Kansas Charitable Gaming Act Bingo and Raffle Rules

The Kansas Constitution bans lotteries outright in Article 15, Section 3, but Section 3a carves out an exception: the legislature may regulate, license and tax bingo run by bona fide nonprofit religious, charitable, fraternal, educational or veterans' organizations. The legislature used that power to pass the Kansas Charitable Gaming Act, K.S.A. 75-5171 et seq., and K.S.A. 75-5174(a) makes clear the power to regulate, license and tax bingo and raffles "is hereby vested exclusively in the state", cities and counties have no separate authority to license or ban charitable gaming on their own.

The Department of Revenue's Office of Charitable Gaming administers the licenses. A qualifying nonprofit applies under K.S.A. 75-5175 with its name, address, the premises where games will be held, and a sworn statement of its nonprofit status; a bingo license costs $25 a year. Raffle licensing is tiered by revenue: no license is needed if annual raffle receipts stay at or under $25,000 (K.S.A. 75-5179(o)); above that, the fee climbs from $25 up to $100 as receipts pass $50,000, $75,000 and $100,000.

Operational rules sit in K.S.A. 75-5179. Call-bingo prizes in a single session are capped at $1,200, adjusted every July 1 for inflation using the federal consumer price index; progressive-game consolation prizes top out at $1,000, and a progressive game can't run more than 20 consecutive sessions before its prize must be awarded. Licensees taking in $1,000 or more in gross receipts must run a dedicated bingo trust bank account, and any bingo prize of $1,199 or more has to be paid by check. No one under 18 may run, work, or buy an instant-bingo ticket at a licensed game, and anyone convicted of a felony or illegal gambling within the past five years is barred from managing, conducting or operating bingo or raffles for a licensee.

K.S.A. 75-5179(c) bars anyone convicted of, or who pleaded guilty or no contest to, a felony or illegal gambling activity within the prior five years from managing, conducting or operating a licensee's bingo games or raffles, and the Department of Revenue can deny or pull a license on that basis. Running bingo or a raffle without the required license, or outside the Charitable Gaming Act's exemptions, forfeits the constitutional carve-out and exposes the operator to prosecution as ordinary gambling under K.S.A. 21-6404, a class B nonperson misdemeanor.