Tips or advice for a charity golf scramble

[austen76]

Just looking for any tips or advice for putting on a charity golf scramble. This coming year my wife and I will be putting on our 3rd annual autism charity golf scramble. The past two years have been great. We have had about 18 teams each year. Raised a lot of money, and done a lot of good with it. This year though we would like to bring in more teams and Try to spark some more interest. Any advice on advertising, prizes, games or anything that would bring new people in would be great!

[bobfoster]

What level of support to you have from volunteers ... are you doing most of the work yourself? Or do you have some people willing to put real effort into it?

(I'd love to give you some advice ... I'm on the Advisory Board of my local First Tee, and wind up organizing things like this on an annual basis).

[austen76]

My wife and I do most of the work. We have volunteers for the day of.

[bobfoster]

[quote name='austen76' timestamp='1327767153' post='4167117']
My wife and I do most of the work. We have volunteers for the day of.
[/quote]


Man ... that's rough. What I might say ... reach out to local businesses and allow people to "sponsor" tees. And ... the most money I have ever made on tourneys have been through (weirdly) ... auctions in the clubhouse after the round.

[highergr0und]

Have you given thoughts to changing to a 3 man scramble with 2 teams (in theory) on every tee? It can help account for some cheating and bring in a good bit more revenue from players. I really enjoy the one I play in each year.

What stuff do you currently do? How do you currently advertise? How hard is it to fill the existing tee times? That would all dictate what you could expect if you try and grow it.

A big moneymaker in the aforementioned tourney that I don't see all the time is the "hit it in a boat" contest. There's a pond right by the clubhouse, and they put a rowboat in the middle. It's $10 for 3 tries, and players get 3 shots to hit the boat for entry into a contest for a large gift card, usually $500 to Dicks Sports (I think they donate). Hitting the boat on the outside gets one entry, bouncing it out of the boat gets 5, and stopping it in the boat gets 10. The shot is generally about 45-55 yards. A lot of guys miss entirely, some pull a longer iron and skip it off the side of the boat, and occasionally they get people who can actually execute and bounce it out. Keeping it in the boat is VERY rare. A lot of guys do multiple batches of attempts spending 20-30. If you don't have a pond, you ought to be able to rig up something..... a fun one would be hit the old truck parked in the grass, but I live in the south where an old beat up truck wouldn't be out of place.... lol

Another side money maker at one scramble I do is the closest to the center contest. Rather than include it with the long drive and pin stuff, it's a separate $20 fee at the tee and they take cash, checks, and credit cards. The winner splits the proceeds 50/50 with the charity. This really only works if you have spendy folks golfing so many participate. The scramble I do this in is pretty high end affair at an exclusive country club that is pretty tough to get on to otherwise so guys come to blow money. Charging $10 might be better for a lot of places.

Bottom line, if you're doing buy in stuff, price it low enough that people will do it. You just need to know your clientele.

[Late4ttime]

Selling string is a cheap pure profit add-on- teams pay $5 a foot, up to 4 ft...if a team misses a putt by 6inches, they cut 6ins of string off, repeat until out of string.

People play in scrambles to hang with their friends, drink, and have a good time. Put up flyers in local Taverns, Lodges(elks, moose, etc) bowling alleys- places where groups of friends gather, to increase your participants.

Late-

[Bob Cat]

Selling string is a cheap pure profit add-on- teams pay $5 a foot, up to 4 ft...if a team misses a putt by 6inches, they cut 6ins of string off, repeat until out of string.

 

Just watch that people don't un-ply their string to make it 3 times longer than purchased (if 3-ply string was used).

 

 

I chair our local HS Booster scramble and have a few ideas:

 

- Give golf balls instead of cash for the place prizes. See if the course will donate or discount them to you. Keep the cash in the charity!

- We have a local t-shirt shop print our tee sponsor signs. They're the plastic corrugated ones w/ wire wickets and cut vinyl letters similar to political yard signs. We reuse them each year because of the many returning sponsors.

- We get prizes donated and raffle them off by selling tickets that can be placed in a box in front of the prize they wish to receive.

- Many restaurants will donate food and drinks.

- 50/50 raffle. Some will return it all and some will keep a little. Great money maker.

 

Have FUN!

[justyd401]

I don't know all the details of it but I've played in 2 with win a car hole in ones. You'll need to have someone at the hole watching! They told me it's an insurance deal you pay around $700 and the hole needs to be a min length this one was 165. The sponsor of that hole payed the $700 and it's pretty freaking cool to shoot for a car just like on the tour! That one was a real sucker pin cut 6 feet from the water. Good luck.

[austen76]

Thanks for all the advise guys! Right now we are playing the regular 4 man team format. I have played in buy mulligans and string scrambles but see a lot of cheating! Kind of want to stay away from that. I usally end up with about 20 hole sponsers. They donate any where from about $50 to $100. We play the usual long drive, closest to the pin and long putt games. I have 2 seperate long drive prizes for men and women. We do door prizes (most donated) a 50/50 drawing and a cash place prize. We also do a betting hole. Its a short down hill par 3, about 130 yds. $5 gets you 5 raffle tickets up front. If you hit the green you get 5 more. You can bet on yourself or anyone on your team. Last year we gave away a $250 gift card.

After all is said and done we usually end up raising just over 2k. Not bad for just my wife and I, and the money gets put to good use.

I may have to look into the 3 man format. That could be fun!