Hosting a Charity Golf Event

Charity golf tournaments are a terrific way to create community awareness and interest in your cause. Hosting your own golf tournament can also be a significant source of revenue for your organization, but require careful planning to ensure that they are not only fun, but also profitable fundraisers for your charity. The success of your charity golf event revolves around maximizing player turnout and increasing pledge sizes, minimizing overhead and obtaining sponsored prizes/services, and choosing the right tournament play format.

MARKETING & PUBLICITY

To maximize player turnout, you need to get major publicity for your event:

• Getting local media coverage from newspapers and television stations
• Placing ads in the sports section of the local paper
  
• Promote with posters at golf stores, offices, and other high-traffic, high-visibility locations
• Putting out multiple press releases through all the local media outlets and PR Web

A press release about your golf fundraiser should describe your most noteworthy news angle in the summary paragraph and then get into the who, what, when, where, why, and how aspects of your golf outing. Your first avenue of gaining publicity is to work with the press and local media–but not how you think. Don’t stop at just sending out the customary press release. Talk to local celebrities, popular newspaper columnists, news and sports anchors from the local news show, local politicians, corporate CEOs, athletic coaches and others who are likely to have a large local following. There is certainly a tremendous opportunity for raising big dollars here – and also an opportunity for tremendous publicity. A great advantage of hosting a golf tournament is the connections you make.

More Publicity Tips:

• Flyers: Hit local mailboxes and car windshields in shopping centers. Give fundraiser details in your flyer in a way that promotes sales and gives contact information. Incorporate a coupon or free gift offer into the flyer that will keep it from being thrown away. Your merchant base will help provide the offers because this is free advertising for them.

• Use Your Website
: If you don’t have one, get one. Use it to communicate your goals, thank your sponsors, highlight periodic offerings, recognize successes, honor individual contributors, give event updates, etc. Don’t forget to promote your web site on all your materials.

• Build and Use an E-mail List
: Ask for an e-mail address for future newsletter distribution when you’re fundraising. Have opt-in links on your web site. Easily stay in touch with a monthly email update. You can build an online community of supporters even faster by offering them extras available only at your site. Offer community forums to post information or read the latest news. Put your fundraising publicity plan in place today. You’ll reap the benefits in continued growth and additional fundraising success for years to come.


• Actively Seek More Publicity
: Get the word out about your fundraiser in as many ways as possible. Get into as many neighborhood newsletters, community forums, talk shows and other public forms of communication as you can.

• Goal Awareness:
 Heavily promote the goal of your fundraiser in all communications, particularly with potential attendees, auction bidders, and sponsors. A good cause gets the checkbooks out! Make sure that all participants know the specific reason why the money is being raised and specifically how it will be used.

SALES & REVENUE GENERATION

There are several different places you can raise money for a golf tournament. First of all, when you host the tournament, each player will pay a fee to participate. Then, you can also print a sponsored tournament booklet or guide, which you can sell for a couple dollars each. You can sell advertising space in this guide to local businesses as well.

Additional ideas may include soliciting local businesses to be the tournament “sponsor.” The organization would be rewarded for their donation and sponsorship by having the tournament named after their company.

In addition to the primary sponsor or sponsors of the event, additional sponsors may donate lesser amounts to sponsor individual golf holes. Each of the 18 holes could be sponsored by a different local business, who would have an opportunity both to be listed in the program guide, and to have their company name shown near that hole. Still other local companies can be solicited to donate prizes for the winners.

Just like individuals get sponsors for Relay For Life walks, Multiple Sclerosis bike rides, and other types of event fundraisers, so should your players. The key is getting each player to collect a certain amount of pledges. Some groups offer incentives for the top pledge getters. Others seek corporate sponsorships for that firm’s players. Put together a sponsorship form and ask each player to raise at least $100 in pledges along with their greens fees.

More Fundraising Tips:

• Silent Auction
: Solicit items from local businesses and even offer to pay for some popular items that will attract serious bidding such as golf lessons from the club pro or a set of new irons. The day of your golf fundraiser, setup a couple of tables full of donated goods and services. Tape bidding sheets and descriptions of each item to the tables so that golfers can place bids one-handed. Make sure to get the bidding started on each item and encourage everyone to bid. Do a last call for bids as everyone is gathering for the awards ceremony that wraps up your tournament, then announce the winners, collect the funds, and disperse the merchandise.

• Hold a Raffle
: You can sell raffle tickets for quality prizes in conjunction with your event. They don’t even have to be golf related, but it does help to have at least some prizes such as a new golf bag, free round, season pass to top course, etc. Price your tickets so that you raise at least twice as much as your prizes cost. If your prize costs total $5,000, then sell 1,000 tickets for $10 each. You can make even more if you get prizes donated. To increase sales, sell tickets to the general public and not just to your group of supporters. You can even set up a sales table at high-traffic locations like shopping centers. 

• Golf Tournament Dinner or Banquet: For people not interested in the game of golf itself, the banquet provides another opportunity to raise additional dollars by selling separate tickets for this event. Including entertainment, excellent food, a silent auction, and an awards ceremony could attract people to the banquet itself. For the golfers, a banquet is a perfect time to wind down from the long day of playing golf. People are hungry, thirsty and happy. They will actually enjoy the time to decompress and share the experiences of the day with friends and other co-workers. And, all are likely anticipating the results of the on-course contests, and the prizes distributed through the fundraising raffle or auctions. This is also a great time to make any announcements about what your organization is trying to accomplish helping you spread awareness for your cause. If you have a general idea about how much money has been raised at the event, make sure to inform attendees and thank everyone who has contributed to your success. Be sure to also thank any sponsors and highlight specific contributions they’ve made at this time.

• Cash Bar Cart
: Load up the back of a golf cart with ice and cold drinks, then drive the course and sell your golfers what they want. Cold beer and sodas are the best sellers, but don’t forget to include snack foods like pretzels and chips.

• Sell Merchandise: If your organization created apparel for the tournament with collared golf shirts, hats, visors, golf balls, etc. (with sponsor logos), this is a great time to sell them! If you don’t have your own items to sell, see if the course gift shop can set up special pricing for tournament attendees and give a percentage of sales back to your cause. If you are sending customers into their gift shop and encouraging sales, they will likely be interested in giving you a kickback.

TOURNAMENT PLAY FORMATS

For those who are participating in your charity golf and fund-raising tournament, it helps to pick a format they are familiar with. The three most common formats are scramble, best ball, and alternate shot.

• Scramble: This format usually is played with groups of four, but can be played with more than four or as few as two players. In a scramble, each player tees off on each hole. The best of the tee shots then is selected, and all players play their second shot from that spot. The process is repeated until the ball is holed. Keep in mind that when playing a scramble, you can drop your ball within one club length from where the chosen ball lies, but no closer to the hole.

• Best Ball: This format usually is for four-person teams. Each player on the team plays his or her own ball throughout the hole and the round. On each hole, the lowest score among the four players counts as the team score. There can be two best ball formats, where you must count two balls on each hole; the more balls that count helps keep all of the players involved in the fate of the team.

• Alternate Shot
: This format usually involves two-person teams and is a competition where the team alternates who hits each shot. The first player hits the drive, the second player hits the second shot, the first player hits the third shot, and so on until the ball is holed. The team also alternates who hits the drive on each hole, so the same player doesn’t hit every drive.

CONTESTS

Another way to raise more money on the course is through hosting contests at different holes on the course. Here are some examples:

• Beat the Pro: For this contest, a golf professional is stationed at a par 3 hole. The golf pro will tee off first and then individual players can wager an amount that they can hit closer to the pin than the pro. When implementing this type of contest, be sure to have a volunteer with a measuring device to ensure accuracy. You’ll want to make sure you have a good “pro” working for you in order to make money from this contest.

• Pro-for-Hire: In this contest, instead of competing against the golf pro, individual players or teams can choose to “hire” the pro to hit their drive on a very difficult hole, which could end up saving them a couple strokes, and could be important in a heated competition. Of course, the pro should have a skill for hitting long drives, and therefore charging a fee for the service makes sense.

• Closest to the Pin: This contest typically takes place on a par-3 hole and the drive(s) that lands closest to the pin wins! A volunteer will inform players that if they’d like to participate, there will be an entry fee of $5-$20, and they will be eligible to win a variety of great prizes such as free golf balls, rounds of golf, gift certificates, golf shirts, etc. These prizes are typically donated by sponsors and the hosting course. A second volunteer will be stationed on the green near the hole to measure and keep record of distances. The winners will be announced at the end of the tournament.

EXPENSES

Greens Fees: Hosting a golf tournament is a big project, and there are expenses involved. First, you will have to arrange with a local golf course willing to host the tournament, and it is very likely that you will have to pay a fee to rent the course for the day. Of course, it doesn’t hurt to ask the golf course if they would be willing to offer you a reduced fee, or even allow you to use it for free, as a way of supporting your cause. The course rental fee will be by far the largest expense. Most golf courses will give you a substantial discount for a large group, particularly if you’re scheduled for a weekday when traffic is low. You can charge the regular price and do quite well. Or, you can pocket the discount, markup the regular greens fee by $10, and do even better.

Food & Beverage: Work with the club to offer a catered lunch to all your golfers or at least a boxed lunch of sandwich, chips, and a cookie. Depending on what you’re offering, markup your costs by $2 to $4 per person and you’ll do well. Overcharging will actually cut into your total profits.

Contest Prizes: Generally speaking, you’ll draw more golfers if you have great prizes for longest drive, closest to the hole, hole in one, lowest team score, lowest actual score, and best adjusted score (handicap). 

You solicit local merchants to sponsor those prizes. Work with an insurance-related prize company for things like the hole-in-one contest. That way you can offer a bigger prize for a much lower outlay. 

Aim to get 100 golfers (25 foursomes) and your small group could easily raise $10,000 or more. Larger turnouts will net even more with some charity golf tournaments drawing 500 golfers competing for big prizes.

Gift Bags & Other Prizes: In addition to the traditional winners, award a variety of fun prizes (“Best Dressed Award,” “Oldest Set Of Clubs Award”). Also provide gifts for all participants, regardless of standings and consider gift certificates that can be redeemed at your silent auction for sports memorabilia – a lasting and meaningful award for your players.

Cost Saving Tips:

• Plan Ahead
: Contact local courses for group rates. Be sure to mention that you are planning a charity event and ask for discounts on cart and greens fees. Once you decide on your preferred location, reserve the date and tee times well in advance.
  
  
• Prepare Timelines: Map out a schedule for all preparations with dates and responsibilities, and create a schedule for the events on the day of your charity golf tournament.
  
  
• Free Catering: It is a nice touch to provide food and beverages at a golf tournament, but this too can be done with very little or no expense. You will be able to find local restaurants or caterers to work with you. Allow them to set up a concession to sell food and drinks, and in exchange they will pay your organization a fee or a commission off of the sales. In this way, you can avoid the expense of providing refreshments entirely, and instead turn it into a profit center.
  
  
• Get Volunteers to Help: Recruit interested volunteers from your charity’s members, community and support base and use them whenever possible to help out instead of paying for services.

June 20, 2011 | Categories: 2011 Charity Golf, Golf Charities, Golf Charity Events, Golf Charity Sponsors, Golf Events, Golf Fundraiser Prizes, Golf Fundraisers, Golf Fundraising Sponsors, Golf Fundraising Tips, GolfCharityBlog | Tags: 2011 Charity Golf, Charity Golf Events, Create a Golf Fundraiser, Golf, Golf Charities, Golf Charity Sponsors, Golf Events, Golf Fundraising Sponsors, GolfCharityBlog | Leave a comment