Sometimes things can be too cheap. Or, just because
something is donated, doesn’t mean that it is a bargain.

A local church was holding their fundraiser at a beautiful banquet room and I was asked to both bring in several pieces of my silent auction items as well as a few live auction pieces to add to the selection that they had secured for the evening.

Upon my arrival I was quite pleasantly surprised at the professional presentation of their pieces and commented to the committee immediately on what a great job they had done.

They told me that they had spent months putting all of this together, in fact, that they had spent a full week prior preparing each and every bountiful basket, wrapping each in cellophane and creating hand cut labels noting basket contents and donors for each.

They stored each basket in two separate garages and had to fill four volunteer vans full of baskets to the venue for the 7 hour setup the day before the fundraiser with 6 of their helpers doing all of the work.

It did look SPECTACULAR though!

Walking around that evening, I couldn’t help notice that some of the opening bids seemed rather low. I mean… 20” diameter wicker baskets filled 2 feet high starting at $20 or $30 in many cases.

When I asked about this, I was told… “Well, almost all of the items
in our silent auction were donated to us by local businesses or families”.

The first thought that raced to my mind was … “ALMOST all of the items”?!?!?!?! That means they actually spent money on some of the items in each basket!

Immediately I started doing a bit of math in my head, and it looked like this.

While donations seem to be great and really exciting for every golf outing coordinator, I guarantee that they don’t see the absolute reality as pointed out above.

The stark reality hitting home at the end of that night, when 7 of their 20 beautiful baskets went without a single bid! (That means, you can add 30% to the total cost in that image).

To say nothing of the fact that people simply do not, and clearly did not want to bid on a basket filled with a car wash gift certificate, bottle of Windex, Armor All, tire pressure gauge, an assortment of air fresheners and two rolls of paper towels. I know for a fact that the only items in that basket that were donated was the car wash gift card and the paper towels out of one of the wives’ kitchens.

This fact makes my image above even more frightening as the evening was a FUNDRAISER.

Sorry, getting back to my point…

I brought 7 silent auction pieces, 2 Masters Tickets and an autographed guitar for the Live Auction portion of the evening.

It took me 20 minutes to set up my items and they blended in perfectly with their room full of gorgeous baskets. Their cost and effort to have me there?…. ZERO.

At the end of the night, all 7 of my silent auction pieces sold as did my guitar & Masters Tickets. All had minimum bids of course and the church profited almost $3,900 on the items that I brought.

On the other hand….

Only 13 of their 20 baskets sold. Some even made pretty good money, but one of the husbands commented that they spent almost $700 on all of the “extras” to fill out the baskets to make them “look good”.

And I couldn’t help but wonder what they were going to do with all of those Allstate Insurance stadium seat cushions and Starbucks travel mugs that didn’t sell?

I guess they will pack them back in those volunteer vans and store them in one of their garages until next year….  Add that cost to my graphic above.

The moral of the story is quite simple…

KNOW YOUR COSTS!

Realize that things can indeed be too cheap.

Asking for donations and getting them is worthless unless you can monetize them. Don’t even get me started on hole-in-one insurance.

You are far better off actually buying a few great items and raffling them off than getting a room full of beer coozies and spending valuable volunteer hours trying to “put perfume on that pig”. There are more important things you can be doing for your cause.

Of course, you can just call SMT Golf Outing Services and use one of our Outing Packages and be done with it.

In the spirit of the Christmas season… our, 12 Days of Golf Outing Planning (backwards and without the Pear Tree thing)

 

On The First Day of Golf Outing Planning… Pick the date for your event. Keep in mind that Friday is the most popular day of the week. Monday’s are the norm for private clubs and weekends are expensive until the names of the months end in “ber”.  Pick a morning shotgun start to save yourself a nice bit of money at a nicer facility if you don’t mind a luncheon as opposed to a dinner after golf.

 

On The Second Day of Golf Outing Planning… Choose your golf course. Don’t go directly for the cheapest facility! You get what you pay for and people will pay for what they get! You cannot charge $195 to play a course that typically costs $18 to play. Make sure you know your costs for lunch, dinner and golf, as well as taxes and gratuities. You don’t want any surprises the day of your event.

 

On The Third Day of Golf Outing Planning… Get a committee to “commit”. That doesn’t mean all together in a room at 7:30 pm up against Survivor on CBS… I know it seems like this would have been earlier, but sometimes “too many cooks” as they say, boogers up the sauce. And besides, now you have two less meetings on date of the event and location to worry about getting everyone together.

 

On The Fourth Day of Golf Outing Planning… Have committee ALL focus on one single job! ASKING GOLFERS TO PLAY! Nothing else. No other topic. Period. Nobody gets out of this job. Everyone must go through their friends and family list, Christmas card list, Facebook list, co-workers, health club buddies, car pool club, church group etc, etc, etc and REQUEST 6 to 8 people to play in the golf outing. That’s it! Not “if “they want to play?… But “CAN” you play? And fully expect a “yes” answer. Each person asked has to fill their foursome of course, and before you know it…. Your field is full and all each of you did was ask 6 – 8 of your closest friends. Close the meeting. Simple as that.

 

On The Fifth Day of Golf Outing Planning… Everyone reports back with their 6-8 people they asked to play and gets their new assignments.  Drop the names and contact info of these people on the table (for dramatic effect ) if you like. This actually might be the very first face to face meeting you need. No sense wearing the group out. Some will drop out soon enough on their own anyway.

 

On The Sixth Day of Golf Outing Planning… Set up your online registration and start a Facebook page for the event. You will need the online registration website, including online payments quickly and each of you need to start pumping information about the golf event into that Facebook page immediately and often. Children, Grandchildren and neighbors need to be notified of its existence as well. SPREAD THE WORD and put the link to Facebook in your Online Registration page as well as into each of your email signatures for daily email. Then, use it! Post pictures, funny stories from events past, what this year’s event is promising and how it is shaping up… Unlike a corn field in Iowa, just because you build it, doesn’t mean they will come. And your clock is ticking.

 

On The Seventh Day of Golf Outing Planning… Choose the games that you will have for players on the course from SMT Golf Outings. The 7^th day is typically a day of rest, so, do this one with your feet up and the football game on. You will need this information for day #8 – When you have them, post them on your Facebook page both for the outing and your personal Facebook pages.

 

On The Eight Day of Golf Outing Planning… Set up your sponsorship packages based off your decisions yesterday. Forget what you have done in the past for a moment, because you now have fun and cool stuff to sell sponsorships for. The old Platinum Sponsors are harder to find than Bigfoot. Grab yourself some low hanging fruit and move on. Use the games you have chosen yesterday and ask sponsors how you can help them. Ask them what they need as opposed to telling them what you need and don’t allow any of your committee to swap donations for rounds of golf in your event. Especially hole in one insurance!!!!! If you barter everything out, you have not made any money and you still need to pay the golf course after the event is over. This awakening will be rude indeed.

 

On The Ninth Day of Golf Outing Planning… Break your committee up into securing sponsors/donors and send them on their way. Don’t forget to give them instructions both on what they are selling and moreover what you expect from them in the way of productivity. Don’t be afraid to hand out small tokens of appreciation for a job well done. A gift card from a local movie theater or restaurant goes a long way. NOTE: if your goal is to raise $25,000 in raffle and silent auction items, you must plan on having double that amount in prize value on hand. Raffles and Silent Auctions are for bargain hunters. Live auctions are for your true supporters!

 

On The Tenth Day of Golf Outing Planning… Call another meeting for everyone to get together. By now you will know who has been most successful in securing their golfers and you can squeeze the slackers in your group to step up. Get a progress report from each person on donations and sponsorship dollars so each can see and be motivated by each other’s successes and find support and suggestions if they are lagging. It is a true Dr. Phil moment right there in your own living room.

 

On The Eleventh Day of Golf Outing Planning… Make sure everyone is back on track. If a full field of players are somehow not secured, ask your committee to lather, rinse and repeat day #4 immediately. If that is not possible… Bring in new committee members or spouses of the ones you now have just for this task! Don’t be afraid to actually mail out old fashioned invitations to your event playing up your cause. You know, with postage stamps on them. It is classy to get an invite in the mail with a nice RSVP card. Thirdly, ask the golf course to send out an email blast for your event asking for players since their course will be closed that day, and the revenue helps them anyway. Most will do it, oddly, only if you ask.

 

On The Twelfth Day of Golf Outing Planning… Simply double check everything with your committee. Tee signs and the guy printing them, logos from donors, the golf course to make sure the food is right and to keep them updated on number of players ( not that they care, but they will appreciate the update ) Player arrival gifts ordered, crossing your fingers for great weather and you better go and find your own golf clubs.

 

Of course this is a general outline, meant a bit in jest, but it really isn’t much more difficult than this. Simply rely on those in the golf business to help you. The golf course you have chosen does this every single day. Let them do their job. SMT Golf Outing Services does this every day. All we really leave you with, from the 12 Days of Planning above is to secure golfers and sponsors and we have golf outing packages that brings you all of the games and prizes that you need…

Enjoy it. Its only golf, and really, the golf has nothing to do with your goal at all! This is simply a money raising event held outdoors at a golf course.

We are here to help.

Golf Outing Value… Who Are We To Decide?

Week after week in golf committee meetings all across the country the topic arises as to “what should we charge for this year’s event”?

Comments immediately come from around the table about the size of last year’s event, the fact that you are now having your outing on a Friday instead of a Monday, how the golf course is actually less expensive but the dinner is $3.00 per head more because Judy insisted on double baked potatoes instead of a tray of mashed like last year.

The old guy on the end of the table, that wasn’t at the last two meetings, but always has an opinion, is the first to bring the poor economy into the discussion, regardless of how the economy is actually doing and instantly everyone else leans back in their chairs and nods at the same time like a bunch of those bobble head dogs in the back window of some old guys car that just hit a pothole.

After the ten second awkward silence and the head nodding subsides, somehow a number is presented and amazingly it is the same as last year’s price, even though all of you realize that the double baked potatoes will make you lose $3.00 per player. This year you hope that the promise of “nicer potatoes” will somehow get you more players to make up for the shortfall. Clearly, “hope” is a golden ring that we all gladly reach for.

Everyone makes a note on their pad and feeling really good about accomplishing one thing at today’s meeting, even though they have agreed to lose money, they can move on to something more fun… player gifts. Or as “mashed potato Judy” likes to think of it…. SHOPPING.

She quickly starts…. “I was thinking tees, sunscreen, maybe a baseball cap with a logo on it…”

One can’t help notice that three of the people in the room must have hit that same pothole again as their heads are nodding as if they were puppets.

The Committee Chair pipes in that he has a guy that (because EVERYONE “knows a guy”) that can get them a deal on a nice shoe bag if they can find a sponsor.

The old guy on the end chimes in…. “We aren’t anywhere near talking about sponsors yet” as if the flow of the meeting was somehow slipping past his attention span.

And it goes on and on….

ALL of this could be easily avoided, you could make your event DIFFERENT, your players could CHOOSE THEIR OWN participation gift, and you actually MAKE MORE MONEY for your cause all at the same time. What a concept, huh? It is really far easier than filling gift bags. As you can either work with the golf shop staff or with us here at www.smtgolfoutings.com

Simply have several price levels to get into your golf outing.

Here is an example of the different levels for a recent event I put on:

Your $125 entry fee will get you a $10 golf shop gift card.

Your $200 entry fee will get you a Nike Golf Shirt.

Your $275 entry fee will get you a Ping Putter

Your $375 entry fee will get you a Callaway Stand Bag

Your $575 entry fee will get you a Taylor Made Driver

Your $1,200 entry fee will get you set of Taylor Made irons & foursome a Blackthorne

As a point of reference…. Buzz on this outing was tremendous. Play increased from 84 players to 108 from the previous year. The average green fee paid was $349. While nobody opted for the highest Green Fee offering, there were 33 players who were given their new Taylor Made driver at registration the day of the event.

 

Revenue for this event jumped from $27,500 to almost $63,000.

P.S. The committee didn’t have to buy any tees, goodie bags or transport any of these items as we had them delivered to the golf course for them, and their players got EXACTLY what they wanted as they did their own “shopping”.

P.P.S. Nobody cared about the double baked potatoes. That was $324 + tax & 18% gratuity down the toilet. I got the feeling that Judy will not be invited back.

Goody Bags – What is “good” about them?

It has been estimated that there are one million golf outings in this country per year. Well, in my best Forrest Gump voice… “I don’t know about that”.

But I do know that golf outing coordinators continually feel the need to price their outing low to attract golfers yet when it comes time to belly up to the registration table, there is ample, umm… “Opportunity to enrich your investment” shall we say. More on this in a moment.

This same committee, the ones who decided to price the outing low to attract the many are the same ones that decided to put together lovely little tokens of their appreciation for your appearance at today’s event.

There was a segment of, if not the entire committee, dedicated to what color the bags were going to be to hold these lovely gifts, who would pay for them, and what items would be donated to fit inside. As we know, more often than not, the items inside are not valuable and come with logos of local merchants as they were in-kind sponsors. Not really paying for the opportunity to have their stuff in these bags, but giving away stuff to save face and have their logo seen by the group.

Today there was a package of 5 tees on a little card from the local oil change place, a sampler of dental floss from Mackray Dental over on 4^th street, an elephant shaped fan with the local Republican Candidate’s name due to the upcoming election sticking out of the top. A tube of Chapstick, a small bottle of SPF whatever and more tees from Zazzo Nail Salon as they are concerned with your appearance and a sleeve of balls from Zielke Muffler and a faded blue cap, like the younger kids wear with Epstein’s Bail Bonds beautifully embroidered in gold right across the front, kinda’ stuffed in the top almost as an afterthought which rounds out your gift bag. You know it was an afterthought because the elephant shaped fan keeps falling out and the bag is torn a bit down the side from the bill of the cap that you will never wear for fear of ridicule due to the fact that you have never been arrested and in need of being bailed out.

It is a shame really, because the committee really did a nice job and picked a lovely powder blue foil bag when they could have just went plain paper.

Oddly the pride of the registration table for the committee is passing out these blue foil bags. They spent a lot of time filling them and standing them up so nicely… but they seemed to forget one thing.

They priced their golf outing wrong in the first place. They priced it too low and they are in desperate need of players being generous to buy into all the stuff they are selling as they stumble through the registration gauntlet of smiling volunteers.

But players have these damn blue foil bags with Republican party fans falling out due to Epstein’s Bail Bonds caps not fitting in there so well. Every player is holding these fancy bags with both hands so as not to dump the precious dental floss or incur any more tearing of their pretty blue bag!

They are struggling to get to their wallets to continue to spend the money that the committee was so desperately counting on. Some are frustrated. Some leave their bags on the nearest flat surface or chair, some simply comment that they “will wait to see what the rest of their group wants to do” and leave before buying anything. But they leave with their goody bag.

Here’s the deal…. Goody bags are fine. But you aren’t passing out gold bars in them. The registration table at any golf outing on the planet is there for one thing and for one thing only. SPENDING MORE MONEY.

Don’t do anything that will hinder your players from reaching their wallet in record time, be it in their back pocket or in their purse because you have loaded up their hands with stuff, be it in the form of a “Goody Bag” or even “important” information on your cause.

Everything has a place. Players will find that stuff. Lay it out nicely on each golf cart seat, heck, it will end up there anyway after registration. Put any rules for the day, information on your organization; drink tickets etc all right there as well. Set the pretty blue foil Goody Bag right on top of their stack so they only have to move it once before it splits open.

By the time they are ready to sit down, they have made it through your registration table, hands free of clutter, their wallets are lighter and you and your group are financially far better off.

Heck, maybe someone will even slip on that Epstein’s Bail Bonds cap before they head out.  Nah, what am I saying????