When I think of charity bingo, I have images of a Parish Hall with volunteers running the game and the parish priest calling out the numbers as parishioners mark their cards and at some point one of the lucky ones shouts “Bingo!”
Bingo came to the United States from Europe in 1929 and was quickly embraced as an inexpensive form of entertainment during the Great Depression. It was about this time that a Catholic priest in Pennsylvania facing diminished offerings to the collection plate began to use Bingo as a way to raise funds for his parish’s charities. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Since that time churches, synagogues and a wide range of charities from the Veterans of Foreign Wars to the Elks Clubs have used Bingo to fund their many and diverse charities. We in the Catholic Church have also used the proceeds to fund our schools and provide scholarships for the less fortunate.
But that is not the image of charity bingo today. It has become a multimillion dollar business that has abused and skirted the laws on using bingo games for legitimate charities and is establishing mini-casinos with slot machines in urban areas of California. Business is so good that in fiscal year 2007-08 electronic bingo in Sacramento County alone had gross revenues of $48.4 million. Of that haul only 8% went to the charities.
The operators of these bingo halls and their partners, the slot machine manufacturers, have their foot in the door for urban casinos and are trying to pry it open. And there is every reason to believe that if they can establish the right to operate these commercial bingo halls they will then push to be allowed to operate bigger, better and electronically connected casinos.
Fortunately the Legislature can stop these greedy bingo hall operators and ensure that Bingo can still be used as a legitimate way for churches and charities to raise the funds to help the truly needy.
SB 1369 authored by Senator Gil Cedillo will put a stop to these stealth urban casinos with their slot machines and give charities a way to increase the amount that the charities will receive.
The bill guarantees a minimum return to the charities of 43% and in some cases that figure could be higher. Compare that minimum to the 8% maximum now being received by charities affiliated with the illegal bingo halls.
It also allows what is called “remote caller” bingo games. Remote caller simply means that different locations could be linked together by audio and video to play the same game. An example would be if many parishes in a certain diocese banded together to have a larger game. This would result in larger prizes and therefore more money to those who truly need it.
And this is by no means limited to the Catholic Church. Any non-profit could develop remote caller bingo games and there are provisions in the bill to allow that to happen.
Finally, SB 1369 will stop these commercial bingo halls from hiding behind a handful of charities and using their non-profit status, and quite possibly jeopardizing that status, to get to their real goal—casinos in urban centers up and down the state.
There are 2,900 non-profits in California many of whom use bingo as their main means of funding their extensive charity efforts. SB 1369 gives them a greater opportunity to increase the amount they can raise and eliminate the commercial operations that are raking in millions while doling out pennies.
The traditional Saturday night bingo game that has been run by Churches across this country for over 70 years will not change much at all. There will still be volunteers from the parish running the game, a parish priest calling out the numbers and someone excitingly shouting, “Bingo!” when they win.
But the real winners will always be those in need.