$100 says the EOCF has never held a bake sale, or contemplated it

Look, I really can't get enough of these stories that make the Oilers look bad, and kudos to the reporter for his doozy of a quote from Edmonton Oilers Community Foundation's Natalie Minckler that finishes the piece. But the really educational part of the piece for me was this:

Many of the typical fundraising activities of sports foundations like Team Up come with big overhead.

Every dollar that comes in from game night 50/50 draws — lotteries that direct half the ticket sale proceeds to the charity and the other half to a winning ticket holder — only bring in 40 to 45 cents on the dollar, says [MLSE's Ken] Nonomura.

“It has the lowest net and highest expenses against it. … From the 50 cents we’re getting, we have to pay for the lottery licenses, the ticket printing and … someone to manage the program. It’s a high cost.”

I think this illustrates the drawback of this method of evaluating charities. Smushing fundraising and administration costs together like they're the same thing isn't a great idea, and likewise, not all fundraising costs are the same. The 50/50 draw is a wildly successful method for getting middle class contributions to charity. When the accountant early in the piece says “As community investments go, there are much better places to put your charitable dollars", well, yeah, but, that's a bit of a silly way of looking at it, no? Most importantly, it's pretty cussing transparent to every 'donor' that 50% of the money is NOT going to charity. If a charitable organization I supported was offered the chance to run the 50/50 at Edmonton Eskimos games, and said, "No, sorry, because 55% of the intake goes towards costs", I'd be furious.