Does your post’s gambling donate to American Legion causes?

What do charitable gambling hockey clubs spend their money on?

Hockey.

What do sports boosters that have charitable gambling spend their money on?

Sports at their school.

What do you think American Legion posts with charitable gambling spend their money on?

For some posts, pretty much everything except The American Legion.

It makes no sense. Why is that?

It’s because they’ve become so good at giving to their communities that they neglect Legion programs. They will fund Friends of the Library, Community Sewing Club and Center for the Arts — making the veterans popular when they walk down the street and see folks around town — but these same vets will fuss and fight like mad dogs over having to send kids to Legionville or to Boys/Girls State or even buying new uniforms for their own post honor guard.

The American Legion needs to put The American Legion first.

Heck, some of these posts will donate to hockey teams that already are getting dollars from the local youth hockey organization. Do the hockey orgs donate to Legionville or to Fund 85? No.

American Legion posts absolutely, positively are allowed under law to give our charitable gambling donations to our own programs, such as baseball, blood drives, the honor guard, assisting struggling veterans, aiding local soldiers, scholarships, buying flags for schools, etc. It should be that our mission comes first, then other stuff.

I am a gambling manager with Bloomington Post 550, and I love my post. It’s full of great people.

We have formed a standard operating procedure so we can fund Legion needs, local needs, or, in some cases, a cause about which an active member is enthusiastic. (Rick Skinn likes Wishes & More out of Fridley, for example.)

We round-file the rest.

In May, we purchased a brand new 2004 Ford Transit XL passenger van and sold off our used Ford E450 shuttle bus (with permission from the Gambling Control Board). The van is for mission-only: for our honor guard to take to funerals, for baseball to take to games and for going to veteran events like Veterans Day on the Hill.

Pretty much everyone was in favor of it, and we had 37 people in attendance that night! I really appreciate the comments from two people who were opposed to it because talking it out brings out the issues.

One of the members who spoke against it said, “The money should go to the veterans!” When he was done speaking, the commander politely retorted, “We are the veterans that it will go to.”

I then had an opportunity to say this: “American Legion Post 550 is a charity, too. We do a lot to help our community, but we also are allowed to fund our own programs, too.”

Perhaps more posts might consider putting their Legion money toward the Legion mission.

I know that many cities require licensed gambling organizations to donate locally. Most ordinances say located or conducted. If your honor guard perfoms at a funeral in the next county, they still had to muster at your post and store their stuff there when done, so it counts as conducted in town.

Sending a child from your town to Legionville counts as a local donation, even if the Legionville check is mailed to St. Paul. It’s not based on the address of the check. It’s based on whether there is a local beneficiary.

How do I know? Well, MAC-V has a shelter for a homeless veteran family of four in Bloomington. Post 550 has donated to it many times, and when we started, we asked the Gambling Control Board whether it counts as Bloomington, even though MAC-V is based in St. Paul. The staff said it does.

As you know, the legal world is based on reasonableness. Just imagine how things hold up in court. If you ask a reasonable person in court whether sending a local kid to a camp far away is local, the answer — seven days a week — would be it is local. Of course!

I’m not saying the community needs to take a back seat, but if your post tells the school it only will send two kids to Legionville, when the school wants to send four kids, while at the same time donating thousands to non-Legion and non-veteran things, your priorities are upside down.

I doubt the hockey people are going to give their money to Friends of the Library.

Tim Engstrom is the communications director for the American Legion Department of Minnesota. He also is a gambling manager for Bloomington Post 550.