Northfield area charitable gambling organizations: What percentage of their proceeds is going to community needs?

Which Northfield area organizations are giving a high/decent/respectable percentage of their charitable gambling proceeds to community needs and spending less on their operations?

Today’s Sunday Strib has a front-page story titled Where’s the ‘charity’ in charitable gambling? (That’s a premium link for the next few days, i.e., you need to be a print subscriber and logged in to access it.)

Pull-TabsThis year marks the 25th anniversary of state-regulated charitable gambling in Minnesota, the charitable gambling capital of the nation. Gambling employs more than 12,000 Minnesotans, funnels money to hundreds of charities, and provides entertainment at nearly 3,000 bars, fraternal halls and restaurants in every corner of the state.

But donations to charities have plunged to their lowest levels since 1986. About $32 million, or 3 percent of gross gambling revenues, went to charities in fiscal year 2010, according to a Gambling Control Board analysis this month. That means hundreds of Minnesota groups, such as Boy Scouts, softball teams and food shelves, are receiving smaller or no donations from gambling proceeds.

A second article is titled The trade-off in charitable gambling (premium access also required):

Hundreds of VFWs, American Legions and other groups have come to rely on their charitable gambling revenues to keep their doors open.

A third article (access is open to all) titled How much money goes to charity? has a:

… list of the more than 1,200 organizations that operate charitable gambling in Minnesota, which has been a $1 billion per year industry. They range from VFWs to fire department associations to youth athletic clubs. To sort by city or another column, click on the arrows inside each column head. The column titled "Other Lawful Purpose" refers primarily to property taxes and some building repairs that American Legions, VFWs and other fraternal groups can pay for using gambling profits.

The figures were released this month by the Minnesota Gambling Control Board and cover fiscal year 2010, which is July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010. This is not data for the 2010 calendar year.

I put together this screenshot of the data for the Northfield groups. Click to enlarge:

Northfield charitable gambling 2010

So let’s crowdsource the analysis of this data. 

Which Northfield area organizations are doing well, i.e., giving a high/decent/respectable percentage of their charitable gambling proceeds to community needs and spending less on their operations?

And which, if any, are doing poorly?

4 Comments

  1. Bruce Morlan said:

    I added two columns where I compute the percent of gross receipts (percent of what people gave that was used in charity) and the percent of net receipts (percent of what people actually “lost” while gambling that was available for use in charity.

    Click image to enlarge.

    December 19, 2010
  2. Griff Wigley said:

    Thanks, Bruce. So the Eagles donated 3%, and everyone else donated 25-45%. I wonder why the big discrepancy.

    December 20, 2010
  3. Jane Moline said:

    Eagles had other allowable expenses–I think this may be to support their post, but I am not sure. But that would mean they are using a large percentage for their charitable purpose.

    Note that the Defeat Days had the highest percentage–go pull tabs!

    I think the interesting thing about these programs is the small margin of net revenue after expenses–I can tell you from watching the Defeat Days on a month to month basis that there is an awful lot of work for a very small income. However, we need every penny we can raise so we try very hard to make the charitable gambling work for our committee. I know that the gambling committee have often donated their time rather than charge it against the allowable expenses. So it could be that there would not be a monthly profit without a lot of donated time.

    I am against the expansion of gambling in Minnesota–and I really am not very excited about going to electronic games instead of pull tabs–I think that this is a good area to keep a tight lid on. (Sorry about dangling my participle.)

    December 20, 2010
  4. Shelley Brady said:

    Thank you Jane! I was putting something together on behalf of the DJJD committee; but you said it very well.

    December 21, 2010

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