10 Things Preventing Your Charity From Having a Great Golf Tournament
Your organization golf tournament is already good, but what is keeping it from being great? If you are making any of the mistakes below, that could be preventing you from having a great golf tournament. Lucky for you, the solution is simple and BirdEase wants to help you!
Here are 10 things you might be doing that are keeping your event from being great.
You don’t have a dedicated website.
As an event manager, you may be a purist and believe that the only way to run a tournament is through mailed out flyers and clipboards. While this method has been used historically, you are missing out on so much by not having a web presence for your event. Particularly an entire website devoted to the day. This includes a custom URL, which can be used as a quick link to integrate to social media and email as well as for printed material (so you can still have your mail out flyer.) With a website specifically for your event, you have a one-stop-shop for all things related to registration, payment, organization and marketing! You have a quick link to send to sponsors and registrants alike, which makes it that much easier for them to sign up for your event and make it great.
You are not taking online payments.
Today, most people are accustomed to online shopping. It’s convenient, instant and requires minimal effort. By providing the tools for registrants to pay online with their credit cards, you are making the process easier for every party involved. Your registrant won’t have to leave their desk, and you can receive the payments directly into the bank account you have integrated. Not to mention, you will both receive an automatic invoice directly to your email that will reflect the purchase (which is always reassuring when shopping online.)
You are not embracing the opportunity to hold an auction.
An auction has the potential to be a big money maker for your event and an awesome way to get Sponsors visibility. Because you are hosting a charity event, people are already likely to spend more money on things because they are aware that it is going to a good cause. If your auction items are awesome, people will have multiple reasons to want to bid ahead of time. You can implement an auction items page to your site to either just display the items or have people place silent bids. Either way, you are giving more exposure to the sponsors and more time for people to get excited about the item prior to the day of the event.
You did not include a live “Donate” feature.
If an individual or organization is unable to attend your event for some reason, it is always a great option to accept straight donations right on your site. These will work exactly like registrations, there will still be a full cart process, a follow-up email and a Registrant in the back-end, however, the registrant will be able to adjust the amount of money they would like to pay. You can keep the donations button on your site open all year ‘round, so you can continue accepting donations even after your event has passed.
You’re not giving your sponsors enough exposure.
Remember, one of the best ways to add value for a sponsor is to include their logo everywhere. Not only is this great for them, it shows registrants how much support your event has and makes the event look more dynamic. The key to having a great golf tournament is to maximize that exposure and plaster those sponsor logos everywhere. This means on the course on the day of the event, but also way ahead of time on your site! You can display their logos prominently on your site (there is a dedicated sidebar specifically for this purpose), mention and tag them in social media posts along with your website’s thumbnail. In addition to including their logo on the course itself on the day of the event, the online exposure increases the overall value so much.
You’re wasting time printing and mailing stuff when you could just make it virtual.
This point speaks for itself. Virtual means instant, efficient, and valuable. Get on it!
You’re wasting time manually making spreadsheets.
The time you could be spending outreaching prospective sponsors and registrants is being spent making Excel spreadsheets to get everything organized for the day of the event. It is important to be organized, yes, but what if you had a way to do that automatically, without wasting precious time that should be used for marketing your event? With the BirdEase system, reports will be automatically created for you, all you need to do is print them out and bring them to the course.
You don’t have an easy way to organize your committee.
Committee meetings don’t need to be so abundant when you implement the right tools. By creating a website that will automatically create your reports and organize your registrants, you can cut back a lot of hours on deliberation and spend more time (you guessed it!) promoting your event and selling actual sponsorships.
You don’t have financial and registrant data ready at your fingertips.
This is key to a great event. You want to make sure all the data is right there for you to access whenever you need it. It could be for creating an email recipients list, keeping tabs on who has paid or how much money you’ve raised, or providing the golf course with a tee sheet.
You don’t have an easy way to manage registrants.
The solution is simple: use BirdEase for your registration process– you’ll get adjustable items, instant reports, and registrant information at your fingertips.