Club Management - September/October 2007 - (Page 33) Financial Responsibility and Sound Management Managers agree that financial responsibility and sound management are bigger than ever. Clubs cost a lot to build, and vacant real estate isn’t available. Formerly, management was day-to-day, overseeing debits and credits. Today, there are 15-year financial plans and far more emphasis on managing the club’s finances, most importantly properly budgeting and forecasting. Burton Ward, CCM, general manager of the Century Country Club in Purchase, New York, said he’s lucky to have worked at clubs that understood they were businesses. At Atlanta’s golf-only Peachtree Golf Club, General Manager G. Mead Grady agreed that clubs are run more as businesses now – a plus. Officers, managers and clients understand that financial management and budgeting are very important, and they try to be good stewards of other people’s money. There’s more professionalism and responsibility. There are essentially two types of clubs – newer ones like Shady Canyon or Sherwood, based on dollars and costing a lot to join, and older, established, real-estate-based clubs like Los Angeles, Bel Air, Peachtree and Congressional. “In England, you can join a country club for not much money because clubs don’t have mortgages to pay off,” Borders said. Initiation fees have gone up “enormously,” Borders said. People are making “obscene” salaries, and at his club, there’s an 2008 Marks 20th Anniversary for BMI By Joseph Perdue, CCM, CHE We started the development of the BMI program in the fall of 1986 at Georgia State University. The idea for BMI developed from the vision of a group of forward-thinking Georgia Chapter members under the leadership of Christopher A. Borders, CCM. The direction we were given was that we were to develop a one-week, university-based, club-specific education program that would cover everything a manager needed to know to be effective in his or her position as a club manager. We offered the first program to 40 club managers in February 1988, and before we even offered that first program, we had already begun the development of the second-level one-week course. We knew we would be developing new levels of BMI for many years. From that humble beginning, BMI has evolved into a professional development program that has been consistently considered by faculty at the leading hospitality schools to be the best professional development program in the hospitality industry. A major key to the success of the BMI program has been that CMAA has never strayed from the original goal of having a university-based series of clubspecific courses offered at the best hospitality schools and taught by the very best hospitality faculty and industry professionals. By far, the majority of the faculty currently teaching BMI courses have taught in BMI from the very beginning. They have been committed to keeping the content fresh, relevant and cutting edge. I have had the good fortune to attend almost every BMI program for 20 years, and I have seen a continuous commitment to excellence by the faculty and the universities, by CMAA as an organization, and most importantly by the managers attending the courses. Joe Purdue, CCM, CHE, is academic advisor for CMAA and associate professor at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2007 • 33
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