Charity golf tournaments are a great thing: a lot of people get involved with good causes and raise tons of money. They can also be very long days for organizers, volunteers, and players. By the time registration starts at say 11 AM some of the people have been there for an hour or two. Then you’ve got that registration period, five hours on the course (we always want less, but most tournaments some group is out there that long), cocktail hour, followed by awards and dinner. When it’s all said and done, you could be there until 8 PM – I’ve seen it!

Today it’s shorting that awards section we’ll focus on. This is obviously a very important part of the event: it’s your chance to thank your sponsors, the people that came out to volunteer and play, and to really solidify the charity with the audience. Here are some tips to save some time without sacrificing any of the things you need to get done:

• If you’re fortunate, you’ve got a LOT of raffle prizes to give away. That’s great! Have volunteers pick the raffle tickets and attach them to the prizes, then let people come up and match their own tickets to take their prize. You can hold back a handful of your big ticket items to raffle “live” but players will thank you for doing it this way!
• Limit the speeches. One representative of the charity and the title sponsor should speak, it’s expected. But anymore than that and people stop listening. It’s actually more effective to limit the number and focus on the message.
• Be prepared! If you’re doing live raffles or awards presentations have someone there helping the speaker hand out the items. Have an agenda to things keep rolling along.

What great (or not so great) things have you seen done?

I’ve played in a lot of chartity golf tournaments. Heck, I’ve even been involved in running a bunch of them. One of the common mistakes I see people make is overcomplicating the format. Sometimes this is even done to the point of detracting from the enjoyment of the tournament. If you’re hosting one of these events, keep it simple.

Let’s look at the most common format: the scramble. The basic format is simple: All players tees off on each hole. The best of the tee shots is selected and everyone hits their next shot from that spot. The best of these is selected then everyone plays from that spot, until the ball is holed. When used in it’s most basic form like this it acheives a few very important things: it’s faster than individual stroke play, it’s fun for everyone, and it gives more people a chance to win. Sometimes though in an effort to be unique or level the playing field too far organizers make it too complicated.

The most common example of this mistake: The Minimum Tee Shot Rule. The intent here is obvious – let’s not let one team bring in a ringer that just brings the rest of the players in the group along for the ride by requiring the team to use at least two drives from each player. To me, this is a mistake for two reasons. First, it takes away some of the enjoyment for some of the players it aims to bring into the fold. A lot of the players in these events don’t get to play more than a few times a year, but they come out to these events to support a great cause. If they’ve got a good player on their team this rule puts a lot of stress and pressure on them to measure up and detracts from their enjoyment of the day. Secondly, it slows down the pace of play. If a team has to use a drive that isn’t great from a player to fill a quota, the hole takes more time to complete and holds up the pace of play.

What other rules have you seen that you think cause problems like this?