PLIGHTS AND INSIGHTS

Nancy Levenburg, PhD, is a recently retired professor of management in the Seidman College of Business at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, MI. She has published numerous articles in business and professional journals and has assisted over 200 organizations with strategic planning, marketing strategy, and improving operations. She is the president of Edgewater Consulting and is a member of Spring Lake Country Club in Spring Lake, MI. For more information, contact her at: levenbun@gvsu.edu or (616) 821-5678.

The Cost of Golf Outings

Fidelity Charitable, a 501(c)(3) public charity that helps donors maximize their generosity through a donor-advised fund, maintains that “the COVID-19 pandemic has upended daily routines and impacted communities across the world in unprecedented ways. No corner of our society has been left untouched by the effects of the pandemic, including the nonprofit sector.”

According to Fidelity’s research, 54 percent of donors plan to maintain their level of giving because of COVID-19 and 25 percent plan to increase it. This means that 21 percent will likely decrease their giving. (100 percent - 54 percent - 25 percent = 21 percent.)

Fidelity’s data seems to jibe with FastCompany, which reported that two in five households (40 percent) said they’re receiving less income since the pandemic started, and one in five (20 percent) stated they “have given less to charity recently compared to before the pandemic.”

One thing we don’t know, however, is how amount of giving varies by intent to continue giving; that is, are those who plan to – or actually did – discontinue giving the large donors or smaller ones?

Nevertheless, this begs the question, where (and to whom) do nonprofits turn when donors’ giving declines? And the answer for many nonprofits is to hold special events – like golf outings – to bolster COVID-depleted coffers.

In fact, it’s estimated that over 800,000 fundraising golf events are held annually in the U.S., netting over $300,000 in some cases, depending on committee members’ community connections, the reputation of the course, special events (e.g., a pro-am), sponsorships, and special add-on events, such as silent auctions.

So numerous nonprofits have sought to host their golf fundraising events at their local country clubs. And for the past several years amidst waning membership levels, those country clubs have been enthusiastically offering up their facilities to the public to help offset operational assessments by balancing club deficits with nonmember revenues.

So while golf fundraisers are revenue-generators for the charitable organization, are they also moneymakers for the private club? It’s a good question… and one that I’ve rarely received a straight answer to from clubs’ board members.

Yet, private clubs typically tout outing participants’ nearly unrestricted use of the club’s facilities (“Host your event in our newly renovated ballroom!”), often including everything from curbside bag drop, use of locker rooms, driving range, putting green, and practice chipping area.

Revenues are typically based on an amount for green fees, golf cart rental, meals served, and any service fees/gratuities… all of which are variable costs; that is, they depend on the number of participants in the event. (Fees may also vary depending on the day of the week, with Mondays being the cheapest and Fridays and Saturdays generally being the highest priced. And many clubs require confirmation of the exact number of participants a certain number of days in advance.)

However, other costs incurred by the club are not quite so variable. So, are these costs also appropriately factored into pricing outside events? That’s the question. For example, • Beverage cart. Will a beverage cart circulate during the event? Clearly, the revenues gained from selling foods and beverages (especially alcoholic ones) from the cart will be incremental to the club, and this could be a big money-maker. But what about the wages for the cart driver? To what account will those wages be charged? • Outing prep/set-up. Among other things, this includes preparation of scorecards and rules sheets, preparation of cart signs and staging of carts, sign placement and recovery of proximity prizes, postevent scoring, awarding of prizes, and so on. Obviously, pro shop staff will be heavily involved in preparing for and hosting an outing… how are their time, effort and materials accounted for? • Food service. If the outing has 100+ participants, who – and how many of the kitchen and banquet staff – will be involved in setting up for, serving, and cleaning up after guests? And, since many private clubs’ F&B operations are closed on Mondays, is the added expense of workers needed for the event covered by fees charged to outing organizers, or is it absorbed by club members? (Further, since the ability to play golf for free on Mondays may be an important fringe benefit for country club employees, usurping this day of the week could be robbing those employees of one of their favorite perks.)

The Chronicle of Philanthropy reported in 2020 that 73 percent of charities worldwide experienced a decline in contributions. Given this, alongside the increasing interest by many private clubs in attract-

JIMMY DUNNE Jimmy Dunne is the founder of USA Bocce, partnering with leading country clubs to create extraordinary revenues and participation. Jimmy is also an award-winning songwriter, with 28 million hit records and gold and platinum records spanning the globe. He can be reached at (310)529.1400 – or via email: jdunne@usabocce.org. ON THE FRONTLINES

The Power of Bocce at Country Clubs

Bocce is on fire in America – and it’s on fire in leading country clubs all around the country.

Under GM Bill Howard, Bel-Air Bay Club (on the beach in Pacific Palisades, CA) built two courts 10 years ago. As a result, bocce participation and engagement is now greater than all other sports combined – and generates $375,000 plus a year from food and beverage revenues directly from its bocce leagues and social events.

Their neighbor club down the beach, Beach Club, put in two courts – and before the courts were built, they had 290 sign up for its leagues. Engagement and revenues keep going up -- now in their fifth bocce year.

Under GM Kevin Dunne, Blackhawk Country Club (in Danville, California) has 770 members in its bocce leagues on five league nights – generating $475,000 plus in bocce food and beverage sales. Think of the amount of member activity that is – for the footprint of bocce courts compared to a golf course.

Rosewood Miramar Hotel in Montecito, a hotel, put in two bocce courts – and had 245 folks from its town playing in its weekly bocce league – generating not only sales but outstanding goodwill for the new hotel.

Nashville, Chicago, Dallas, New York, Florida – so many leading country clubs in cities all around the country have 300-900 members playing bocce every week!

Here’s the crazy thing.

Nobody knows about this. Because partly, unlike pickleball, tennis, golf, etc., there is no governing body that is connecting the dots between bocce country clubs... no standardized rules or league, tournament and events formats... no communication and sharing of best practices between clubs, and no way to train your athletic director or activity director to run successful leagues and events.

Now there is. USA Bocce. (www.usabocce.com)

We’re launching the Bocce American Cup this October for leading clubs around the country. We’re offering training (and certification) for your athletic director to learn how to play, learn strategy, learn

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE

Early Detection Practices for Club Cybersecurity Response

BY HASSAN ALSAYEGH AND VARUN KHANNA

Detecting a cybersecurity incident early is key to mitigating the long-term impact. In many cases, businesses are unaware of cybersecurity breaches for days, weeks, or even months after their systems have been breached.

How can a business detect breaches and stop the bleeding of information from their systems before it reaches a critical peak?

Clubs can use the following technologies and software to detect intruders and unauthorized access to avoid facing a cybersecurity breach.

DEPLOY A MANAGED FIREWALL

Establishing a well-managed firewall system is an organization’s fundamental network defense. An installed firewall acts as an internet border between the public internet and the club’s internal network. It protects club member data, files, financial statements, and banking data from unauthorized hackers.

A firewall is the first line of defense for protecting data. With no firewall installed in the club’s cybersecurity system, the website and country blocking options are not deployed. Website blocking is available with a firewall to block certain websites that may contain malware or ransomware.

Be sure to schedule routine audits after deploying a managed firewall. Technology changes rapidly in today’s world. Hence, it is crucial to undergo routine checks on the firewall system to avoid having out-ofdate software.

FILE INTEGRITY MONITORING

Another way to detect a cybersecurity incident is to become familiar with file integrity monitoring software (FIM). FIM is a technology and security process that scans the operating system (OS), application software and database to ascertain whether they have been breached or corrupted. FIM works by validating and verifying these files and compares them to the latest version via a “baseline.”

If FIM has confirmed that those files have been corrupted, the system will automatically generate alerts. The FIM software is essential as it scans, analyzes and informs the user about unexpected changes to files.

The main use-cases of FIM involve detecting unauthorized activity, pinpointing unintended changes, verifying update status and monitoring system health. All use-cases lead to detecting intruders in the software, hence avoiding cyberattacks. A good FIM software should monitor network devices and servers, workstations and remote devices, databases, OS and cloud-based servers.

REDUCING MALWARE DETECTION GAPS AND INCIDENT RESPONSE TIMES

To protect users and companies from malware, it must be detected early. Malware detection is the process of determining whether a given program has malicious intent.

One of the biggest gaps in malware detection is that of hackers evolving at the same rate as the detection software companies, producing a new generation of malware that is difficult to be detected by the current software.

In the early days, signature-based detection approaches were used but came with some limitations, such as the ability to detect new generation malware, and hence became outdated over time.

Some new approaches have also been proposed to detect malware, such as deep learning, cloud, mobile devices, and IoT-based detection. These protect the users by not only detecting existent and known malware but also new generation malware.

When a ransomware attack or other cybercrime incident occurs, it is crucial to activate an incident response (IR) plan immediately and attempt to minimize the damage caused by the breach.

One of the key metrics that IR professionals have embraced to help mobilize their internal planning initiatives is mean time to respond (MTTR) — a measure of the time it takes to control, remediate, and/or eradicate a threat once it has been discovered. There are a variety of approaches that organizations can use to make their MTTR better. BR

This research was conducted by HFTP Middle East Research Center scholars Hassan AlSayegh and Varun Khanna. These early detection solutions and more will be detailed in the upcoming research report Comprehensive Practices in Club Cybersecurity: Crucial Steps to Protect Your Club from Today’s Online and Digital Threats. Produced by HFTP and NCA, the member-exclusive report will be published in Summer 2021.

Nancy Berkley is an expert on women’s golf and junior girls golf. Nancy shares news and her opinions about women’s golf on the www.lpgawomensnetwork.com, www.womensgolf.com and on her own websites: berkleygolfconsulting.com and nancyberkley.com. You can also follow Nancy on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/nancy.berkley.98 and on Twitter @NancyBerkley. NANCY’S CORNER

Will Your Club Grab This Junior Golf Opportunity?

The number of junior golfers in 2020 ages 6-17 shows the greatest year-overyear growth since 1997, reports the National Golf Foundation (NGF) in a recent newsletter.

Over half a million new junior golfers entered the game as team sports were restricted due to COVID-19. The challenge is whether the golf industry will be able to sustain the interest of junior golfers as other team sports return.

For an answer, I reached out to Greg Nathan, NGF’s chief business officer. Greg replied: “Course operators looking to sustain the surge in activity need to consider new programming. When business is good, that’s a time that course operators should think about innovating. Add new programs, leagues, fun and loosely competitive social events, camps, skills challenges for better players… less traditional things for others. We have an opportunity in hand. Will we grab it?”

Whether your golf club grabs this opportunity will depend on whether your golf club recognizes that today’s juniors are different from previous juniors.

For example, last March I visited my two high school grandsons in California. We were excited to play golf together. They wanted to show off the new sets of golf clubs that I bought them as birthday presents.

As we loaded our clubs into the golf carts, I asked, “Boys, do you have your distance-readers?” They answered, “Grandma, we have distance apps on our cellphones.” New rule: Cellphones are now permitted on the Peninsula Golf and Country Club (a member of BoardRoom’s Distinguished Clubs program) course designed by Donald Ross.

What other changes do clubs have to consider to hold on to new junior golfers? I reached out to my friend and colleague Suzy Whaley, former president of the PGA of America and head golf professional at Mirasol Golf and Country Club in Palm Beach Gardens, FL.

Suzy promptly sent me a list of 25 features about why today’s juniors like golf. Following are just five from Suzy’s list: 1) Being with friends without parent involvement; (2) Using new modes of technology to track data and statistics; (3) Wearing relaxed clothes, especially new teen footwear; (4) Listening to music on the course; and (5) Enjoying funny mishaps that make great Instagram posts.

I never think about Instagram as a junior-golf marketing attraction, but it is. What a great bulletin board those photos would make.

I followed up with Michael O’Donnell, the senior director of coaching and player development at the PGA of America, who supervises the PGA Jr. League – a combination of instruction and competition.

Mike confirmed that juniors learn well in groups. He suggested more large-group coaching on the course where the focus is on learning “how to play” rather than on “how to hit balls.”

In a conversation with Jim Deitis, the director of golf at Midland Golf Club, a Distinguished Club, Jim confirmed the success of the PGA Jr. League program, adding that 80 junior girls and boys participate in the program.

Kathy Nyman, LPGA instructor at Deer Creek Country Club in Jacksonville FL., praises the PGA Jr. League for bringing families together for junior matches using the club’s spectator carts.

Another junior golf program is the LPGA-USGA Girls Golf program founded in 1989 by Sandy LaBauve, an LPGA instructor, with financial support from the USGA. The current program has 90,000 girls in many chapters in many states. The LPGA-USGA Girls Golf program focuses not only on how to hit a golf ball but also on leadership issues, which is a good fit for the young generation of girls.

But here’s the reality and the challenge: Not all golf clubs have families with young children or teens as permanent residents. That’s an opportunity to grab.

Offer a junior guest program. Your club’s “junior golf guest program” should always keep safety rules at the top of the list. Here are my further guidelines: (1) Station an instructor who works well with junior golfers on the practice tee for specific days and times for drop-in lessons. (2) Encourage well-supervised golf lessons on the golf course. (3) Convert a practice green into a putting course with supervised instruction. Try a chalked gimmee circle around each cup so children feel good when they miss a putt by just an inch or two. (4) Nothing beats par-