The costs of making potential recipients or participants aware of a lawful purpose activity generally qualify as a lawful purpose expenditure under the activity's applicable code. In other words, For example, the cost an advertisement in the local newspaper announcing that youth basketball registration and tryouts will be on October 29 would be a lawful purpose expenditure. It would be reported on the LG100C as a lawful purpose under code 7, which is the code for youth activities.
However, advertising an event for the purpose of attracting spectators is not a lawful purpose. For example, let's say that a local youth baseball team was playing for the conference championship. To get more people to attend the game, the VFW sponsors a radio advertisement asking the community to come out and show their support. This would not qualify as a lawful purpose because watching the game isn't a youth activity.
Another type of advertisement that sometimes causes confusion is the costs of promoting a fundraising event. in this case let's say that the youth baseball association was having players sell pizzas to raise money for a spring break tournament in Florida. To support this effort, the Elks Lodge put an ad in the paper encouraging ing people to buy a pizza if a baseball player should knock on their door. The cost of this advertisement is not a lawful purpose because it's advertising the fundraiser.
Only the portion of an ad that qualifies as a lawful purpose may be paid from the gambling account. For example, if the ad announced that there was a free youth basketball clinic that kids could attend and also announced that the organization's weekly fish fry would begin the next Friday, only the portion of the cost for youth basketball would be allowed.
In all cases, the organization is responsible for obtaining and maintaining documentation that the expenditure was indeed a lawful purpose. For example, the organization should keep a copy of the newspaper ad or get a copy of the text of a radio ad. Without sufficient documentation, the expenditure will not be permitted as a lawful purpose.