lottery has the Starburst Awards, given to projects throughout the state that demonstrate excellence in the use of lottery dollars.
And then there are lotteries that honor teachers and educators – and even students – through special recognition programs. Highlighted here are responses from lotteries that have really ramped up this concept.
ADVERTISEMENT
Michigan Lottery
The Michigan Lottery established the Excellence in Education (EIE) awards in 2014 to recognize outstanding public-school educators across the state during the school year. During the program’s 10-plus years, we have recognized more than 300 educators across Michigan and the impact they have in their respective communities. Supported by the Lottery’s advertising budget, hundreds of entries are received each year.
EIE award nominees are evaluated on the following criteria:
Excellence. Their work consistently helps students and/or their schools or school districts advance to higher levels of academic achievement.
Dedication. They consistently go above and beyond expectations to help students succeed.
Inspiration. Their work inspires others around them to exceed expectations either academically or professionally.
Leadership. They demonstrate clear leadership skills in their positions with their school or school districts.
Effectiveness. The nominee’s work has clear and positive results on the educational advancement of students within the school or school district.
Winners of the weekly award receive a $2,000 cash prize and are featured in a news segment on the Lottery’s media partner stations: WXYZ-TV in Detroit, FOX 17 in Grand Rapids, FOX 47 in Lansing, WNEM-TV in Saginaw, and WWTV-TV in Traverse City.
Each year, one of the weekly winners is selected as the Educator of the Year and receives a $10,000 prize. The culmination of the program is a surprise assembly at the Educator of the Year’s school where they are surprised with a check for $10,000.
The EIE program has been a successful way for the Lottery to showcase its beneficiary, Michigan’s School Aid Fund, which supports K-12 public education programs, through paid partnerships and earned media. The program also allows us to connect on a grassroots level and gain exposure in local communities to show support of public education and educators. The news segments air throughout the state, are shared on social media, and amplify our tagline, “For Fun. For School.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Ohio Lottery
The Ohio Lottery’s mission is to raise funds in support of public education, K through 12. Since our inception in 1974, we have raised more than $33 million for schools statewide. Our Partners in Education program brings our mission to life. Since 2007, the program has allowed us to offer tangible support for teachers and students working hard and making a difference in their local communities. The program is a gateway to celebrate excellence in education.
During the academic school year, September through May, the Ohio Lottery accepts nominations for Teacher of the Month and Academic All-Star (student) awards. Three teachers and three students are chosen each month in a random drawing. Each awardee receives a gift card, prize pack, and a certificate of excellence. Since 2023, in recognition of Teacher Appreciation Month in May, we have enhanced the program by including a field trip giveaway for one of our teacher nominees and their class. The annual giveaway is conducted in partnership with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
The program also includes a School of the Year award. The Partners in Education Program accepts nominations for School of the Year from September through March. In 2024, nominations were required to include ways their school promoted student literacy skills. That focus supports Governor Mike DeWine’s initiative to improve student literacy skills statewide. The School of the Year receives a gift card, prize pack, and a certificate of excellence.
Partners in Education is promoted on dedicated pages on the Ohio Lottery website and in social media. Recent stories appearing on the Lottery’s YouTube channel (on the Education and Inspiration playlist) include a recent Teacher of the Month, Tom Ely. He’s a robotics teacher at Akron East Community Learning Center who started the robotics program for students a few short years ago. There’s also the story of a recent School of the Year award-winner, Revere Middle School, which used a portion of its award to purchase supplies for the Revere Roasters, a coffee shop on campus managed by students of Alli McIntyre, an intervention specialist and Teacher of the Month recipient.
ADVERTISEMENT
Oregon Lottery
The Oregon Lottery was created in 1984 to help fund programs that matter most to Oregonians, including public education. Because education is a key focus tied to the Lottery’s mission, the goal is to honor and support educators dedicating their lives to their students and communities. Since 2016, we have partnered with the Oregon Department of Education to sponsor the annual Oregon Teacher of the Year (OTOY) Program, part of the National TOY program. The program helps elevate exceptional teachers making a difference and offers extensive professional development and once-in-a-lifetime experiences (White House visit, NASA’s Space Camp, etc.).
The OTOY program awards up to 19 regional winners throughout the state with $1,000. The teacher is then in the running for the OTOY, who wins $10,000. Teachers can be nominated by anyone through the dedicated website. When Oregon Lottery began sponsoring the program, nominations were just over 300. With the Lottery’s support, the program has grown to over 1,200 nominations this past year. Our support includes the prize money for teachers and the state winner’s school, producing and funding the annual awareness campaign, providing travel for the OTOY, and providing staff support to the regional events.
The recognition that comes with this program continues throughout the year and is shared through many channels. Through media outreach and news coverage, dozens of stories are produced about regional winners and the OTOY. Oregon Lottery employees participate in surprise celebrations in partnership with school districts (often school assemblies) across the state to present regional teachers their awards. When it’s time to announce the state TOY, another surprise event is held at the recipient’s school, typically attended by the governor. Additionally, Oregon Lottery produces a video to spotlight the educator’s journey in becoming the TOY. The video is an important element of the campaign, as it helps builds momentum and awareness on social media.
Oregon Lottery’s work on the program has earned state recognition and is producing results that are boosting awareness for Lottery’s mission. As documented in 2024 Oregon Lottery’s Brand Promise survey, 76% of Oregonians are aware of Lottery’s support of public education, one of the highest recalled of Oregon Lottery’s six beneficiaries. OTOY media campaigns and video have also received recognition through the Public Relations Society of America.
ADVERTISEMENT
Tennessee Education Lottery
The Tennessee Education Lottery partners with its six drawing stations statewide to highlight educators who play a valuable role in so many lives during pre-K through 12th grade. The program has proved quite popular as a way for parents, students and other educators to nominate their favorite teachers to be in the well-deserved public spotlight.
The six stations gather nominations and then showcase an Educator of the Week in their local markets. Each month, the weekly regional winners are presented on the Lottery’s website, where the public can vote to decide the statewide Educator of the Month. At the end of the school year, those chosen are honored at a special luncheon or reception.
ADVERTISEMENT
Virginia Lottery
By law, all Virginia Lottery profits support K-12 public schools in the Commonwealth. In FY24 alone, we turned over a record profit of $934 Million, which is about 10% of the state’s entire budget for education. Since 1999, we’ve contributed more than $13 billion. The General Assembly works with Virginia’s Department of Education to distribute the funds. About 1/3 goes directly to the schools in the form of discretionary funding. The other 2/3 go to about a dozen specific programs, such as early reading intervention, career and technical education and class-size reduction, to name a few.
In addition to supporting the Lottery Proceeds Fund, the Virginia Lottery also works throughout the year to put a spotlight on public school educators and students in a variety of ways.
We are currently celebrating our 10th annual Thank a Teacher campaign in which we encourage as many Virginians as possible to send hard-copy or digital thank-you notes, provided by the Lottery, to their favorite public school teachers leading up to National Teacher Appreciation Week in May.
The precursor to the “core” campaign is the Thank a Teacher Art Contest (now in its 8th year) in which we collect submissions from K-12 public school student artists and then select three designs (one each from elementary, middle and high school) to be featured on the notecards. Lottery employee volunteers conduct the first round of judging and then we send the top 30 to a blue-ribbon panel of judges comprised of a former Virginia Lottery Super Teacher (which was our previous 10-year beneficiary campaign), the executive director of the VA School Boards Association, and a board member for the VA Art Education Association.
During a surprise in-school event, the Lottery’s executive director (or a member of the Communications team) awards the student winners with a gift card and supplies for their school from our longstanding partners at the Virginia-based SWaM-owned The Supply Room (TSR). These notes also include a unique web code that the teacher can then use to enter to win $2,500 for themselves and $2,500 in supplies for their school from TSR. We randomly select four teachers for this exciting prize and, again, utilize the element of surprise to award him or her, along with their school.
We support both the art contest and core campaigns with a robust paid media plan (including digital, streaming, print, audio) complemented by our owned assets, including our website, social media platforms and email database. We do a soft kick-off of the art contest with owned assets only beginning around mid-November, with paid media running January through mid-February. Paid media for the core campaign runs from April through the first full week in May (National Teacher Appreciation Week).
Our evaluation efforts of the Thank a Teacher campaign include variety of things, such as the number of art submissions received, number of notes sent, a thorough review of paid media and ROI on dollars spent, and an annual “benchmark” survey of 1,000 adult Virginians to determine awareness of and participation in these campaigns.
ADVERTISEMENT
Related Content: