Frances Connolly, a 55-year-old former social worker and teacher from Northern Ireland, won a staggering £115 million or about $145 million in the EuroMillions lottery in 2019.
Instead of spending it all on luxuries, she decided to give back to others. Her ultimate goal was to set up charitable foundations, and that’s exactly what she did. She established two charitable foundations, one in Northern Ireland named after her late mother, Kathleen Graham, and the other one called the PFC Trust, which supports local carers, the elderly, and refugees in her hometown.
Connolly has always been passionate about giving back to the community. As a child, she volunteered with the St. John Ambulance and learned how to give first aid. She was also a member of an AIDS helpline in Belfast, which she helped run. Connolly believes that money liberates people to become the person they want to be, and it has certainly liberated her to give back to deserving people.
Connolly has given away more than half of all the money she won, including £5,000 to Ukrainian refugees so they could buy clothes and hygiene products. She also purchased tablets for seniors, so they could stay in touch with their families all the time. She has no plans of stopping her philanthropic work anytime soon, and helping others is like an addiction to her.
While Connolly and her husband, who still runs their plastics business, live a normal life, they did purchase a six-bedroom house in County Durham with seven acres of land, something they had always dreamed of having. Mr. Connolly also drives a second-hand Aston Martin. But, for Connolly, it makes no sense to have that kind of money and not use it to do good in the world.
