Psst: Running a small nonprofit arts organization? Starved for funding? Looking for eight or ten grand to balance the budget or get that next project off the ground? Ken Kaulen, 26, has a sweet deal for you: easy money and fast, barely any effort, and you won’t have to take your clothes off or deliver any mysterious packages. Kaulen, aka ChicagoKenny, owns a new company called Chicago Poker Live. He wants to help you throw a series of four casino events–mostly poker parties, with maybe a blackjack table or two. And if you don’t know hold ’em from stud or a flop from a blind, no problem. All you have to do is get a charitable gaming license from the state–which costs $200. He’ll help you with the paperwork and hook you up with everything else, including the venue, equipment, trained dealers, and the players. And here’s the part charities really like, Kaulen says: you’re in on the action risk free. If your event loses money, he covers all the expenses. His first arts-group client is Chemically Imbalanced Comedy, which will be trekking from its north-side storefront out to Woodridge tomorrow (April 14) for the last of the four events its license allows this year.
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Chemically Imbalanced founder Angie McMahon says she was “trying to think outside the box” about fund-raising when she heard about Chicago Poker Live (also known as Chicago Charitable Games) from her sister, a member of a Northern Illinois University business fraternity that had just worked with them. As her sister explained it, McMahon says, “it’s illegal to gamble in Illinois unless you’re a charity, but you hire this company as a consultant and they provide your volunteer dealers, they get the chips, they get the poker tables, they find a venue, they help you with your tax forms, they publicize it, and they get you your poker players. After you pay the taxes and room and equipment rent, you split the rest with them.” McMahon says she checked it out, found that this is indeed the way it works, and signed her group up.
“There are so many people who don’t understand this whole new poker boom that’s happening,” Kaulen says. “That’s where I come in.” He and his brother started their business in January, he says, and have an e-mail list of 10,000 players who’ve opted in at their Web site (chicagopokerlive.com). “The charity doesn’t have to solicit their friends and family to show up–I bring a whole other group of people,” he says. “All the charity has to do is work the event the day of and [do] some paperwork before and after.” In addition, he says, “I have a whole network of volunteers that’ll help deal”–usually poker players themselves who are “either looking to get better at the game or looking to play” but are temporarily out of funds. Kaulen says he “kinda” does the “legwork” for the charities but claims not to manage the actual events: people from the sponsoring nonprofit run the bank. “I train them, walk them through everything. [Then] I’m just there, and if they need questions answered, they ask me.”
