ClubsHelp’s 100-Hole Challenge Tees Off with Great Success.
Mike Krick had a number of good reasons for wanting to participate in the first-ever ClubsHelp 100-Hole Challenge. First and foremost, it was an opportunity to raise money for his favorite charity, The First Tee. It was also a chance for him to play golf, something he hadn’t done in months due to the uptick in rounds being played due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I played more complete rounds of golf that one day than I had all year,” said Krick, the Director of Golf for White Manor Country Club in Malvern, Pa., a western suburb of Philadelphia. “We’re off the charts with the number of rounds we’re doing, which is a good thing. We’re busy. But we can’t get on the tee sheet.”
By “we,” Krick was referring to he and his staff—Director of Instruction Grant Griffiths and Assistant Golf Professional Wesley Calderone—who took part in the 5-1/2-round marathon fundraiser on September 14th at White Manor CC. The threesome teed off at 6:45 a.m. EST and completed the 100 holes some 12-1/2 hours later, at 7:15 p.m., averaging slightly more than two hours per 18 holes. They played a combination of the bronze (6,702 yards) and black tees (6,330 yards), and even played a three-man scramble to help mix things up.
Calderone won the internal competition among the three club professionals, posting 14 birdies to Krick’s 12 and Griffiths’ 10.
“It was like a second holiday for me,” said Krick, who is relatively new to White Manor, having joined the club in April 2020. “It was great that the three of us could get together and block off the whole day to play some golf. We had a great response from the members, too. We raised close to $6,000, and that’s with only two weeks’ notice.”
White Manor raised $5,634 in the short lead-up to the event, $5,000 of which went to The First Tee of Greater Philadelphia. Ten percent of the monies raised also went to the ClubsHelp Foundation, a nonprofit organization that assists its network of 400 member clubs nationwide in supporting various causes and charities in their local communities. This includes providing PPE and food for front-line responders and health care workers heavily impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, as well as other supplies and resources to local communities in times of natural disasters, such as fires, hurricanes, floods and wind storms, like the one that recently devastated Iowa.
ClubsHelp developed the 100-Hole Challenge as another means for clubs to give back to their local communities and favorite local charities. The umbrella organization supplies participating clubs with many of the resources needed to run the event, including a promotional toolkit, national leader board, planning timeline and free fundraising platform (through the Give Lively app) for receiving pledges. For the White Manor event, its sponsors also donated CLIF Bars and AHEAD gear for the three participants.
The plug-and-play nature of the event was one of the major reasons why White Manor was able to pull off a successful fundraiser, giving the small runway they had to put it together. Of the nearly $6,000 raised, $1,950 came through member donations (either charged to their member accounts or via personal check) and the remaining $3,684 through the Give Lively app, according to White Manor CC General Manager Jason Voit.
“They [ClubsHelp] set us up with the shell and gave myself administrative access to the app to upload our logo and photos, and to add members and things like that,” said Voit, who also served as the event’s organizer. “It was very easy.”
Voit said that he also used the club’s own website and social media platforms to promote the event and sent multiple email blasts out to his members driving them to the Give Lively app.
Voit and Krick are not new to the concept of the 100-Hole Challenge. They had joined forces before for several other golf marathon fundraising events, only without the help of an organization such as ClubsHelp. They had planned to play 100 holes at White Manor in the spring until the pandemic struck, and when they received a phone call from Concert Golf Partners’ Aaron Straub months later encouraging them and the 21 other Concert Golf properties to take part, they quickly reached out to ClubsHelp’s Administrative Director Danielle Kindelmann to get the ball rolling.
“The days were getting shorter and we needed to pull the trigger right then,” said Voit. “That call [with Concert Golf] was the impetus for getting it done.”
Concert Golf Partners was one of several golf management companies to come aboard early and pledge support to ClubsHelp and its mission. They’ve bought PPE equipment and donated tens of thousands of meals to area hospitals nationwide, and when word started to circulate about the 100-Hole Challenge, they were more than happy to jump in and provide their support.
“For me, it was a very easy thing to get behind,” said Straub, Concert Golf’s Vice President of Operations. “Because of COVID our courses are being really pushed. It’s proven to be a very safe, socially-distanced activity. We’re running a million miles per hour, and to be able to execute an event like this that’s really turnkey is highly attractive to us.”
Another Concert Golf Partners’ club, Heathrow Country Club just outside of Orlando, Fla., was hosted a second 100-Hole Challenge on October 5, 2020, with contributions going toward helping children and adults with developmental disabilities in Central Florida. Concert Golf has properties scattered throughout the country, from as far east as Boston, Massachusetts, to as far west as Phoenix, Arizona, and Straub is encouraging all of them to get involved in some fashion with the 100-Hole Challenge in the near future.
“It’s a wonderful thing,” said Straub. “It supports local charities and, by proxy, ClubsHelp, and allows members to buy into something really organic and important to them. White Manor had to act very swiftly but they pulled off a great event. I would expect every one of our clubs to do it in one way or another.”
