While I would like to take credit for the variety and incisiveness of questions that we’ve treated over the 15+ years of Outside the Ropes (OtR, that’s over 216 issues for those of you counting or our “charter subscribers”), the fact of the matter is that many of the questions and topics come from our readers or thoughtful observers of the industry and our work. Such is the case this month when a recent inbound inquiry asked a series of successive questions: “Why do we have golf industry foundations?” “Why do we have two and what’s the difference between them?” “What are they supposed to accomplish?” These are all reasonable questions and seemed worthy of a discourse with the OtR reader base.
Through a combination of some research and my exposure to both organizations and their principals over the past 17 years, I’ll provide my professional answers and opinions to the above questions as well as outlining what I think what would define success for a “model foundation” in the golf industry:
• Industry foundations generally are established and function for the greater good by performing tasks that span individual stakeholders and/or require skills or diplomacy that individual members cannot efficiently or don’t want to resource individually. Does golf need one or more of those?
• We have two foundations, the National Golf Foundation (NGF) and the World Golf Foundation (WGF), why do we have two and what are the primary responsibilities and differences?
• What skills and services would a model golf industry foundation provide and how are current organizations measuring up to that standard?
Much like any industry and all organizations, times change and, along with that, the needs of constituents and the role of supporting organizations should evolve in parallel. When that doesn’t happen, it’s generally the result of either ossified leadership protecting their comfortable world or the industry they’re serving being asleep and not demanding accountability for their collective investment (memberships and dues). From my perspective, we’re not far from that point currently in the golf industry. Let me explain why.
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