[alice_in_bubbaland]

Our Parish holds an annual raffle too. The winners are published in the Sunday Bulletin. Come to think of it, I personally only new one winner after all those years.

The bigger problem is that Fr. Robert loaned money to parishioners, who in turn donated it back to the Parish in order to get matching funds from large corporations such as Merck & Co. and Johnson & Johnson.

[spudsmaki]

Loaned money to parishoners? As in a loan that isn't paid back? The IRS calls this income, that should show up on the line at the bottom, Other Income. It's like any other ill gotten gains.

Normally it wouldn't be caught, but J&J and the other foundations may squawk. In that case, the auditor will issue 1099s. These big dollar foundations can be pretty fussy about their money, they have oodles of CPAs and other licensed personnel who don't want to be associated with anything weird.

All sorts of angles to this.

[babydoll22]

Just teaching them how to fish rather than giving them a fish.

[SuziQ]

We've had a large raffle as part of our Parish Festival for a few years. It has always been above board, and neither of the priests, nor any one else in the Parish administration handles the money directly. I ran the raffle for the first couple of years with a friend, and she and I bought a ticket together. Suffice it to say, we were amazed when our name was called for one of the lower amount prizes! We made sure that WE didn't pull any winners' names for precisely that reason. We didn't want there to be ANY questions about it. The drawing is also held at the end of the festival in front of a HUGH crowd, so there's no chance for messing with it.

The main problem that some folks had with it is that the winner for several years was always someone from out of town. School families sold to their extended families, and one of our parishoners was an employee of a large corporation, travelled quite extensively, and sold tickets to folks in his organization. Those folks won two out of the first three raffles. Since then, more local folks have won, and it's exciting.