People usually know what they're in for when they head into a casino.
It's hard not to get caught up in it.
It's the noise that gets you.
The buzz, the thrill of winning big.
It's a night of spending and throwing caution to the wind.
That's what casinos mean to most people.
But here in Alberta, the rules of the game are slightly different.
For charitable groups in the province, casinos are a lifeline.
They're capable of keeping them afloat.
This is Raising the Stakes.
It's a podcast about the role casino advisors play in helping charities pull off the perfect casino fundraiser event.
Because a charity's ability to help their communities might depend on just making it to the tables.
There's a long road to get there.
And when it comes to casino events, there's no room for error.
For those involved in not-for-profits like educational musical theatre and community spaces, Singing, dancing, we use a lot of puppets.
Crime prevention awareness, We just try to help people figure out how to protect their property and themselves.
Or even animal shelters.
We do have a good number of boxes of kittens that are literally just left on our doorstep from time to time.
Funding doesn't come easy.
Casinos are just one avenue they can turn to, but it's effective and sometimes necessary.
Wait till you hear what the take is.
In the major casinos, which is most of them, the charity gets half the profits.
Meet Jeffrey Dawson, owner and operator of Alberta Casino Advisors, Incorporated.
For charities in Alberta, it's very successful.
In Edmonton, for example, the charities over a two-day period make about $80,000.
In Calgary, it's about $75,000.
In Red Deer and other smaller cities, it's between 20 and 30 thousand paint on the city.
Jeff is a dual casino advisor who has experience in every casino in the province.
Not only does he help charities get a license for a casino event, he's there to follow through, showing them every step of the way.
There's a lot that needs to be done right up until the big event.
A ton of moving parts.
Charities need a casino advisor to steer them in the right direction and prepare them for whatever might go wrong.
It's too important for them to leave it to chance.
I went in and said, no, we're fine, we're fine, we're fine, fine, we're fine, we're fine.
No, that was big mistake on Mark's part.
Mark should have just assumed that Murphy's Law is gonna kick in and get ready for it.
He's been a casino advisor for many years.
I've been a casino advisor since 2011.
The term casino advisor is kind of misleading.
I do not advise casinos.
Every casino in Alberta requires to have volunteers in order to operate.
And so what a casino advisor does is they train volunteers in the casino and the volunteers, the charity that is assigned to the casino changes every two days.
Every two days I get a new group that I work with and I work in different casinos across the province.
Years ago, the Alberta government decided that when they approved casinos in Alberta, that charities would be benefactors of the casinos.
It's a charitable gaming model is what it's called.
The charity holds the license for that casino to open that day.
Actually, if a charity doesn't show up at a casino on their assigned day, the casino is actually not allowed to open.
Talk about a costly mistake.
Jeff knows the rules inside and out.
When they change and they change often, he's on it.
The devil's in the details, as they say.
Sometimes charities don't know that there are certain positions that need to be filled.
The stakes couldn't be higher.
My name is Sean Fraser.
I'm the executive director of Evergreen Theatre Society.
So we have two sides of our operation, all operating under sort of one society.
So one is
the Evergreen Theatre programming side.
And so what we do is we do curriculum linked science and environmental education within schools and in public education settings.
But we also do public performances and that sort of thing.
So singing, dancing, we use a lot of puppets.
We have a touring puppet theatre, that's a mobile puppet theatre that drives around and goes to different events.
And then the other side of it is the Evergreen community spaces.
so basically what we do is we provide space to underserviced communities and sort of a lot of young entrepreneurs, a lot of female entrepreneurs and run all kinds of programs there.
Evergreen also operates as the management company that manages the property and, you know, snow shoveling.
And I spent the summer up on the roof, tarring the roof, you know.
like you do for the children, right?
So my name is Terri Lee Robchan and I'm the executive director of the Central Alberta Crime Prevention Centre.
We operate at a Red Deer.
We're involved in crime prevention and on that end of things, we provide services and we provide programming.
And some of the things that you might hear about us would be our presentations.
So we do crime prevention presentations, we do...
fraud and scams, we sometimes focus on seniors, we do some senior presentations.
We just try to help people figure out how to protect their property and themselves.
My name is Mark Forney, I'm the Treasurer of the Wild Rose Humane Society.
We are an animal shelter, a non-for-profit organization that works out of Didsbury, Alberta.
We are a non-for-profit, as I mentioned, we have one paid staff member.
All the other activities are completed by volunteer board members.
have volunteer community members that come in and clean up with the cats.
We have volunteer dog walkers.
Sean, Terry Lee and Mark all do important work for their communities as part of their charities.
And Jeff does his part to help them keep the lights on.
Why did we decide to have a casino event?
So first of all, I've been doing casinos probably for 20 years.
So it's not it's not something that's new at all.
Been doing them for a long, time.
It is just part of the fabric and the way to stay alive in the Alberta funding structure.
So why we chose to do it is because we need to pay the bills somehow, right?
And there are opportunities for support for not-for-profits and charities in Alberta has diminished greatly over the last 10, 15 years.
Well, this is the second time I've had the pleasure of working with Jeff.
I think this was our organization's third casino.
And so we've just been in rotation there every couple of years.
And so we actually very much rely upon the casino for our vet costs because that's by far the largest, largest cost of the shelter.
Over the years, we've looked at all kinds of different
different opportunities and different things to do with varying degrees of success.
We're already incredibly taxed.
So we have to be very strategic in how we use our time in other areas and look at the maximum return on investment that we can get.
I work very hard every day to keep everything just afloat.
Right.
So why we do it?
Because we have to.
We looked at a lot of different events, but they were all kind of small scale.
So it'd be like we'd make $1,500 or we'd make $1,000 or we might only make $500.
And that's where the casinos, know, really the amount of money that we were making, we could split over two to three years and it was a stream that we could rely on.
Most charities need to get funding however they can.
They know it's impossible to rely on just one source of funding, but for Sean, Mark and Terry Lee, they all agreed that the casinos do a lot of heavy lifting.
So a charity has just gotten licensed for a casino by the Alberta Gaming Liquor and Cannabis Commission or AGLC.
What happens next?
AGLC assigns them a casino and they're two days.
At that point, they're required to hire a casino advisor and
they're independent and so the people get to choose, the casino chairperson gets to choose which advisor they wish to work with.
therein lies the kicker.
So it is actually a requirement in doing casinos.
For someone like Sean, he knows the landscape well.
It's a familiar number and he knows all the moves.
Having a casino advisor is just another step of the process.
So, I you have to kind of understand the fabric of how casinos operate in Alberta.
We are required to have a licensed liaison who is licensed by the government, but a third party entity that helps through that process.
So it's kind of an at arm's length, third party accountability and a way to be able to make sure that all of the standards and things are upheld.
but it's up to him to pick an advisor who he thinks will ultimately help his organization.
He's going to look at experience, skillset, and resources.
He needs to know of a casino advisor who will provide the level of support that his organization requires.
Jeffrey Dawson works with a team.
That means something when schedules get hectic and charities need to talk to someone right away, or they need people there at the tables.
It's about providing coverage.
I've actually got a team of ten guys and gals that work for me.
You get into a major casino, which is the ones in Edmonton and Calgary, there's a requirement to have three advisors each day, so it's not just one person.
There's three, and so you need a team in order to make that work.
Especially I have many times where I've got three or four casinos that we're operating in the same day.
Every charity has different needs when it comes to casino advisors.
Each chairperson has a different level of experience with casino events.
Myself and some of my advisors have been chairpersons, have been on the other side of the equation.
we know what we would have liked as a client.
And we found that a lot of times the advisors don't do that.
So we really try to be responsive, listen to what clients, where their pain is, and try to make the event an easy process for them.
For Jeff, it's about simplifying the process, coming up with innovative ways to make the whole thing a lot less daunting, more manageable, and even fun for newcomers and even the
most seasoned chairpersons.
So it's important to make sure you get assistance from day one from an organization that understands how the paperwork needs to be done and make sure that you are filling the
right paperwork at the right time so you can get to your event and get the proceeds.
So why does Jeff
do any of this?
Well, I enjoy working with different people.
The ability to go to different places and work with different people every day is very motivating.
I love it.
And the fact that we're helping charities make money to fund the activities that they do.
Whether it's educational musical theater or crime prevention, we're taking care of animals without a home.
or just about any other good cause you can think of.
They all have a heart for whatever they're doing and so I enjoy helping them in their financial goals.
At the end of the day, my hope is that the work that I will have chosen to do through my career will pay dividends at some point.
And a lot of days it doesn't always feel that way, but when you get to go and see
kids enjoying themselves and families enjoying themselves and you know people having a good time and it is very rewarding.
Unfortunately as I'm sure a lot of you know like when you're in a leadership role you don't get a chance to see a lot of that your time occupies a lot of the more unfortunate
and more negative things so it can feel a little bit discouraging sometimes.
So I try and force myself to get out to be able to see clients because then you go, right that's why we do this.
Casinos help charities in Alberta exist and function at the top of their game.
Without the services the charities provide, communities would feel that all over the province.
If the casino events Jeff helps his charities carry out are considered uneventful affairs, that means he did his job.
It's like fire prevention.
Speaking of which, a fire breaking out at a casino event is something Jeff has experienced.
More on that in another episode.
If a charity isn't prepared for the event,
or makes a mistake anywhere in the process.
The consequences could be devastating.
So some of the things that can go wrong is not meeting deadlines.
There are organizations that I'm aware of that they don't fill out the paperwork properly or maybe they intentionally make an error on the paperwork.
I think they call that a white lie.
If you get caught, ATLC could fine you.
They could also remove you from getting future casino events.
Next time on Raising Mistakes, we're going deep into the vault.
It's all about the Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis Commission.
Biggest misconceptions, mistakes, and what charities need to understand.
another Everything Podcasts production.
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