Charity Golf Tournament Fundraising: 5 Ways to Raise More

Why Golf Tournaments Are Everywhere Right Now

If your nonprofit already hosts a gala, there's a good chance someone has asked, "Should we do a golf outing too?" On a recent Hey Nonprofits! podcast, host Trevor Nelson talked with Blake Weaver, a member of the HGA Fundraising team and former golf professional, about what makes charity golf tournaments work. Blake is also the person behind HGA Golf Prizes, a hole-in-one product, which we'll get to.

Blake sees the popularity as the result of a perfect storm. Golf had a surge in participation over the last five or six years, and he credits Tiger Woods' 2019 Masters win and the pandemic with pushing it forward. People wanted to be outside and around other people. A golf event is a way to gather your community in a light-hearted setting. Gala season isn't the competition, Blake said, "it's just a way to get everybody out."

Keep Golfers Around Long Enough to Hear Your Mission

Trevor asked a question that nonprofits often ask: when everyone is focused on the round, how do you keep the mission in front of them? Blake said the most successful approach he's seen is a banquet after play, with awards for participants. People are already eating lunch, and it's the one moment when everybody is in the same room.

The harder part is getting golfers to stay for it. After a long, hot day, many just want to turn in their scorecard and leave. Blake shared two tricks he has seen work. The first is to hold the second half of the goody bags, the koozies and donated gifts, until teams return their scorecards in the banquet room. The whole team comes back in to pick them up. The second is to pay out last place. Blake described the message: even if you don't think you played well, stick around, because there will be a great prize for last place. That reaches the teams that would otherwise write off the afternoon.

Mini takeaway: Plan a reason for people to stay for the program, and give the last-place team a prize too.

Pitch Sponsors on Networking, Not Just Logos

Trevor said sponsors are one of the biggest opportunities in golf fundraising, and one of the most overlooked benefits is networking. Blake explained why golf is such a good setting for it. At a gala, guests mostly stay at their tables once the program begins. At a golf event, people are on the range for an hour, wandering for a water, in a relaxed mood, and sharing a common topic, which is why they support your organization. Most of your supporters have careers and businesses, and some may never have met at a gala.

That makes sponsorship a two-way benefit. Sponsors get to advertise to the other players, whether through a tee sign or the beer cart, while supporting a cause. "Ultimately, that's how everyone would want to advertise if they could," Blake said. Make sure your sponsors know that, and tell them who's likely to be in their group.

Blake also offered a timing rule. Many sponsors come back every year, so the easiest outreach is to those who've already said yes. And he'd start the conversation early: for an organization whose gala comes first, the day after the gala. "Almost all of the money is made on a golf event on the front end," he said, whether through sponsorships or what Jason, HGA's CEO, likes to call underwriting. For more on this, see Underwriting Opportunities for Your Fundraising Event.

Cross-Promote Your Gala and Your Golf Event

Gala and golf events usually sit months apart, which is a missed chance. Blake's advice is to promote each at the other. His Walmart analogy: look at the bottom of your receipt, where they say they hope to see you again. People on the golf course bring friends and colleagues who may never have heard of your gala, and Blake described how a conversation on the course can bring that guest to the gala. The reverse works too. A guest at a gala table may hear about the golf tournament and say they'd love to play, and suddenly a team is formed.

Trevor added a data point he'd heard from Nathan Chappelle, the author and data scientist, on a previous episode. As Trevor relayed it, an analysis of thousands of events found that getting someone to attend three events made them more likely to give a major gift than any other path. We haven't verified that figure ourselves, but the logic is hard to argue with: every event someone attends is another chance to see what you do. A golf outing gets people to that number faster.

Mini takeaway: Put the date and venue of your next event in front of everyone at this one, and do the same in reverse.

Five Ways to Raise Money at a Golf Tournament

Trevor asked Blake for five ways to raise money at a golf outing. Here's his list, with his examples.

1. Team registrations. This is your baseline. If you sell out your teams, you know what you've made before anything else happens.

2. Sponsorships and underwriting. As Blake put it, anything you can put a logo on is worth considering: the range, the beer cart, or anything else a logo can go on.

3. Games. Mulligans are the simplest. Blake has also seen teams buy a foot of string and a pair of scissors, and a ball that lands within that measured distance of the hole counts as a made putt. He's seen golfers pay to move from the back tees to the front, and an event that put a long-drive competitor on a par five so players could pay to hit a tee shot from there. Most are easy to set up and cost little.

4. A silent auction tied to your gala. Blake described one tournament he knows of that registers every golfer for an email list, and opens an online silent auction connected to its gala. It starts about three months before the golf event and four months before the gala, with new items added every couple of weeks. The organization's contact told him the auction brought in about $150,000 that year. Blake bought an item himself, though he never planned to attend the gala. It was the third email that got him. Note that this is the gala's silent auction, run on the golf event's timeline.

5. A raffle that ties to your identity. Blake wasn't sure of his fifth, but he suggested something that ties to your mission, and mentioned raffles. He described a nonprofit that sold two golden tickets for tee times, one at 8 a.m. and one at 1 p.m. The first sold 30 minutes before the morning tee time, and then they sold the second. We have a full guide to this approach in The Golden Ticket Raffle.

A Hole-in-One Prize Without the Hassle

Blake's own project is HGA Golf Prizes. He said he built it after hearing from a nonprofit whose hole-in-one winner ran into rules the company hadn't disclosed in advance, and after seeing how much hassle comes with giving away a car or cash. HGA already had vacation packages, so he proposed a hole-in-one prize of a vacation, possibly more affordable than the alternatives and set up through a short online form that takes three or four minutes.

The prize works well as a sponsorship opportunity because it's on a tee box that every golfer sees, and every golfer has a reason to care. A sponsor's name goes with it, and the organization earns sponsorship money while players see the sponsor. Blake said anyone planning a golf event is welcome to email him, even if they're not using HGA for anything. He'll walk them through it.

Your Next Step

Pick one idea from the five and put a date on it. If your gala is coming up, put the golf tournament in the program and a flyer at the check-in table. If your golf event is first, build a sponsor list from last year's group and call them the day after your event. And decide what will keep golfers in the room after the round.

Insights in this article are drawn from the Hey Nonprofits! podcast episode “The Anatomy of a 6-Figure Charity Golf Tournament”, featuring Blake Weaver, a member of the HGA Fundraising team.