Suggestions on fund raising for a charity golf outing?

[Aguirre]

I'm helping run a charity golf outing for the 4th year in a row.  I deal with the pro, book the course, meals, drink tickets, etc, and print off all necessary handouts the previous day for rules, prizes, etc., and MC the dinner.  Haha, that sounds like I do the whole thing, but trust me, I don't.  I have a lot of help.

Anyway, some of things done already:

1) Silent auction items (stuff we have this year are Steelers-Ravens tickets, Pirate tickets, Andrew McCutchen signed ball, Troy Polamalu signed jersey, foursomes at private clubs, Myrtle Beach condo week)  Guess what city I'm from.

2) Chinese auction items (gift baskets, gift cards, etc.)

3) Move-up holes--For $20 per foursome, you can move up to the red tees on three holes (usually Par 5s)

4) Par 3 contest hole.  $10, you get a sleeve of cheap balls no matter what, if you hit the green you get $10 worth of Chinese auction tickets.

Any other ideas?  Any help is appreciated.

In case anyone was wondering, the charity is for my friend whose children, who have an incurable and inevitably fatal disease (late infantile battens).  His oldest (9) died this past January.

[FooFader]

I always find the 3 club and a putter tournaments to be really fun. Maybe do one of those?

[boogielicious]

1. Longest drive
2. shortest drive (joke prize)
3. closest to the pin.
4. Opposite hand.  Get a left club and have them try to hit it on one hole off the tee.  Driver would be best.

[Aguirre]

I'm looking for suggestions on fundraising, not the format.  But thanks.

[DwightC]

In the spirit of selling 'move-up' passes to the red tees on the par fives, I've been to scrambles were tickets good for mulligans (off the tee or from anywhere) and 'hand wedges' (pick the ball up out of a sand trap and toss it to the pin) have been sold.

[Aguirre]

In the spirit of selling 'move-up' passes to the red tees on the par fives, I've been to scrambles were tickets good for mulligans (off the tee or from anywhere) and 'hand wedges' (pick the ball up out of a sand trap and toss it to the pin) have been sold.

Me, too.  Unfortunately, I feel that this is abused a bit and slows down play.  Move up tees eliminate that a bit.  I was in an outing last fall that used the "hand grenade" as they called it.  We were a threesome with four grenades (for fairness) and I threw the first one.  It worked out great.  The next two from my partners sucked.  So when the fourth came up, I asked to throw it.  I didn't get it.  The throw sucked.

[rcwkent]

I was just in  an event that sold 3 anywhere mulligans for $25. Just one shot....not a mulligan for the whole group, not 4 shots.

All the staff on the course was selling them, so you could buy more on the course ...out group ended up buying 6 total.

Advertise or display before the round the items in the Chinese auction. I only bot 10 tickets, but there were two items I was really interested in winning,. If I had known,  I would have bought more during the round!

[MS256]

Outside of selling the usual Mulligans, pieces of string, throws, long drive, and closest to the pin, the most unusual one I've seen was to have somebody on a par 5 tee box selling paper cups for $5.

If you bought a cup you could tee up your ball, put the paper cup over it and hit it. Then you played your "first shot" from wherever it ended up.

My playing partner bought a cup and sculled it to the left into the woods. That scared me off and I didn't buy one because we needed a ball we could play.

Then the next guy in our opposing group hit one over 300 yards right down the middle from under the cup and hit his next shot (the first on the scorecard) on the green. He missed his putt for a 2 but made a 3 on the hole.

I think the secret is to get the ball teed up and place the cup over the ball so the edge of the cup is barely touching the ball, without unknowingly knocking the ball off of the tee.

Funny thing was that as we were getting close to that hole I kept hearing the sound of clubs hitting the ball through the paper cup and couldn't figure out what was making that loud whopping sound.

[jtw89]

Do you already ask for donations? Alot of times people will just give away some money. Although they may feel like they are already donating by playing in the event so donations may not be extremely successful.

[Aguirre]

Yes, there is an option for cash donations.  We've had a few.  Any purchase of raffle tickets at the outing is a de facto straight cash donation, as all the prizes are donations.

[Aguirre]

Advertise or display before the round the items in the Chinese auction. I only bot 10 tickets, but there were two items I was really interested in winning,. If I had known,  I would have bought more during the round!

I always do this.  I have a flyer right at the check-in table outlining the prizes and dollar value of chinese auction items.  Then I divide it by the golfers in the group.  So if it's $5000/100 golfers I say $50 in prizes per golfer.  In other words, buy $50 worth of tickets, dudes.

I also send one or two good looking women and my buddy who is in sales around during dinner to make one more sales pitch.  We usually sell another $600-$1000 dollars just doing that.  I have to say, it's kind of creepy that the golfers tend to respond to a hot teenage girl the most.  My friend's daughter volunteers every year.  We usually have another 2-3 gorgeous 30 something woman out on the course, and these guys grivitate toward the 17 year old.  wtf.

[Pretzel]

One thing that a lot of scrambles do is they sell "string" before a round. This string lets you move the ball, within the length of the string, without counting it as a stroke. It is usually used to hole out a putt that ended up near the hole. You can either set it up so that they can only use it in certain increments (ex: a full foot at a time) or they can just use whatever they need without wasting the leftover string.

To get people started most tournaments give 1-2 feet of string to every group just to explain it to each group and get them interested in possibly buying some.