Often Golf Tournaments end up being a long and expensive day.

We have the perfect solution:

• Our Executive length course provides a fun and affordable venue for your special day.

• Enjoy a relaxing meal and drinks at our new outdoor Tiki-bar, before or after your tournament.

• Our tournament coordinator will take the stress out of your day by tending to the details.

• We welcome tournaments of all sizes, from 10 to 200+ golfers.

• To book your day call us at 905-641-8088

Fund Raiser Golf Tournaments

A great warm-weather fundraising event is a golf fundraiser. Hosting your own golf tournament is actually fairly easy and if done right, you can raise a significant amount of money. Here are some tips for maximizing your results.

Big turnout
Obviously, the bigger the crowd, the better you'll do with your tournament. Promote with quality posters at golf stores, your own offices, and other high-traffic, high-visibility locations. Use your newsletter and email lists as additional ways to get the word out.

Distribute a press release about your golf fundraiser to all your local media outlets. 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.

Brock Gives Back
Ask for details

Hole sponsors
Contact local businesses and ask them to sponsor a hole. To attract eighteen sponsors, make it affordable, say $100 or so. Show them a mockup of the signs that will be placed for each sponsor and your event program where you'll list all your sponsors.

Corporate sponsors
For the biggest financial impact, approach large corporations and ask them to sponsor your event. Companies with headquarters or substantial operations in your area are your best bets. Price your corporate sponsorships at a reasonable level, say $1,000 for a smaller golf tournament, and you'll get a good response.

Put together a sponsorship request on your letterhead and be specific as to what's in it for the corporation, i.e. prominent signage at the event, corporate logo golf balls for all golfers, newspaper coverage, golfing slots for top executives, etc.

Ask around within your group to see if anyone has personal contacts at the management level. Managers often have discretionary funds available for reasonable promotional expenditures.

Player sponsors
Just like individuals get sponsors for Relay For Life walks, Multiple Sclerosis bike rides, and other types of event fundraisers, so should your players. Put together a sponsorship form and ask each player to raise at least $100 in pledges along with their greens fees.

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.

On 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. obviously, follow all local regulations concerning raffle ticket sales.

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.

Catered lunch
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.

Summary
If done correctly, a golf tournament can raise a substantial amount of money. Leverage all these fundraising tips and you'll have a record-breaking golf fundraiser!

Arranging a Golf Tournament Fundraiser

Hosting a golf tournament is a high-profile, and often very lucrative fundraising concept. Golf has a reputation for being the game of people with lots of money and leisure time. And while it has gained in popularity, and is by no means only a "rich man's game", 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. It's not unusual to find local celebrities, businesspersons and politicians on the golf course, and these are people that you definitely want to be aware of your organization's overall mission and needs.

Where the Money Comes From

There are actually several different places you can raise money with 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, so instead of, for example, just having a "Save the Seals Golf Tournament," you would call it the "First Bank Save the Seals Golf Tournament." That's great publicity that's worth a lot to a local business.

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

Your Expenses

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. Virtually all of the work can be done with volunteer staff.

 It is also 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.

Publicity

Golf tournaments are natural publicity magnets. 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, and news and sports anchors from the local news show, and you'll find that many of them are players. These will be the first people you invite to play. Naturally, if the local sports reporter is going to play in the tournament, they will do a little self-promotion on their own, and do a lot of your publicity work for you. You can also use the fact that they are playing in your own advertisements and promotions, and local fans will show up just to see their favorite local celebs play. Don't forget to invite local politicians, corporate CEOs, athletic coaches and others who are likely to have a large local following.

At the end of the day, a single-day fundraising event can yield a much greater profit than another fundraiser that runs for weeks. And besides the revenue, the golf tournament will also serve the dual purpose of doing a great job in publicizing the work your organization does.