Successful golf tournaments – time management, respect of time and timing.
- Start planning a year out from the date
- Form your committee and task them properly
- Ask each committee member what they plan on contributing, and the amount of time they can contribute
- Accept that amount as fact, and task accordingly
Give your golfers and guests plenty of notice for the tournament date
- "Save the Date" invite as soon as you have the date
- Golf tournaments are a full day out of the office
- If your event is in guests calendar 9 months to a year out, that will insure they do not schedule meetings, travel, or other business activities on your golf dates
- This will also insure your team captains can invite their guests in a timely manner
- Day long sporting events are not easily fitted into a schedule
Most people can fit in a last minute breakfast, lunch or dinner – that only takes a couple of hours our of their day. Golf is not something you fit in – it needs to be scheduled well in advance
Insure you have a well connected committee
Have the committee, guarantee, they will have their tasks completed on time and in a timely manner- Invite committee members who do not procrastinate
- Invite committee members who understand strategic planning, budgeting, and time management – yours and theirs
- Successful committees do not have a lot of meetings – they are doers and will create a successful event without meeting every week or two to report in
- Identify people who are your sales people, fundraising or sponsorship sales, create the database, and outline the timeline for the calls and invites to be made. Hold the committee to these goals
- Identify those who are better at in kind acquisitions. Allow this group to form their own committees and meet the timeline that is set at the beginning of the event planning
- Make use of technology – email updates, point form reports, virtual meetings, skype, online web conferencing.
Go Green and save time
Spend time insuring the committee understands the repercussions of not meeting timelines
If the committee understands what goes into the planning of a successful tournament they may not leave so much to the last minute
Last minute golfer registrations cause the following challenges:
- Not enough shirts or gifts ordered
- Incorrect sizing
- Wasted inventory and money
- Score cards not printed with the guests names on it
- Cart labels not printed
- Seating and Dinner Charts without the guests names on it
- Less than VIP Treatment for the guests
However, the worst waste of time?
The event producer is now chasing names and registrations, wasting valuable time on or before event day that is needed for operations and insuring the volunteers are well trained, the site is set up, the drawsheets are complete. In other words, the committee member who left everything to the last minute, has added to the stress and strain on the event producer
Last minute auction donations – the same thing:
- The donor does not benefit from the visibility and advertising that goes along with having the auction item months before the event
- The program does not have the proper description, value, website or logo – or perhaps the donation is missed from the print program altogether
- The auction item isn’t where it should be – the donor says they will bring it the day of the event – and forgets it
The unfortunate part of last minute auction items- the lack of return on investment and loss of revenue
- Auctions advertised online, two weeks prior to the event, will realize an average of 80 cents on the dollar; last minute items get 45 to 50 cents on the dollar.
- The sponsor/donor is unhappy because their donation is undervalued
- The fundraising portion of the event is undervalued because the same hard work went into getting the items, just not in a timely manner
- The event producer is wasting valuable time adding items into the event when this is the time scheduled to polish the final details
- this is the time that should be spent insuring the event and operations will run smoothly,
- this is the time to do site set ups, AV, rehearsals, programming,
- this is the time required to train volunteers
- this is the time to be prepared with extra time to handle the true last minute challenges that comes with any event
Committee members - you hold the success or failure of your event in your calendars. Schedule the time to be a committee member, and to do what you have committed to do.
Like any successful business, event committee members must manage this time and this project. Identify the needed time, schedule appropriately and create success with your event producer. Everyone will benefit.
