The National Council on Problem Gambling has lost its executive director, its director of programs and four state members while keeping a $2m partnership with Kalshi. NCPG has not said why executive director Heather Maurer resigned, and the timing alone does not establish that the Kalshi agreement caused her departure. But the accumulating exits show what the agreement is costing the national harm-prevention body institutionally.
Maurer left after less than a year in the job. NCPG board president Derek Longmeier said its programs and services would continue during the search for a replacement, but offered no reason for the resignation. Days earlier, programs director Jaime Costello announced her own departure, writing that the environment had shifted “in ways I could no longer reconcile with how I believe this work should be done.” She did not name Kalshi in that statement and said her final day came earlier than she had proposed, “not by my choice.”
The conflict is now structural
In May, Kalshi committed $2m over multiple years to NCPG and became the first member of a new “Financial Services & Trading” category as well as a member of its Leadership Circle. The arrangement put a prediction-market operator inside the country’s principal problem-gambling nonprofit while state regulators and affiliates were arguing that the same company’s sports event contracts amount to unlicensed gambling.
Michigan, Nevada, Ohio and Washington member organizations have since left NCPG over the Kalshi relationship, according to SBC Americas. Their practical objection is not semantic. Kalshi permits customers as young as 18 nationwide, while most state-regulated sportsbooks set the minimum age at 21; states also contend it offers the equivalent of sports betting without their licences, taxes or consumer-protection rules.
NCPG tried last week to separate those questions. It said event contracts are “functionally gambling” and carry real potential for harm, while maintaining neutrality on whether prediction markets are legally gambling. It also said donations and membership do not amount to endorsement. That position preserves the council’s traditional neutrality on legalization, but it cannot neutralize the conflict over funding: the organization is accepting money from an operator that several of its own members are trying to stop.
Capacity is leaving with credibility
The dispute arrives when national treatment infrastructure is already fragmented. NCPG lost the right to use 1-800-GAMBLER in 2025 after failing to reach a new licensing agreement with the Council on Compulsive Gambling of New Jersey. It now promotes 1-800-MY-RESET as the national helpline, while the New Jersey council continues to operate the better-known number.
A national council is useful because it can connect state regulators, treatment providers, affiliates and operators. The Kalshi money may fund research and safeguards, but money is not the only resource the arrangement consumes. Four state members have taken their enforcement experience and local relationships out of the room; two senior staff members have now left as well. NCPG can remain formally neutral about Kalshi’s legal status. It cannot treat those losses as neutral to its ability to coordinate a public-health response.