The Pellucid Perspective - October 2016 - 2

EVENT
MARKETING

Brother, can you spare a time?
Geronimo.com an ideal matchmaker for clubs and non-profits
By Jim Dunlap

art of nearly every non-profit fundraiser's job is soliciting
businesses for potential auction items at charity events.
Those businesses frequently include golf courses who are
asked to provide tee times to be auctioned off. In turn, someone
at the course has to respond to those requests. On the other side
of the coin, the golf course sales department is equally busy making outgoing sales calls to local non-profits who may be interested in staging a fundraising outing at an area golf club. Needless
to say, there is a lot of staff time on both sides wasted.
Enter Mike Last and the Geronimo.com umbrella organization. For non-profits and golf clubs alike, an introduction to
Last and his team should probably be accompanied by the sound
of trumpets. Geronimo's list of business development and timesaving programs, all at little or no cost to non-profits and courses
alike, have got to seem like the arrival of the cavalry to besieged
fundraisers and golf club salespeople.
Two of the best known of those programs can be found at
OneSpareTeeTime.com and BestOutings.com. OneSpareTeeTime is a vehicle where non-profits can register at no charge to
receive a certificate for a tee time at participating courses which
they will then auction off to raise money for their non-profit or
charitable enterprises. The process is done online, thus saving the
golf sales staff the trouble of fielding hundreds of requests each
year. Geronimo also provides course flyers and the certificates
for display prior to and during the auction, which unlike most
certificates are designed to promote the club donating the tee
time to the typically affluent donors to non-profits.
BestOutings is a Geronimo platform that allows courses to
advertise their facility as a potential host site for a non-profit or
charitable fundraising tournament or outing. Courses interested
in hosting such events provide information about the club, available dates and times, contacts and any other relevant information and that information is made available to Geronimo's database of approximately 4,000 non-profit organizations. Again,
that service is free to the golf course, and saves hundreds of outbound sales calls and follow-ups to reach more non-profits than

even the most diligent sales staff could be expected to contact.
The only stipulation for the club's participation is that they demonstrate some form of local non-profit support, whether that be
a OneSpareTeeTime certificate, a donation, use of the club's facilities, etc.
A third program which is just evolving is called Travel Pledge.
It works similarly to OneSpareTeeTime in that golf resorts or
golf clubs with a hospitality component provide certificates for
stay & play packages to non-profits seeking auction items or donor rewards. Courses stipulate available dates or time periods
during the year, and generate ancillary revenue during normally
slack periods.
One theme readers will have noticed is the use of the words
"free" and "no charge." The obvious follow-up questions are
"What's the catch, how do Last and Geronimo make money,
and are they doing all this out of the goodness of their hearts?"
The answers, apparently, are no catch, Last and his investors collect a small percentage of money the non-profits raise to cover
expenses and donate any "profits" back to junior golf programs
or other industry grow-the-game initiatives, and yes, essentially
Last & company are doing it out of the goodness of their hearts
to help both non-profits and golf clubs.
Skeptics, and I confess to being one originally, will wonder
how Last, an avid golfer and member of the Atlanta Athletic
Club, pays his dues and provides for his daily bread if the programs outlined previously make no money for Geronimo. The
answer is that to borrow a term from an infamous video produced by the source of much of his personal fortune, Last made a
"boatload" of money when he sold his Last Minute Golfer company to Comcast subsidiary GolfNow in 2008. (I also checked
with several industry veterans whose judgment I trust and who
have known Last for many years, and they all vouched for his
philanthropic spirit and good intentions). Geronimo also offers a variety of for-profit sites promoting a variety of products
and services outside the golf industry which generate revenue,
although most of those also generate revenue for non-profits.

One theme readers will have noticed is the use
of the words "free" and "no charge." The obvious
follow-up questions are "What's the catch, how do
Last and Geronimo make money, and are they doing
all this out of the goodness of their hearts?"
2 THE PELLUCID PERSPECTIVE

OCTOBER 2016

http://www.Geronimo.com http://www.Geronimo.com http://www.OneSpareTeeTime.com http://www.BestOutings.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Pellucid Perspective - October 2016