Member Story: How HB 141 will help Special Olympics Montana

As part of our effort to document the impacts of Montana’s 2025 Legislative Session on nonprofits, MNA sat down with members to talk about three key bills. The following is a conversation with Wendy Rispens, Vice President of Development for Special Olympics Montana, about House Bill 141, aka the Raffle Bill.

HB 141 was a key priority of MNA and our partners this session. The bill updates a section of Montana gambling law to allow Montana nonprofits, colleges, universities, and school districts to accept credit cards for the sale of raffle tickets. While we recognized that banning credit card gambling was an important protection in the case of most games of chance, the rule was making it prohibitively difficult for Montana nonprofits to conduct common fundraisers.

Together with a coalition of partners, and thanks to bill sponsor Rep. Ed Buttrey, we were able to make an exception for nonprofit raffles, improving the fundraising potential for local nonprofits, while keeping gambling protections in place.

Special Olympics Montana (SOMT) supports children and adults with intellectual disabilities, providing year-round sports and athletic competition. With sports as our platform, SOMT provides opportunities for athletes to demonstrate courage, experience joy, and share skills and friendship with their families and the community. SOMT also provides health education and screening, offers leadership opportunities for athletes to shape the programming offered, invites schools to become more inclusive and partner with our athletes in competition, and much more.  

This will be the 32nd year of our raffle, our single largest fundraiser. We sell $5 raffle tickets across the state of Montana, raising approximately $700,000 last year. In a state such as Montana, where we only have a million people, this raffle has a pretty wide reach. We have athletes who sell tickets door-to-door and at store-front locations, and they will continue to do so by accepting cash and checks. We also have sponsors who sell tickets for the raffle. Most notably is Town Pump, which sells tickets in all of their locations. In the past, our commercial sponsors had to only accept cash or check so their sales were limited. There’s a lot of people who don’t carry cash or check any longer. 

Now that House Bill 141 passed to allow credit cards for nonprofit raffles, I think our sponsors will be able to significantly increase their raffle sales. We will likely be able to find additional raffle sponsors who will sell tickets in their location because they’re not going to be hampered by that cash limitation. Increased revenue will definitely help fund our work and our mission. Also, a more successful raffle will increase awareness for the mission itself. People will have more encounters with our athletes and our partners, and will learn more about the Special Olympics in Montana. Most people may have heard about Special Olympics, but they may not understand all the facets of life that we support for individuals with intellectual disabilities. The impacts of this policy change will not only be financial support, but a huge increase in awareness as well. It is wonderful to make this change.