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Bingo & Raffle Newsletter

Quarterly Reports Due October 31

If you hold a 2014 license, you MUST submit your LE-21 Quarterly Report form by October 31. The report covers the period for July through September. Reports filed after this date will be assessed a $50 late filing fine.

Please make sure you download and use the correct forms from our website.

If you have any questions or concerns, contact Lisa Marty at lisa.marty@coloradosos.gov.

Quarterly Bank Forms

Starting in the first quarter of 2015, we will require all licensees to submit segregated bank information (Form LE-21a) with each quarterly report.

Please note that the bank form contains beginning and ending balances for the quarter. The form must be complete and must be submitted with each report filed.

Surrendering Your License

As a reminder, you can surrender your 2014 license at any point during the year if you do not plan on running any charitable games for the remainder of the calendar year.

The benefit of surrendering your license is that you will not have to submit quarterly reports for any of the remaining quarters. If you do not surrender your license, you must submit completed quarterly reports for every quarter during the year you hold your license.

You have a few options for surrendering your license:

Include the license when you mail your final quarterly report, indicating on the form that you will no longer hold games during the calendar year; or
Mail your license in separately with a note telling us that you wish to surrender the license because you will no longer be holding games.

As always, please feel free to contact us with any questions at licensing@coloradosos.gov.

Bingo/Raffle Financial Reports

Our office is committed to using our state-wide reach to provide timely and accurate data to the bingo/raffle community. We use the information you provide on quarterly reports to publish two informative datasets on our website

Aggregate revenue report: this report contains a "roll-up" of total revenue, expense, and profit data for charitable gaming in the state.

Revenue by licensee: this report contains similar information broken down by individual bingo/raffle licensees. We began publishing this report in response to a request from our Bingo/Raffle Advisory Board.

Our website currently contains reports for calendar year 2013 and for the first and second quarters of 2014. We will update the reports on a quarterly basis.

Bingo/Raffle Advisory Board

The Colorado Bingo-Raffle Advisory Board provides guidance to the Secretary of State's office in its regulation of the charitable gaming sector. All members of the public are encouraged to attend and contribute to this important dialogue. The Advisory Board will hold its next meeting in October.

When: Wednesday, October 15 at 10:00am

Where: 1700 Broadway, Denver, CO 80290, Blue Spruce Room (Second Floor)

Come join the meeting to share your thoughts on bingo and raffle activities in our state.

If you have any questions, please feel free to write us an email at licensing@coloradosos.gov.

Help Wanted: Testing the New E-filing System

Our office has been hard at work putting together a new e-filing system for Bingo/Raffle customers. The system will eventually allow Bingo/Raffle licensees to perform all of their filings online.

The first phase of the system release will be for bingo/raffle quarterly reports. Before our office can release this first phase, we will be doing both internal and external testing of the site. Sometime in the next few months (around November or early December), we will be contacting a few licensees to help us test the system before release.

If you would like more information on this testing, please feel free to contact us at licensing@coloradosos.gov.

Notes on Reporting Pull Tabs

Here are a few tips to keep in mind if you’re reporting pull tabs on your quarterly report. First of all, remember that the LE-21 form separates pull tabs at bingo and pull tabs at bar/clubrooms.

If you have pull tabs at bingo, you must complete line 1.6 indicating the number of bingo occasions during the quarter. The reporting lines for pull tabs at bingo are 1.14, 2.4, and 3.7

If you have pull tabs at a bar/clubroom, you must complete line 1.9 indicating the number of days your bar was open for pull tab sales. The reporting lines for pull tabs at a bar/clubroom are 1.16, 2.6, and 3.9.

Here are a few general pointers for reporting pull tabs:

Make sure you are reporting the gross revenue and payout totals, not the profit.
Make sure the revenue and payout totals are the actual amounts. They are rarely the same number, and generally should not be reported as such.
You must report all sales and payouts on a quarterly basis. Do not wait for a deal to sell out to report revenue and payouts.

Pull tab information should be kept daily on the LE-31 form for regular pull tabs, and on the LE-31a for progressives pull tabs.

Games Manager Training

Remember, your organization must have at least one certified Games Manager in order to run charitable games, and we recommend licensees maintain more than one. We continue to offer in-person and online Games Manager training courses.

For in-person classes, visit our Games Manager Training page and follow the instructions to sign up for a scheduled class.

You can also sign up to host a Games Manager training course. Follow this link to provide us with a few details about you and your organization, and host a class soon.

Please note that the Games Manager mail-in certification exam is no longer available.

New Resource: Bingo Management Toolkit

We announced in our last newsletter the release of a new, free resource for our bingo/raffle customers: the Bingo Toolkit.

The Bingo Toolkit is a collection of tips and best practices from some of Colorado’s leading charitable gaming managers. Inside you’ll find ways to motivate volunteers, market your occasions, bring more excitement and variety to your gaming events, keep regular players happy, and attract new players.

If you’re just beginning to run a charitable gaming operation, this guide will help you get off to a strong start. These best practices were taken from extensive research on what successful games managers are doing to run profitable games. Then we put it together in an easy-to-use reference guide.

If you’ve been at this for a while and are looking for a few ideas to give your charitable games a boost, then you’ve come to the right place. That said, not every idea in this toolkit will be right for you. Feel free to pick and choose what seems most relevant and useful to your organization.

The toolkit is free for all members of the public. To access the toolkit in PDF format, or to order free paper copies, visit our website. See below for a glance at the toolkit layout. Enjoy, and best wishes for great success in your efforts to raise money for your organization!

Quarterly Data Points: Annual Profits

The end of the second quarter marked the halfway point of the year, so data from our licensees' first two quarterly reports in 2014 can give us a good idea of how charitable gaming will fare for the year. The first graph below shows that gross revenue is trending consistently with figures from the previous three years. In fact, the nearly $60 million in revenue is almost exactly half that in previous full years.

The graph below, depicting year-on-year changes in profit, shows a similar picture. Total profits in the first half of 2014 dipped slightly from the same time period in 2013. The biggest drops came in regular bingo (down 17%) and raffles (down 7%). However, progressive bingo and pulltabs in bar and club rooms continue to be big winners.

We'll keep you updated on financial trends in the charitable gaming community. And, as always, you can find more information on the bingo/raffle financial reports page available on our website.

Selling Raffle Tickets Online: What You Need to Know

If you plan to sell raffle tickets via the web, there are a few things you need to keep in mind to ensure you stay in compliance with the law:

First of all, make sure you let our office know that you will be selling raffle tickets online. We will request that you submit screenshots of the sales platform to ensure that they are compliant.
Make sure funds from the sale go directly into your bingo-raffle account. Like all charitable gaming proceeds, the credit processing cannot be done through your general account and then transferred into your bingo-raffle account.
Ask yourself: will you be sending tickets via the web or just doing hard tickets? If you do tickets via the web, you will need an internal data system which will capture all the information required on a hard ticket, as well as being sure no ticket numbers are duplicated.

Web-enabled raffles can be a bit difficult, so we encourage you to communicate with our office early and often as you develop your plans. Please contact Shannon Bee (shannon.bee@coloradosos.gov) with any questions.

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