8.1 SR 06-05-2023 - Laserfiche WebLink

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To: Elk River City Council From: Fraternal Order of Eagles (FOE), Aerie #3264 Re: Extension of Gambling License We are submitting a request to provide charitable gambling through paper pull -tabs and electronic pull -tabs at the Elk River Golf Club. While we have had a long running gambling license and have provided a lot of support to various people and organizations within the Elk River area, we acknowledge that we haven't made the required levels of contributions in the recent past. There are several reasons for this: • Unlike some organizations who have a dedicated resource for assistance, we depend on people and organizations in need contacting us and requesting help. Sometimes people aren't even aware of what we do as an organization. We have since started working on a pipeline of groups who require our help as well as publicizing our mission as an organization. • During the 2020 year, our club was closed for 4 months due to Covid-19. Please note that this crossed 2 of our fiscal years as we operate on a 6/1— 5/31 fiscal year. This not only affected our ability to generate revenue, but also affected the number of requests that we received. We are not sure if the normal requestors even knew we were open. • Also relating to Covid-19, many organizations received government benefits such as PPP, County or State Assistance and Employee Retention Credits. This may have reduced their need for grants, driving down our number of requests. • Electronic pull -tabs were new to us. We had no idea what to expect in terms of revenue from them, so when we budgeted, we were conservative as to what would happen. The revenue was far more than what was expected and far more irregular than paper pull - tabs, leaving us with a lot of additional, unpredictable revenue. We have since gotten a better understanding of what we can expect from this source of revenue and are actively reaching out to the community to make them aware that the Eagles can be a source of assistance. I believe if you review the past 12 months, our donations have increased greatly and in a more predictable fashion. We hope that the City Council will approve our request so that we can extend the benefit that we can provide to the community. Thanks for your consideration.