gambling in alberta - Research Services - University of Lethbridge

Figure 30: Proportion of Total Net Charitable Alberta Gambling Revenue Derived from Different
Gambling Formats (in thousands of 2010 dollars).
$450,000
$400,000
$350,000
$300,000
$250,000
$200,000
$150,000
$100,000
$50,000
$0
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The fact that Alberta charity/community groups have had access to a reliable and expanding
source of gambling revenue has some potentially negative effects, however. One issue
concerns whether community groups have developed a reliance on gambling revenue over
other sources of fund-raising. The Canada West Foundation conducted a study of this issue in
1999 whereby they surveyed 406/1005 Canadian organizations that received gambling grants
between 1995 and 1998 (44% of these organizations being from Alberta). Sixty-nine percent of
these groups considered gambling grants to be very important to their organization’s revenues
(Berdahl, 1999). For most organizations gambling grants did not represent a major part of their
overall budget, with 46% indicating that it only accounted for between 1 – 10%. On the other
hand, 20% (13% in Alberta) reported that gambling grants represented over half of their total
revenue, with this being particularly true for sports and recreation groups compared to social,
health and educational groups (Berdahl, 1999). For those groups who also directly conducted
charitable gambling, 68% considered this source of revenue to be very important to their
organization and 14% (20% in Alberta) reported receiving over half of their annual revenues
from charitable gambling (Berdahl, 1999). Overall, gambling grants were rated as the top
funding source for 28% of the sample, and rated in the top 3 funding sources for 50% of the
sample. Charitable gambling was rated less highly, with 13% of respondents rating it as the top
funding source, and 33% rating it in their top 3 funding sources.
1990
Raffles Pull Tickets Bingo Casinos
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