October 23, 2009 | Read Time: 7 minutes
Charities have long run golf tournaments to raise money.
Now the PGA Tour, which runs competitions for professional golfers, is stepping up its efforts to make sure people know about the money its events raise for good causes — a publicity effort that has taken on new urgency during the recession.
Last year, the tour donated $124-million in golf-tournament proceeds, and it estimated that it has raised a total of $1.4-billion in the past 71 years. Officials of the organization estimate that professional golfers, through their own fund-raising efforts, contribute an additional $30-million a year.
Through a range of projects being developed over the next year, the tour hopes to promote the philanthropy of the sport and its players and get volunteers, sponsors, and fans more involved in its charitable activities. It also plans to link more closely with the roughly 2,000 nonprofit groups across the country that each year benefit from PGA Tour events.
The announcement of the new charity efforts, stamped with the slogan, “Together, anything’s possible,” comes as officials of the PGA Tour predict that donations to charity — which are based on the revenue earned by the tour’s events — will decline this year by as much as 15 percent. It also follows on the heels of a flap over whether it is appropriate for companies receiving federal bailout money to sponsor events, like golf tournaments.
Ty Votaw, executive vice president of the PGA Tour, says the publicity campaign has been in the works for more than a year — long before the economy took its bad turn and questions were raised about corporate spending. But, he says, the timing does make a compelling case for the new campaign.
“It’s demonstrated to us the need to better communicate the positive impact that the PGA Tour has on communities, the economy, and business development,” Mr. Votaw says.
Search Engine for Players and Charities
The tour annually oversees about 100 professional golf tournaments, most of them structured as nonprofit organizations that donate their proceeds to charity.
One way the tour hopes to get the word out about its charitable activities and to bolster its giving, according to Mr. Votaw, is with a new search engine it will add to its Web site that will identify the players and charities involved with a certain cause. So, for example, a fan interested in autism could quickly find out about what the golf star Ernie Els is doing to help people with the disorder, In March Mr. Els started a new group, Els for Autism, and played host to a golf tournament that netted $675,000.
The search engine, Mr. Votaw says, would also direct fans to all of the autism charities that receive money from PGA events.
Bert Pfiester, chief executive of Respite Care of San Antonio, is looking forward to that kind of advertising for his group, which serves developmentally disabled children. The promotion from the PGA Tour’s Web site and the ability to use the Tour’s logo and promotions on his own will be a nice boost for his small organization, he says.
“They have national recognition and being associated with the PGA — and getting ourselves introduced to their fans and sponsors — brings incredible value to us,” Mr. Pfiester says.
Last year, Respite Care received about $60,000 from the Valero Texas Open, a PGA tournament in San Antonio, and it expects to get even more from this year’s event, which took place in May.
The charity already cleared $33,000 from the Tour’s Birdies for Charities program, in which groups solicit pledges based on how many birdies golfers make during a tournament, and it plans to make a grant request for $50,000 to go toward the building of a new shelter for kids in state custody.
Along with the money, Mr. Pfiester says, the Valero Texas Open offers his group visibility. At a party announcing the player pairings for the event, Mr. Pfiester says he met some of the tournament’s corporate sponsors and invited them to visit Respite Care’s facilities.
“One of the companies is, from Houston, is coming out to see us soon,” he says. “They’ll get to see where the money goes and we get to demonstrate what we do and who we help.”
Inspiration for Volunteers
Another goal of the golf association’s new campaign is to encourage the thousands of volunteers who work at the tournaments to get involved in additional charitable activities. The PGA Tour estimates that 100,000 people volunteer their time at the events each year, performing all sorts of jobs on and off the courses, and it credits the free labor with allowing the tournaments to earn the net proceeds that go to charity.
To inspire its volunteers to do more than volunteer at golf outings, the tour has connected with the HandsOn Network, a national group that coordinates volunteerism. The PGA Tour will direct its volunteers to the network and promote Hands — On’s efforts through its Web site and advertising.
The Players Championship, in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., tried another strategy this spring? to spur volunteering, one that may be used at more events next year. Players gave its 2,100 volunteers the opportunity to nominate and then vote for a local charity that would be highlighted at the tournament.
The volunteers selected Daniel, a Jacksonville charity that serves abused and troubled kids. Daniel set up an information booth during the volunteers’ training times, and the volunteers had a chance to make a donation on uniform pick-up day. The charity, whose budget is $11-million, plans to use the $40,000 raised to renovate apartments where it teaches homeless teenagers how to live independently.
“We wanted to make a strong personal bond for the volunteers between what they were doing and what it means for the community,” says Jay Monahan, executive director of the Players Championship, which last year distributed $3-million to 94 charities in Northeast Florida.
John Felix, who was chairman of this year’s FBR Open Tournament, in Scottsdale, Ariz., says connecting corporate sponsors to the sport’s philanthropy is key, too. And with FBR — a financial company in Arlington, Va., that has been the event’s title sponsor since 2004 — bowing out after next year, Mr. Felix says the PGA Tour’s new charity push will be especially helpful in attracting a new big sponsor.
“Charity is a selling point,” he says. “Our sponsors make a big financial commitment because it’s good for their business and they want to be good citizens and be seen as good citizens. We have to make sure that we elevate and communicate that tie, how their sponsorship helps our communities.”
Appearance Counts
Mr. Felix and other golf officials say that if that message had already been more familiar to more people, the sport might have avoided the fuss last winter over corporate sponsorship.
In February, Mass. Rep. Barney Frank, head of the House Financial Services Committee, and a group of other lawmakers demanded that Northern Trust, a Chicago company that had gotten $1.6-billion from the Troubled Asset Relief Program, return to the government the equivalent of what it spent on entertainment during a PGA tournament it had sponsored that month.
In addition, Mass. Sen. John Kerry introduced legislation that would limit those kinds of expenditures by companies receiving bailout money.
Northern Trust has defended its spending and has paid back all of the federal money, which a company spokeswoman says it had planned to do anyway.
Senator Kerry’s bill has not been voted on, and in the meantime Mr. Frank has softened his criticism, saying that it is the lavish spending on parties and entertainment associated with the golf events that are of more concern to him than the sponsorships of the events themselves.
But the stir has left its mark.
“It’s been disappointing and sometimes distracting to have to answer to the idea that what we are doing is somehow not worth all our partners’ investment of time and money and care,” says the Players’ Mr. Monahan. “We’re a sport, but we are also part of a movement — a collective effort to change lives — and all this gives us the chance to spend time talking about that and educating people about that.”
