LINCOLN, Neb., Jan. 28, 2022 /The NonProfit Times/ -- Marriott Business Councils bring together hotel management and employees from across a region to network and work together to give back to the larger community. The Colorado Marriott Business Council has been active for over two decades, with a strong presence in the Denver area and beyond that engages Marriott hotel brands, its employees, and the community at-large.

Chad Conrad is the current chair of the Colorado Council and has been involved in its work for over two decades. “Marriott believes in taking care of its employees while also taking care of its community,” Chad says. At the national level, Marriott has been a banner sponsor of Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) Hospitals for over 30 years. This support has trickled down to local and regional Marriott groups, including business councils.

For over 20 years, the Council has hosted an annual golf tournament to raise money for Children’s Hospital Colorado, the local CMN hospital. For Chad and Marriott employees from across the state, this support of Children’s Hospital Colorado has resulted in a meaningful tie to the community. He has been involved in the golf tournament since its inception and has seen it grow and flourish.

But as COVID-19 hit the tourism industry hard, hotels were short-staffed and the golf event was forced to be pared down. The Council lost several members due to layoffs and hotel closures, including those who helped Chad head up the golf tournament. “It fell 100% on my plate to make it happen,” Chad says. Though he didn’t necessarily want to learn a new platform or system, he knew in order to keep the event going, he needed to employ some type of technology to save time, automate processes, and make planning simple and efficient.

Turning to Technology

Chad turned to GolfStatus, the official management platform for golf events benefiting CMN Hospitals, to get the event back on its feet. “Since it’s been around for over 20 years, it was important to me to keep it alive,” Chad says. The switch to GolfStatus couldn’t have come at a better time—it gave Chad an easy-to-use, all-in-one solution to promote the event, register golfers, onboard and recognize sponsors, and collect funds.

GolfStatus’s partnership with CMN Hospitals helps event organizers—passionate supporters, hospitals or hospital foundations, corporate partners, businesses, or other volunteers—put on a golf tournament to benefit member hospitals. Because these events benefit a nonprofit, they qualify for GolfStatus’s Golf for Good program, which provides access to its full-featured golf event management and fundraising platform at no cost.

The GolfStatus team worked with Chad to build an event website where people could purchase team and sponsorship packages or make a donation with just a few clicks. When the tournament was organized by a larger planning team, one person handled all the money, processing paper registration forms and checks, sending receipts, and tracking payments. With a one-man show for this year’s event, Chad says the online registration and secure payment processing features were priceless. “I barely had to do anything with it,” he says, as the platform sends automated receipts upon registration and he could quickly and easily see who had registered in the software’s back end.

Chad used the platform’s built-in messaging feature to send emails directly to registrants, alerting them of updates and specifics about the event. He used it to share information about the day’s timeline, where folks should check in, and the included breakfast. Since all registration information is stored in the platform, there was no need for him to export email addresses into another service to send a simple email—it could all be handled within GolfStatus. “I don’t know that I can ever go back to how I used to do it!” Chad says.

The Impact of Golf Fundraising

Chad has seen the impact the golf tournament has had for over 20 years, not only for Children’s Hospital Colorado but for participating hotels. “So much business is done on the golf course,” he points out. “Whether you’re a good golfer or not, you can still make connections and do business while raising money and having fun.”

Chad has worked with a core group of vendors and partners to support the golf event over its tenure, but has continued to explore new sponsor support. “When we partner with a new hotel through the Council, it opens doors to a new set of sponsors,” Chad explains. The golf event’s website and accompanying free GolfStatus mobile app gives sponsors a ton of digital exposure for their investment, before, during, and after the tournament.

While the tournament attracted about half of its historical attendees, it still hit its benchmark goal of around $35,000 for the hospital, thanks in part to the time savings GolfStatus provided that allowed Chad to pursue new sponsorships. “We were thrilled about that,” he says. Chad says his number one focus is to bring the hotels together to raise awareness and funds for the hospital. “We could throw a dinner party or do something different but we wouldn’t have the success of a golf tournament,” he says. “A golf tournament has staying power.”

Golf for Good

GolfStatus’s Golf for Good giveback initiative helps nonprofits and those holding events benefiting them streamline their golf events to save time and raise more money. It starts with a free event website and no-cost access to GolfStatus’s platform for qualifying organizations and events. Get qualified here or email [email protected].

Source: The NonProfit Times

LINCOLN, Neb., Jan. 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- GolfStatus, the leading event management platform for golf fundraisers, has partnered with celebrity booking agency The Celebrity Source to help connect charity golf tournament organizers with celebrities, athletes, influencers, and other public figures. The partnership provides event organizers planning charity golf outings and golf fundraisers with access, options, and first-rate service in sourcing a range of celebrities that best fit their event's needs.

Through its Golf for Good program, GolfStatus. serves nonprofit clients, businesses, corporate entities, and others holding charity golf outings and fundraisers—providing access to its software at no cost to these organizations. The event management and fundraising SaaS platform makes it easy to organize and execute professional, high-end golf events. The Celebrity Source, which has a strong tie to and focus in cause-related marketing, is known for creating organic, authentic celebrity matches for their clients to gain more visibility for charity events and fundraisers and the important causes they support.

"We're not just a booking agency, we are a strategic partner who digs deep into our clients' needs and fulfills them," said Laurie Kessler, CEO of The Celebrity Source. "We know from experience that celebrity support can help quantum leap charity golf tournaments in terms of exposure and funds raised, so partnering with GolfStatus and their Golf for Good program was a no-brainer for us."

To get started with GolfStatus's technology and connect with The Celebrity Source, visit golfstatus.com, email [email protected], or call 402-413-9650. Learn more about Celebrity Source by visiting thecelebritysource.com, emailing [email protected], or calling 917-626-8368.

About GolfStatus

GolfStatus is golf's premier tournament management solution and golfer engagement platform. Its full-service event management software streamlines outings from start to finish, yielding professional, high-end events while also saving time and improving the event experience for golfers, sponsors, and golf facilities. Through GolfStatus, its powerful technology is accessible to nonprofits to streamline golf fundraisers and help event organizers use them to engage more supporters, raise more mission-critical funds, drive impact, and do more good.

About Celebrity Source

The Celebrity Source has been in business over 30 years and has access to thousands of celebs from film, TV, music, sports, fashion, digital stars and influencers. Among the company's specialties is cause-related celebrity outreach and coordination whereby the celebrities may not be paid—The Celebrity Source knows what it takes to get a celebrity to say yes apart from money. The Celebrity Source has helped hundreds of corporate and non-profit clients find authentic celebrity matches for events (live and virtual), PR/Marketing/Advertising campaigns, corporate meetings and cause-marketing strategies.

Contact:
Ashley Watson, Director of Marketing
[email protected]
812.202.0019

Source: PR Newswire

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Play Yellow’s Ben Parker on Using Golf to Raise $100 Million for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals

LINCOLN, Neb., Jan. 12, 2022 /Association of Fundraising Professionals/ — For Ben Parker, Senior Director of Play Yellow at Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) Hospitals, golf has been a constant. His passion for golf stems from playing competitively in high school and college, going on to become a PGA Professional. He found ways to stay connected to the game throughout his career, hosting a golf television show and producing celebrity golf tournaments. Eventually, he landed at CMN Hospitals to spearhead the Play Yellow effort, in partnership with Jack and Barbara Nicklaus, with the goal to raise $100 million in five years for children’s hospitals.

Ben has long believed in the power of golf to do good in the world. “Supporting kids reaches the soul of the golfer,” says Ben, who has seen firsthand the sport’s impact in the outpouring of support at all levels of golf for CMN Hospitals. “When we can combine something they love—golf—with helping kids, it creates a meaningful connection. We give it an identity with Play Yellow.”

CMN Hospitals & Golf Fundraising

When Ben came on board at CMN Hospitals, there were thousands of golf events across the country raising money for local children’s hospitals. Organized by hospital foundations, corporate entities, community organizations, and dedicated supporters, these tournaments essentially happened, as Ben describes it, in the background, without CMN Hospitals knowing who was organizing, sponsoring, or playing in them.

“The more I worked with my teammates, I realized there was a massive opportunity to cultivate, grow, and simplify golf fundraising with our network,” Ben says. His experience working with charity golf tournaments of all types and sizes gives him a unique perspective on how tournament organizers operate and what motivates them. He explains that the majority of volunteers who organize a golf event aren’t typically golfers themselves; they’re passionate supporters and volunteers who are willing to jump in and make things happen. They see how golf is a very powerful mechanism for bringing people together and raising money.

Ben and his CMN Hospital colleagues on the Innovation team dug in to look for a solution to expand and strengthen golf fundraising and make the process easier for organizers across the board. “We want organizers to be able to spend less time on the minutiae of planning a golf tournament and more time on the fun stuff,” Ben says.

The amount of work that goes into a successful golf tournament isn’t lost on Ben and his team, which is why they make every effort to simplify the process and help organizers see the impact of their time and dedication. He points out that when tournaments are organized as Play Yellow events, they’re part of a larger CMN Hospitals ecosystem that has deep ties to corporate sponsors, individual hospital communities, and media partners, which gives their event instant credibility, tools, and support. “For someone whose day job is something else, to suddenly be charged with making a massive impact in a golf fundraiser, it can be overwhelming,” Ben says. “But we’re there to help organizers see how the golf community loves to support kids in need and connect them to this larger network so they can be successful.”

The $100 Million Jack Nicklaus Challenge

Play Yellow’s humble beginnings include a plate of cookies and a kind gesture for a child dealing with cancer. Jack Nicklaus, the legendary golfer who won 18 majors over the course of his illustrious career, befriended a young fan in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, named Craig Smith. Craig was diagnosed with Ewing Sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, that would tragically take his life at the age of 13. During one of their many conversations, this one following one of Jack’s tournament wins, Craig said he knew Jack would come out on top because he was wearing a lucky yellow shirt.

Jack would continue to wear yellow on Sundays over the years in honor of Craig. When he won his sixth Masters in 1986, he wore yellow for the final round. Ben explains that this story didn’t surface until some 20 years later, when Jack was asked if there was something different about that particular day of golf—when he had a career round and won the tournament—and he pointed out that he was wearing yellow that Sunday.

Jack and Barbara Nicklaus were already dedicated supporters of children’s hospitals in Ohio and Florida and wanted to further amplify those efforts with CMN Hospitals and their influence in the golf world. To that end, Jack called PGA TOUR Commissioner, Jay Monahan, to meet with them at their home in Florida over a plate of Barbara’s chocolate chip cookies. Jack set the audacious goal of raising $100 million for CMN Hospitals in just five years through golf, and Play Yellow was born.

Getting to the Goal with Technology

Prior to the pandemic, Play Yellow had raised about $24 million for CMN Hospitals through golf. “When COVID hit, all these golf events that we had built momentum behind went into shutdown mode,” Ben says. “There was some panic because we knew that hospitals needed this unrestricted funding to care for kids, and we knew there would be a huge fundraising gap to close in 2020 because these events weren’t going to happen.”

Creating efficiencies and better supporting tournament organizers with user-friendly tools, while at the same time strategizing how to get tournaments back up and running, led CMN Hospitals to a partnership with golf technology company GolfStatus. The platform puts powerful fundraising technology built for golf in the hands of individual event organizers, while also providing key insights at an enterprise level, broader sponsorship opportunities, and a central event directory for larger organizations like CMN Hospitals that have hundreds or even thousands of events that benefit them.

GolfStatus’s tech solved many challenges right off the bat, with built-in features to live-score tournaments, send in-event messages to golfers and sponsors, and an in-house customer success team to build a website for each tournament and provide support every step of the way. The platform greatly simplifies registration and payment collection and processing, which saves organizers a huge amount of work, making the prospect of putting on a tournament less daunting. In the face of COVID-19, GolfStatus’s features also allowed tournaments to mitigate touchpoints by moving registration, scoring, coordination, and other logistical tasks online and providing options for virtual and hybrid events.

What’s more, the value of using a common technology for Play Yellow events goes well beyond saving organizers time and effort. Indeed, one of the strongest arguments for such a platform is the ability to securely and responsibly collect donor and sponsor data in an efficient manner, helping CMN Hospitals as a whole and its member hospitals and foundations gain a better understanding of who is supporting them through golf. “Hospitals may not have the oversight they need for these events or even know who is organizing golf tournaments on their behalf,” Ben points out. “The power of this information, and how best to support these third party events, is crucial to making fundraising decisions.”

Ben is excited about the future of CMN Hospitals’ golf fundraising using GolfStatus. “GolfStatus fits the unique needs of golf event organizers,” says Ben. “As a partner, GolfStatus sees the long term vision of what we want to accomplish with Play Yellow and for CMN Hospitals.”

To support CMN Hospitals through golf, you can play in a tournament near you or even organize your own golf fundraiser.

GolfStatus.org—the social impact division of golf technology company GolfStatus—provides no-cost access to its golf event management and fundraising platform to nonprofits through its Golf for Good program. A proud partner of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, GolfStatus.org’s mission is to help nonprofits leverage golf to engage more supporters, raise more mission-critical dollars, drive impact, and do more good. Learn more about the Golf for Good program and get qualified at www.golfstatus.com/demo.

Source: AFP

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