Charitable gaming remains a cornerstone of nonprofit fundraising across many U.S. states and Canadian provinces, but for regulators, it is also increasingly complex. As charities rely on raffles, bingo, casino nights and other forms of gambling to raise funds, gaming regulators are grappling with heightened compliance risk, growing demand for flexibility, and persistent capacity constraints.
In this post, we explore three of the most significant issues affecting charitable gaming regulation today—compliance, governance, and integrity risks; regulatory burden versus flexibility; and resource constraints—and show how modern technology, particularly gaming control systems like POSSE GCS can help address these issues through risk-based supervision, policy modernization, and transparency enhancements.
Charitable gaming may seem benign. After all, proceeds go to deserving causes. But the reality is that it can expose regulators to serious risks. Nonprofits managing gambling activities may lack the internal controls, financial sophistication, or compliance expertise common in commercial gaming operators. This raises red flags around fraud, mismanagement, or even money laundering.
All of these issues press regulators to maintain not just a licensing process, but ongoing oversight, a task that can strain traditional, paper-based systems.
Regulators must walk a fine line between ensuring accountability and giving charities the freedom they need to operate effectively.
Recent regulatory changes show just how delicate that balance can be. In Alberta for example, the provincial regulator, AGLC, significantly loosened its charitable gaming rules. Effective April 2025, charities may now retain up to $50,000 in profits (up from $10,000) without prior approval, spend up to $100,000 on community events, double their leasehold improvement limit to $100,000, raise administrative expense caps, and no longer require travel approvals.
These reforms demonstrate a clear willingness to reduce red tape, but they also heighten the risk that oversight will weaken. That’s because more financial discretion for charities often means less frequent pre-approval and more post-activity scrutiny, raising potential compliance gaps.
Regulators must modernize their policies to give charities greater autonomy, while simultaneously safeguarding public trust and ensuring proceeds are used appropriately.
Even as the charitable gaming sector becomes more sophisticated, many gaming control agencies remain under-resourced. Common pain points include:
These constraints hamper the ability of regulators to evolve alongside the charitable gaming sector, which is itself changing fast.
“Many regulators use outdated, siloed software (or even paper-based processes), which makes coordinating licensing, inspections, and enforcement extremely inefficient. Disparate systems hinder data-driven automation and prevent a risk-based approach.”
Modern workflow automation platforms, especially licensing and control systems built for gaming, offer powerful levers for transformation. In this next section, we discuss how the ‘Powered by POSSE’ GCS software solution can be configured to help regulators tackle today’s charitable gaming issues:
A risk-based regulatory model shifts away from rigid, checklist-driven compliance toward outcome-focused, data-driven oversight. POSSE GCS supports this in key ways:
By centralizing data and embedding risk logic in licensing and enforcement workflows, regulators can allocate resources more strategically—prioritizing charities that pose higher compliance or integrity risks.
Regulators often face pressure to modernize policy in response to evolving sector dynamics (e.g. giving charities more flexibility without sacrificing oversight). POSSE GCS can be configured to facilitate such modernization in the following ways:
Overall, a modern licensing system makes policy evolution much less burdensome, while preserving the capacity to enforce new standards effectively.
“A modern licensing system makes policy evolution much less burdensome, while preserving the capacity to enforce new standards effectively.”
Transparency is foundational to maintaining public trust in charitable gaming. Software platforms like POSSE GCS can greatly improve transparency, both internally for the regulator and externally to stakeholders and the public.
Through these transparency mechanisms, agencies can reinforce public confidence, deter misconduct, and maintain a clear, auditable regulatory record.
Charitable gaming is at a pivotal moment. As sectors modernize and regulatory demands grow, agencies must evolve too. Relying on legacy systems or manual processes will only widen the gap. But modernization doesn’t have to be painful or prohibitively expensive.
Here’s where agency leaders can act:
By investing in a modern regulatory architecture now, you position your agency to supervise charitable gaming more effectively, fairly, and responsively, while empowering nonprofits to do what they do best: serve the community.
If you’re a regulator or agency leader interested in learning more about POSSE GCS and how it can transform your charitable gaming regulation, get in touch with us today. Our team can walk you through demos, share case studies (including implementations with other gaming commissions), and help you to design a tailored modernization roadmap.
