Shirley Mulrooney died in March 2013 after a painful and expensive fight with liver cancer. 

After she died, her son Mike Mulrooney, promised to carry on her legacy of volunteerism and serving others. At the time, he was unsure how to carry on his mother’s legacy, but what stuck with him most about his mother’s cancer battle wasn’t just how physically challenging it was, but how expensive it was. 

He knew he wasn’t alone in the overwhelming expenses families impacted by cancer can feel.  

“I was told horror stories of people who had cancer that couldn’t afford the basic necessities of life,” Mulrooney told the Courier Journal. “I’m talking food, rent, medication, mortgage payments, utilities, all while they’re sick because they’re so sick from the treatments.” 

At the end of 2013, Mulrooney founded Shirley’s Way, 10966 Dixie Highway, a nonprofit focused on providing financial support to individuals under medical care for cancer and other diseases. Much of the money raised by Mulrooney’s business comes from charitable gaming, one of the three types of legal gaming in Kentucky (not accounting for sports betting which was signed into law in March).  

“Charitable gaming refers to games of chance conducted and held by licensed charitable organizations for fundraising purposes,” said Kristin Voskuhl, a spokesperson for the Kentucky Department of Charitable Gaming. “Charitable gaming provides entertainment and revenue for charities that participate to help in their stated missions.”

In the last 10 years, Mulrooney has been able to give away roughly $1.8 million to families in need in Kentucky.

“It’s very humbling to be able to write a check and save somebody’s house or make their utility bills when they’re about ready to be turned off,” Mulrooney said. “It’s just a feeling of pride to know that we’ve been able to make that happen.” 

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Across the state, charitable gaming fundraised more than $531 million during 2022, which constitutes 6.09% of all dollars wagered in Kentucky, according to the 2022 Annual Report from the Kentucky Department of Charitable Gaming. 

“Charitable gaming provides charitable organizations a fundraising opportunity that allows them to better serve their constituents and stated mission, increasing the strength of Kentucky’s nonprofits,” Voskuhl said.

Here’s what to know about charitable gaming in Kentucky. 

What is charitable gaming and how can I play? 

In 1994, the Kentucky General Assembly passed the Charitable Gaming Act, which established the Department of Charitable Gaming and the current regulatory framework for the industry.

The gaming started with raffles, bingo, charity game tickets, split-the-pot games, and paper pull tabs, and in 2016 expanded to include electronic pull tab machine gaming. Electronic pull tabs play similarly to slot machines.

“To consumers, electronic pull-tab devices appear to operate similarly to historic horseracing machines, but the models on which the games are based are quite different,” Voskuhl said. “Electronic pull tab devices essentially contain an electronic ‘box’ of pull tab tickets with a predetermined number of winning and losing tickets that the system’s random number generator assigns to the player each time the player purchases and plays a ticket.”

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Shirley’s Way has four locations, its flagship Dixie Highway location, Hideout Pizzaria at 5620 Barrett Lane, Derby City Flea Market at 2900 7th St., and Colonial Gardens at 818 W Kenwood Dr., where gamers can participate in raffles or play electronic pull tab machines. At each location there are between eight and 50 gaming machines, Mulrooney said. 

“Charitable gaming has been around for a while,” Mulrooney said. “It’s highly regulated.”

Each location has a charitable gaming chairperson who is there to monitor the integrity of the game. Once a player wins, they print off the winning ticket from the machine and go to the kiosk near the games to redeem their prize. If the kiosk fails, the chairperson is responsible for rewarding the gamer.  

How does the state of Kentucky benefit from charitable gaming? 

Prior to electronic pull tabs, Shirley’s Way hosted 5K runs, sold t-shirts and had a red carpet walk for cancer survivors, but none of these events pulled in nearly the same funds as charitable gaming. 

“We weren’t really able to give a whole lot of money away in that time because we didn’t have much coming in,” Mulrooney said. “If [charitable gaming] is done right, it serves the community. We would not be able to give away what we’re doing right now without it.” 

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The Department of Charitable Gaming licenses and regulates all charitable gaming across the Commonwealth. There are more than 523 Kentucky-licensed charitable gaming organizations that are state-regulated, and an additional 688 organizations conduct charitable gaming and are exempt from licensure because they earn below $25,000 annually, according to the 2022 Annual Report. 

Kentucky law requires licensed charitable organizations to retain at least 40% of adjusted gross receipts from charitable gaming and devote these proceeds to a charitable purpose.

“In other words, after the charity pays out the winners from charitable gaming, no more than 60% of that money can be spent on operational costs,” Voskuhl said. “All of the money that the charity has after paying these operational expenses must be spent in furtherance of its charitable purpose.”

In 2022, 61.24% of money raised from charitable gaming was available for charitable purposes, according to the 2022 Annual Report. 

The Department of Charitable Gaming functions on a self-supporting budget through fees on gaming. In 2022, the department budget was more than $4 million and supported 35 staff members. The fee is 0.628% of an organization’s gross receipts from charitable gaming. 

“We paid the gaming commission last quarter a little over $20,000 in gaming fees,” Mulrooney said. 

How else does Shirley’s Way raise funds for charity?

Aside from the electronic pull tab machines, Mulrooney and his staff have leaned into a raffle they call the Queen of Hearts. Players can purchase tickets for the raffle online or at Hideout Pizzaria where there is a live drawing every Monday at 8 p.m. The winner gets half the pot, with much of the remaining money going to families in need. Mulrooney said at one point the pot surpassed $800,000. 

“Right now, we’re giving away $30,000 to $40,000 a month because of charitable gaming,” Mulrooney said. “You can’t hold a bake sale and raise that kind of money.” 

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Kellye Duckworth, the director of operations at Shirley’s Way, said the online gaming formats such as raffles helped the nonprofit during the pandemic. 

“The way that charitable gaming was able to work around doing our online ticket sales, we would have shut down during COVID had we not had charitable gaming,” Duckworth said. 

Shirley’s Way also has a program called Shirley’s Little Angels which works to provide funding for children to participate in youth sports, fund school lunches, participate in camps, and more.  

“Last year, because of charitable gaming, we gave away about $18,000 to local kid’s programs,” Mulrooney said. “This year already, because of charitable gaming, we’ve given away about $30,000 for schools reading programs and kids with cancer that want to go to camp and stuff like that.” 

Contact reporter Olivia Evans at [email protected] or on Twitter at @oliviamevans_