Golf Tournaments Drive Fund Race

On average, a charitable golf tournament is held every other day in Northwest Arkansas. There are about 170 tourneys per year to benefit a variety of charities.

Stonebridge Meadows golf course in Fayetteville has about 35 tournaments annually. The eight courses in Bella Vista combined account for another 35.

With so many tourneys, the competition is stiff for golfers willing to donate money to play.

“The average golfer probably only plays in at best three to four golf tournaments per year,” said Missy Shanklin, executive director of Pagnozzi Charities. “If you are going to do a golf tournament, you can’t just get a group of 10 guys together and call it a golf tournament.”

But these tournaments don’t make much money on golf. The donations come primarily from events surrounding the sport.

“On the golf end, you hope to break even,” Shanklin said. “I know a lot of smaller organizations that try so hard to raise money with a golf tournament because they’ve been told that’s where the money is, but it is not. Unless you have a full deck of golf play, and an event to go with it that helps carry the golf tournament, they really don’t make as much money as you think.”

The 2004 Pagnozzi tournament brought in about $70,000, but the silent and live auctions accounted for $50,000 of that total, Shanklin said. About 80 percent of the auction items were sports memorabilia, which is a draw in itself, she said.

Last year’s two-day event attracted 288 players. For $700, a four-person team could play and eat for two days, in addition to attending the banquet in the evening of the last day.

Shanklin said since the Pagnozzi tournament is in its 14th year, about 70 percent of its golfers are repeat business.

Will Golf 4 Kids

Perhaps the behemoth of all golf tournaments in the area is the Children’s Miracle Network’s Will Golf 4 Kids Tournament, a two-day event held at the Berksdale and Kingswood courses in Bella Vista that benefits Arkansas Children’s Hospital. The 2005 event, which had 203 sponsors, netted more than $575,000. A total of 256 teams — 1,024 players —descended on the two 18-hole courses.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is the main sponsor at $25,000 annually. Wal-Mart also donates a facility to store supplies for the event. Wal-Mart actually started the tournament 12 years ago and handed the reins over to suppliers about six years ago, said Mike White, chairman of the event. White, who has been involved with Will Golf 4 Kids since its inception, is also vice president of business development for Paper Partners Inc. in Lowell.

“If we didn’t have the supplier base that we have here, it would be hard to populate the tournament,” White said.

He said about 98 percent of the players are probably suppliers to Wal-Mart.

White thinks players decide to participate based on cause.

“I think it certainly is dependent on the cause, and I think people know [Arkansas Children’s Hospital] is a good cause.” White said the fact that Children’s Miracle Network is one of Wal-Mart’s top charitable causes probably also motivates people, in addition to the tournament benefiting the only pediatric hospital in the state.

“You start planning the next year the week after the tournament is over,” White said. “It’s a year-round effort to continue growing current sponsorship.”

White said the ultimate goal is to sell out all 288 teams, which can cost anywhere from $2,000 for a bronze team to $6,000 for a platinum team. The price pays for one day of golf for a team of four, plus meals and access to the evening auction event. The different levels give sponsors different signage recognition.

In addition, teams can pay $80 for mulligan rights per player, which is a second shot permitted from the tee without penalty while playing on each of the nine holes.

Golf Tourney Realities

Mike Shea, director of golf for the Bella Vista Property Owners Association, said the number of golf tournaments on Bella Vista’s eight courses has stabilized during the past seven years.

“We always have two or three new ones, but we always have two or three that drop out or change courses,” Shea said.

The overhead for a golf tournament is fairly inexpensive.

Shea said the POA offers charities a rate of $18 for 18 holes of golf, plus $11 for a cart fee. The regular rate is $32, plus cart.

Shea said Bella Vista offers larger charity events the chance to play a substantial number of players in a short period of time in a limited geographic area.

For example, Berksdale and Kingswood share the same parking lot and clubhouse.

“A lot of people that come to us believe the golf event can raise money,” Shea said. “I tell them the golf event is a vehicle to raise money. It is not the vehicle.”

Shea has been in his current position for 17 years. He said the more effort charities put into getting hole sponsors, prize donations and food donations, the more money they will raise.

Shea said charities tend to find out the way to produce revenue from the tournament is to pre-sell the event.

“If you are not thinking a minimum of one year in advance, you are not going to get the sponsors that you could have gotten,” Shea said. “You may have the greatest charity in the world, but it doesn’t matter.”

Tina Waggener, director of The Cancer Challenge, said her organization added a third golf course to its tournament this year to boost the potential for 60 more teams for a total of 180. In addition, The Cancer Challenge changed its evening benefit format to include a Derby Night for its sponsors. The Derby Night allowed attendees to bet with fake money on races and featured a “running of the hogs” race of live, 8-to-10 week-old corporate sponsored piglets. Vendor Partner of Bentonville facilitated the Derby event.

“We felt like we needed to continue to separate ourselves from the other [charity events],” Waggener said. “We wanted a departure from the traditional dinner-dance.”

In fact, The Cancer Challenge decided to add more sports to its event a few years ago in an effort to capture a different audience.

A $1,500 sponsorship to The Cancer Challenge gives participants two golf spots and tickets to the social events on Friday and Saturday nights. The Cancer Challenge includes golf and tennis tournaments, a 5k/10k run, trap shoot and motorcycle ride/show. Sponsorships levels top out at $25,000 for a Founding/Crystal level sponsorship, of which there were 11 this year.

Just Say No

Jerry Vest, president and CEO of Regions Bank’s Northwest Arkansas division, said the bank gets anywhere from 25 to 35 requests for golf sponsorships per year. Vest said Regions employees might play in five to 10 tournaments per year.

“We have a business development and contributions budget, and our participation in those community golf tournaments is a combination of both,” Vest said.

He estimates Regions, a national bank, spends “several thousand” per year on tournaments.

Ron Byrd, category development manager on the Wal-Mart Team for Unilever, said his firm has received about 20 formal requests for participation in golf tournaments in the past year.

Unilever spent $30,000 to sponsor The Cancer Challenge weekend and also has participated in the Children’s Miracle Network, Cystic Fibrosis/Ronald McDonald House and the Arkansas Athlete’s Outreach golf tournaments.

Bert Kell, trust department supervisor for Arvest Bank-Rogers, said the company decided to streamline its charitable giving process this year. Kell said Arvest easily receives 50 or more requests for golf tournament participation annually.

This year, those requests will go through a centralized committee to make the decisions, Kell said.

“What we found was the right hand wasn’t sure what the left hand was doing,” Kell said. Sometimes, more than one Arvest team would show up at the same tournament.

“We can get as many Arvest people involved as we possibly can this way,” Kell said.

The quarterly 15-person committee meetings help avoid the issue of having the same person playing in several tournaments.