Are you in the process of planning a charity golf event? Golf tournaments are popular fundraisers because they provide an excellent way to raise money while also cultivating relationships with current and future donors and generating positive publicity in the community. Planning and holding a successful golf tournament fundraiser requires a great deal of work, but the results can certainly be worth the effort!
Raising Money with a Golf Tournament
If you are responsible for planning a fundraising golf tournament, it's important to approach your duties in a systematic manner. Because there are so many different elements associated with holding a successful golf tournament, proper planning throughout the process is essential.
Charity Golf Event Planning Checklists
Creating and using checklists for event organization, promotion, and implementation tasks can be very helpful when you are planning a charity golf event. While the items that need to be accomplished will not be the same for every tournament, there are many similarities among these types of events.
Use the sample checklists below as a starting point for creating documentation that can help you keep up with all of the things that you need to take care of to hold a successful golf tournament event of your own.
Event Organization Tasks
- Create a checklist and timeline
- Recruit committee members
- Select chairperson
- Establish a fundraising goal
- Schedule general committee meetings
- Reserve a location for committee meetings
- Send schedule to committee members
- Make committee assignments
- Set up a Google Docs spreadsheet to facilitate committee communication
- Choose a date
- Book a location
- Additional duties specific to your event
Event Promotion Tasks
- Create a marketing and public relations plan
- Create a tournament website (or page on the organization's website)
- Create sponsorship packages
- Solicit sponsors
- Write and submit event promotion news releases
- Seek media promotion opportunities
- Recruit participants
- Additional promotional activities
Implementation Tasks
- Brainstorm a to-do list with the committee
- Assign responsibilities
- Create a budget
- Establish a reporting structure
- Develop a participant registration system
- Make catering and refreshment arrangements
- Purchase prizes or solicit donations
- Create prize categories
- Select and participant t-shirts or other items with sponsor logos
- Order event signage
- Follow up on task assignments
- Make participant team assignments
- Facility setup
- Additional tasks relevant to your event
Post Event Follow Up
Seek Committee Feedback
Once the golf tournament is over, it's time to evaluate the success of your efforts and begin getting a head start on next year's event. Step back and look at what worked well, and what you'd like to change in the future. Hold a debriefing meeting with the members of the committee to get feedback from everyone involved. This is a great way to express appreciation to your volunteers for a job well done as well as an opportunity to learn from people who handled various tasks associated with the event.
Seek Participant and Sponsor Feedback
In addition to getting thoughts from the people who planned and pulled off the event, it's also a good idea to seek feedback from the sponsors and participants. Consider creating a sponsor survey and a participant survey as a way of obtaining this type of feedback. You can use a free tool like Survey Monkey to create a free online survey that can be sent via email. For the sake of donor relations, you may also want to place a personal telephone call to your major sponsors to thank them for their support and to ask for suggestions for future events.
