Mom and 7 kids won a $429M jackpot. But they aren't spending the money on themselves
It takes a lot of self-restraint not to blow a lottery jackpot on a new house, car or designer wardrobe. But for the Smith family, the decision to use their winnings for good was a no brainer.
Pearlie Smith and her son and six daughters won the $429 million New Jersey Powerball Jackpot in 2016 and knew they had to do something positive with the money. After they took care of personal financial obligations like paying off loans and bills, each contributed some of their winnings to establish Smith Family Foundation, a private grant-making institution that aims to improve the quality of life in their hometown of Trenton, New Jersey.
“I could have gotten a yacht and never come back, but we just have a heart and mind to do this work,” Valerie Arthur, one of Smith's daughters, told NJ.com. “It’s a blessing to have the ability to do whatever you want to do in this life and yet you choose to come and help somebody else — that right there is divine intervention.”
The foundation held a grand opening of its new headquarters in Trenton on Saturday.
In raising their kids, Pearlie and Seamon Smith emphasized the values of hard work, love of God and giving back. The foundation’s website said that the family lived in a neighborhood with poverty and drugs, but the parents always emphasized the importance of education. Faith plays a core role in the need to use their lottery fortune to benefit others.
The foundation says its core values are urban ministry, education, cultivation and transformation. It hopes to impact the lives of thousands of youth and “to spread the love of God.” It will provide grant funds in three ways: three-year grants, one-year grants and summer programming.
“We want to fund programs that directly affect systems of poverty so we can help change the systems or change the dynamics that are causing people to be in poverty,” Smith Family Foundation Program Manager Harold Smith, a nephew, told NJ.com. “Rather than just helping them find food or give away food, we can make it so they now have the ability to obtain employment, get their proper education in order to be able to go out and get their own food.”
The Smiths took the cash lump sum option on their lottery winnings, meaning the family received around $284 million, then split eight ways. It was the largest single jackpot winning ticket sold in New Jersey, according to the Chicago Tribune. The odds of winning are one in 292.2 million.
This story was originally published June 15, 2017 at 11:58 AM with the headline "Mom and 7 kids won a $429M jackpot. But they aren't spending the money on themselves."