EPISODE 90

Derek Correct me if I’m wrong, but Holes Fore Hope started in Minnesota five or six years ago, and has since grown to support both the private club industry and public golf clubs across several states. I think, if I am right, maybe five, six, or seven states provide educational scholarships and financial aid to those in the golf community, oftentimes on the employee or the staff side of clubs that are facing some sort of hardship. And this gratitude for the game of golf really aligns with our own passion for this industry. And it’s an incredible foundation. We’re excited to talk about it today. 

Tucker Craig, you don’t have a background in the club space, correct? So you’ve never worked at a club, or you’ve never worked as a general manager, or any of that kind of background. So what led you to this passion of saying, I really wanna give back to those people that are maybe behind the scenes? 

Craig Well, it’s two things, you know. When did it start? And then to answer your question, Tucker, yes, I did work in the industry. And I worked in the industry in high school in the bag room at the Meadows Country Club. And that was my exposure to the private club industry. Because my folks didn’t have the economic means, God forbid, to even help me play golf, and God forbid, help me get to a private club. So I started in the public side for the Sarasota Junior Golf Association. For $2, you could play Forest Lakes and carry your bag. And I was lucky enough to get the job in the bag with the Meadows. And that’s where I noticed the golf shop, food and beverage, very passionate, talented people who loved the country club or the golf experience, and really enjoyed being around the members. It probably started in my head when I was 16, so in 1986, and then when I went on to work at Orchard Lake Country Club in 1994 as the assistant pro working for John Gates, I got to see another dimension of that in Detroit. And I saw some of the best members in the world – Doc Borio, Jeff Bergeron, Steve Turner – and just their generosity to the staff. And so as I left that side of the world and went into the tech space, for 25-plus years, it always stuck with me. And I said, you know, once I was done kind of working full time, we’re gonna do something meaningful. And thankfully, I have a great group of friends here in Minneapolis, who I exposed this idea to. We rallied over some cold ones on a snowy night in December in 2018 at Chowballa. And we just drew a line in the sand and said, we are going to make this thing happen. It’s going to happen the first week of October on a Thursday night. Let’s start to rally. That was the beginning of our first server event for Holes Fore Hope. 

Tucker That experience, up till now, has been six years have passed. And now, like Derek had mentioned, you’re a board chair. And so this is something that you’ve started, but what does your role look like today when you think about how you organize and rally people together? What does that mean for you? 

Craig What I love about our mission when we get to meet individuals for the first time, and you guys, I think, are a great example of this, whether you want to donate $5 to the mission or $5,000 to the mission, respectfully, we view you as the same. And then more importantly, our simple qualification for anybody that wants to be part of the mission is, do you love the game of golf, and do you believe it’s done more for you personally and professionally than you can do to give back to the game and golf, and do like helping people? Because if those two things are a yes, we’re a perfect fit. And so when you think about my day-to-day, it’s just out telling that story with our board members, with our community members, with the teams that we support in the community on the private side and the public side of what we’re about, what we are trying to do, who we serve, and why it’s important. And thankfully, we have over 1,500 people who feel just as passionate about it in their own way. And they’re carrying our message into the community when they can and where they see fit to help grow the mission.

Derek I think that 1,500 number is going to grow pretty substantially pretty quickly as more and more people start to understand what it is that you do. When I introduce you and I say that Holes Fore Hope provides financial support and scholarships, that is really an underwhelming, insufficient description of all of the ways that the funds that get raised help the people that you’re trying to help. 

Craig Every dollar matters. A dollar still means a lot to me. $20 means a lot to me. A hundred feels like a lottery ticket still today. And so you think about the community we serve, and I’m going to give you two examples. You’re an assistant pro, and this was our first benevolence request ever out of a club here in Minneapolis, Delwood. A young assistant pro, 25 years old, is recently married, and his wife gets cancer. They have to go through all the treatments to manage and eliminate her cancer. And let’s say the bill’s rough and tough – $7,000. You’re an assistant pro, newly married to your wife, where do you find $7000? You immediately go into debt. You’re on a payment plan, potentially with your health care organization. So our very first benevolence request was $1,000 donation to help this young couple battle cancer. We’ve had multiple examples like that, battling cancer. We’ve had a loss of life for families in that scenario. Another one that comes to mind is, I’ll keep the club nameless, but one of our advocates and board members saw one of his coworkers a little distraught in the kitchen. And he went over to his coworker and said, Hey, what’s going on? Well, this coworker had just gotten a new used car. And when I say new used, call it a 12-year-old car. And so, it’s a $1,400 bill. I just bought a new used car that’s 12 years old. Where am I gonna find the $1,400, right? So if we believe the idea that every American can’t stomach a $400 unexpected bill, or not every American, but a high percentage, let’s call it 95%. That creates a lot of stress and anxiety. And I think if the membership knew about it, especially a 20-year employee, a 10-year employee, they would just say at lunch at the table or in the bar, Hey, everybody give me 100 bucks, problem solved. Those are the things that our members don’t see, but they’re happening every day in our staff’s lives. And so we just wanted to open up a path where they could reach out, not be judged, hear their story, in support of one of their coworkers, and eliminate that anxiety. And if that doesn’t make me feel good, I don’t know what does. 

Tucker There’s a level of doing good for people, right? When we’re talking about people, another layer of this group’s job is to take care of people every day, to help you make memories, to help make sure that your family has what it needs to enjoy their time. And these people need to be taken care of on their own. And I think that’s very powerful when you think about just the opportunity out there. And what you just mentioned that I think is really interesting is that it’s not necessarily that members don’t want to give, or they don’t want to be generous. It’s that they don’t understand that it’s happening because it’s kind of shielded from them. And what’s interesting to me is this Holes Fore Hope is an avenue, like you’re talking about, not only from an employee standpoint – Hey, we’re here to help you reach out to us – but also from a member standpoint – You have a great heart, you’re a great person, let’s give you an opportunity to be that great person that we all know you are too. 

Craig There are a ton of clubs that have different programs. I always think about the holiday program where you’re chipping in for the staff end-of-year bonus, Christmas-type bonus. And those are awesome and unbelievable. And maybe your club has an individual scholarship program that they do. Those are unbelievable. We want you to do all of those and then some, because this isn’t an either or. What I would say is that the best clubs with the best members believe in abundance. It’s always one plus one equals three. And so the more we can advocate for our incredible employees and help them when they need the help, that’s what’s inspiring. And so we’re just gonna continue to shine the light on it. There’s a club out in California. I think the first year they did their event in Palm Springs, and they have a very rich membership. We’ll just call it that. Very affluent. I think at their first event, they raised $1.9 million, and it just became part of the culture of the club. And I think this is one of these things that brings the club together in celebration of their employees, but then also in a community like Minneapolis or Sarasota or Detroit or Northern Michigan, you start to unite this greater golf community that’s not necessarily united. They’re friends of friends, and they know somebody, and maybe they play in City League. That’s awesome. But they really kind of get nested in their own club experience. And we’re the first program to bring this group together. You guys have probably seen it through the scholarship breakfast, where if you’ve been once, you’ll never miss another scholarship breakfast. If you’ve been to one of our three galas, you’re like, okay, how does it get better than Rocko and Lumpy in the first gala? And then Chandler in the second gala, because he crushed it. And by the way, Tom Coyne comes in in the third gala, and now you’re like, we got to resurrect Prince because Tom crushed it. So you feel that energy, and you just feel the power of people working together. 

Tucker I think that’s an interesting way of looking at private clubs. They are their own community in their own right. Each club is its own smaller community. And those who maybe belong to more than one club or they’ve been to multiple clubs, they understand that it’s a community that isn’t always fully connected. But there’s no reason why it can’t be. And I think that’s interesting when you look at it. They’re the same mindset people. They have the same values. They want to move forward together, but they are almost stuck in their own little community. And this is a great opportunity to say, let’s think about the broader opportunity here that we have as a group, as a type of people that love golf or love tennis or love to get together and make memories with friends and family and all that. And the staff are a huge part of the ability for that organization and that industry to move forward and to build something greater than it is today. It’s fantastic. 

Craig You know, I wouldn’t be on this podcast today if it wasn’t for the connections. My first round of golf with Shawn Messner at The Club at Golden Valley, before it was called The Club at Golden Valley. Great job, Team Sussner. That branding exercise is fantastic. I get invited through John Cleveland, playing with Mez, and meeting Mez. Next thing you know, I’m playing with Mez on the guest day of the following year. Next thing you know, Mez and I are taking golf trips together with a couple of other guys. That’s the spirit of it. Friendships that were made that may have never been made, and then those friendships working together for a bigger purpose in the game that we all love. 

Derek Speaking of connections, I’m going to shamelessly. I don’t know that Tom Coyne is listening to our podcast yet, but all of his books are right there behind me on my shelf. So someday I might hit you up for his email and we’ll see if we can keep that roll going. You rattled off a few different cities. You’ve talked about the web of connection between members being members of multiple places, members traveling, and members having friends in other places. While you started this here in Minnesota, you’re now expanding to clubs in several other states with a vision to continue to grow that. And also not just to private clubs, but also to public courses as well. Describe a little bit your vision for the evolution and why it’s important not just to do this in Minnesota but for you and your board and the people that are working so hard on Holes Fore Hope. Why is it so important to grow this reach throughout the country? 

Craig It’s the power of the people. So it’s the friendships that are yet to be made. It’s finding more people where the game of golf has given them more than they can give back. And they love helping people. And we enjoy being in each other’s company, and we enjoy doing good together, and then being together. So, when you get to these different clubs and they see the hoodie, or they see the head cover, or they see a ball marker, or they see the golf bag, or they see the towel, and they’re like, Hey, what’s for Holes Fore Hope? And you tell them a story. And they’re like, We need that. We should do that. Hey, I got a friend. And then you give them an example of where you’ve helped in these situations, and they go, Well, we just had something like that with so and so. If we would have had Holes Fore Hope, we could have probably done that. So that’s the exciting part. I’ve got multiple friends in multiple markets – Jonathan Wicksall and Maddie Peele up in northern Michigan, right to the table, donating and helping kick off northern Michigan. You got Fred Disanto, Todd Weitekamp, and Danny Bash helping kick off the Florida piece. And by the way, they’ve been advocates for us outside of the state. That’s the beauty of this thing. They were donating to us, even though they didn’t live in Minnesota, for the most part. Dave Torbenson is firing up the Wisconsin market for us as a former head pro and GM over there and now at Mankato Golf Club. So we’ve got my friend Jeff Bergeron donating to us in the Arizona space because, again, he believes in the power of the people and the game of golf. So we’re down a good path there. We want to ramp faster, obviously. And then on the PGA side, specifically, that we did because of my dear friend, Ryan Hanford, who’s the longtime head pro at Midland Hills, we saw an opportunity in the market to help the public side of this equation, specifically with aspiring PGA members. So if you’re at a public facility like Rum River Hills or the Wilds, or you’re in a semi-private facility like Deer Run, or you’re in a resort facility like Grandview or Cragun’s, those folks aren’t necessarily getting rich quick, trying to become a golf pro. And then more importantly, when you look at the levels of education they have to go through to achieve a class A status, when it’s all said and done, let’s call it $10,000 of just pure cash. There is no education funding at these public facilities. So they have to do it on their own. So if the first level of this is rough and tough, call it all in $1,500. My question to all of us who love the game of golf, and specifically think about those thousands of public, semi-private, resort-type facilities, is if you’re making, let’s just pick a number, let’s call it $40,000 a year as an assistant pro, $3,300 a month, where do you come up with $1,500 cash to go get your education, level one? Where do you get it? How do you save for it? So that’s an obstacle to getting people into level one and wanting to be an aspiring pro who wants to grow the game, serve the game, and, oh, by the way, how many of those assistants maybe start in a public facility and then end up in a private facility? So we can eliminate that for them and get them in. Like Dave Torbenson said down at Mankato, if I weren’t lucky enough to be at a private club that paid for my education to become a Class A professional, I wouldn’t be in the game of golf today. And that would be an incredible shame. Because you look at Torby’s track record and then you look at programs like Golfapalooza, that I think is now in its eighth year in Mankato, that he brought from Wisconsin and gets kids into the game, that wouldn’t be happening if Torby wasn’t in the game. 

Tucker When you speak about this, I think it’s really interesting to me because I see a club or a member’s investment or involvement in Holes Fore Hope as not necessarily a contribution to their local community. I see that as something where they believe that the golf industry, I don’t know what you’d call that at large, the club – public or private – industry needs to move forward. It needs to take care of its own. It needs to be better. And I think it’s interesting when you look at how a club can get involved in something like this. How does that impact how maybe members see that club in its own right? We talk about brand all the time. We talk about building a brand. We talk about kind of contributing to a larger story and doing something impactful that gives your members a place to feel like, wow, I really belong here. How does Holes Fore Hope contribute to that sense of belonging, and how does it actually deepen the culture, even though you might be impacting lives outside of your own personal organization? 

Craig I love making donations to anything golf-related. So if it’s my buddy, Brian Eater, who started Birdies for Brains here to help cancer patients in Minneapolis, I wanna do that. If it’s the USGA that helps grow the game, I wanna do that. If it’s a Park Club member making a donation to the Western Golf Association, I want to do that because it’s in the name of golf. It’s not us versus them. It’s golf. We are all golf. So I’m motivated, and I think a lot of our members are motivated. And Tucker, to your question a little bit, this is a wild card where I’ve had an individual come to our scholarship breakfast every year who doesn’t play golf and makes a donation because they’re so inspired by what we’re doing, and they’re not even in the golf community. So really what that says to the rest of us in the golf community, whether we play putt putt, or we like to go to the range, or we actually play in a scramble every year, whatever your relationship with golf is, we’re a piece of that relationship because we are in service of golf. And yes, our core mission started in the private sector to help benevolence requests and scholarships of club employees and children of club employees. We’re not gonna slow down on that mission. We hope every major market ultimately does that. And yes, we’re gonna advocate for future aspiring head pros to get their Class A status and get into the PGA of America and eliminate that obstacle. But again, I go back to, do you like helping people? And has golf played a role in your life? Golf could play a role in your life because your grandkid plays golf. And that’s your relationship with golf. And you like helping people. So you may not even play golf, but because your grandchild does and you love helping people, I would say you’re part of Holes Fore Hope. But I’ll tell you this. I think the private clubs in every major city, and if you’re doing whatever you’re doing, keep doing it and take it to another level, and I would still encourage you to invite us in with your membership, and let’s grow this community in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Let’s grow this community in Des Moines, Iowa. Let’s grow this community in Scottsdale. Let’s grow this community in Detroit. Because we see the benefits of it in its infancy in the first six years, just in Minneapolis, in northern Michigan, and in Sarasota, Florida, as an example.

Tucker  It’s not a either or conversation. It’s an and conversation, which I really like. It’s not necessarily should I donate here or there. It’s and there and do this and we can do that. And it’s about multiplication rather than trying to substitute.

Craig And we made a conscious decision. And this isn’t a knock on anything. And I know why fundraising does it. And I appreciate the method to the madness to some degree of, hey, if you donate at this level, you’re X. You donate at this level, you’re Y. You donate at this level, you’re Z. And I understand that. I’ll go back to $5 or $5,000. If you like helping people and the game of golf has helped you personally and professionally, there are no levels here. We’re all one. 

Derek We work with clubs that have their own foundations. And we work with clubs that I don’t know if they do anything. It seems to me, my impression is in this industry that there’s a sense of philanthropy and giving back that permeates the entire industry. And when we think about tying it back to brand, we say a brand isn’t your logo. It’s not your tagline. It’s not your colors. It’s who we are. And many clubs that we work with are really successful clubs. When they say who we are, they include their team and their staff in that we. It’s not just the we of our membership. The way some of these clubs talk about their members, the members talk about the staff, it’s almost as if the staff were paying members also. I’m curious if you see that too, and I’m also curious if through Holes Fore Hope, you’ve seen any clubs actually transform from maybe not being as benevolent or philanthropic as they could be, and you kind of help them take that next step so it becomes part of that club’s internal identity of who they are. 

Craig I’ve got a couple of great stories on that to answer your question on starting. We didn’t have anything to now we have something. And it’s growing, and there’s energy, and people never really just asked. Sometimes you just need somebody to show up and poke the bear and say, Hey, I got an idea. And so two clubs actually had me come in and speak. I was invited in by one head professional, and I was invited in by another GM. Would you come speak to our board members and kind of tell them what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and how you’re doing it, and what it means? And these were two clubs that didn’t have a program. And I’m happy to say both of them are thriving, and they’re building on this program within their membership. And it’s actually giving their membership a little bit more purpose, to your point, than just showing up and playing golf. And playing with my three to four, five or six buddies and showing up, it’s like, Okay, hey, we did this last year, and these are the people we impacted. And here are the faces, and here are the stories. And here is, I’ll make up a name, Susie’s son who’s now going off to school and has got a scholarship, or, hey, we know that your car broke down last year and we helped solve that problem for you as a 10-year waiter or waitress at the club. I’m just using examples. One of my favorites was last year when the folks up at Northland really doubled down with Keith Norby’s leadership and Connor and Vuce and Hoyer and McCall and Cypher and Cubby. I’m probably missing a few names there, but one of their longtime, awesome employees, Odie the bartender, slipped and fell off a ladder. Odie was going to be out of work for two months. We had two benevolence requests that ended up in Odie’s hands, sponsored by the generous donations of the Northland members to help fund that. And the coolest thing was when I got a note from two of the donors who said, Hey, Craig, just want to let you know, Odie swung by for the Christmas party here. We saw him. He’s doing better. He’s going to be back to work in three weeks. And you could just feel how proud that member was in that email, in the energy that was probably in that room where Odie felt a sense of relief, where my back’s not against the wall, and I’m losing money. My members see me. They like me. We’re one. I get pretty fired up about that. So that’s what we’re playing for. 

Tucker A general manager is listening to this, or a membership director is listening to this, and they’re thinking, okay, this all sounds fantastic. What should I do? How can I take this to the next level for my own club, and how do I introduce this to membership? This idea of we might already be giving, and here’s another way we can do that – how do you kind of bridge that gap in the conversation and start doing that “and” portion that I was mentioning when we’re saying we can this and this, and here is how we’re going to do that? What does that look like for me? 

Craig It usually starts with a call from somebody who knows me, or one of our board members, or one of the community members who says, Hey, you should speak to Craig to hear their story and how this thing has unfolded at so-and-so club, and so-and-so club, and so-and-so club. And that’s really how it starts. It’s a non-threatening conversation over a cup of coffee or lunch or dinner, whatever it may be, where I just want to pick the brain and say, Here’s what we do at the club today. Here’s what we don’t do. Here’s what I think we could do. And could you help us start to think this way and plant the seed? Now I have a belief that leaders always lead. They never stop leading. So we just have to find the leaders in the club, both on the staff side and the membership side, who want to lead. And I’ll tell you, one of my favorite picks was a couple of years ago, and they come every year, but it just crystallized for us. And this was the year that The Club at Golden Valley was going through the renovation. Multiple scholarship winners. They’ve had multiple benevolence request winners. They have multiple teams who play in the three-on-three. We’ve held the gala there with Tom Coyne. We held our first scholarship breakfast there in 2020. And you see their GM, Don, who’s retiring. So kudos to you, Don. You see Mark Zeman, the president of the club. You see Jake Foat, the head professional there. You see one of their board members there. You see one of our board members, who’s a leader at the club and creating change, Timmy Costigan. And then you just feel that energy, right? And my dream is to imagine if every club in the Twin Cities walked in with their GM, their head pro, and the president of their Board. In fairness to their superintendent, who was really busy building the golf course, he was there in spirit. He was there and spirit. And we could feel that. So that’s the opportunity, because leaders always lead. 

Tucker If you had one message for those club leaders, and say, You’re leading and I inspire you to lead, what can they take away from the story of Holes Fore Hope and say, lead in this way, move in this direction? If I can ask you to lead, lead this way. What would you say to that? 

Craig I’ll tell you one more story, and I’ll talk about the leadership of it. Down at my club in Florida, we had one of our staff members, Cass, out of the blue doing his physical. Next thing you know, he’s got to go in for triple bypass open heart surgery. And you can imagine the weight of that surgery at his age, 60-plus. And he’s been an incredible, loyal part of our team for a long time. And he’s going into the heart of the season where he makes most of his tips. So now I’m out of work, and I make most of my tips December through April, and I’m going to be gone for three months, the anxiety of that. I’ve got to recover my health. Then, financially, I just took a hit in the sweet spot of my season. A handful of guys around the club just start rallying. Next thing you know, there’s a wad of cash. Here you go, Cass, please don’t worry about your tips. I think you’re all squared away. That’s just an example. That’s just people doing the right thing for a loyal staff member who’s part of their team, who cares about the club, who cares about their members, hit a rough patch in the road, and because we knew about it, we could do something about it. And my point to everybody is, there are so many things that we don’t know about because we probably just don’t know our staff like we could and should. And that’s not a knock on the leaders of the club. What I’m just saying is people in general are proud. They don’t want to bring their challenge to their boss. Luckily, that example I gave you in the kitchen was a leader at the club here in Minneapolis who saw a coworker stressed and just asked the question. And I just think the more we ask the question of our team members, How are you doing? Any issues? Have you had any bumps in the road this year? Is there something we should know about that we could help you with? Whether the club wants to do it or foundations like ours can step in through the generosity of those members who believe in what we do and know we’re a vehicle to a system if they want some anonymity. I love the old Maya Angelou quote, When we know better, we do better. And so I think that’s the opportunity. 

Derek Craig, is the best first step for somebody who wants to get involved holesforehope.org? By the way, that’s fore as in F O R E holesforehope.org. Besides the website, how can people get involved? 

Craig I think that’s a great way to start. Come in, check out the site, see the photographs of our PGA winners, our scholarship winners. Obviously, we can’t talk about our benevolence requests on our website because that’s a personal thing. But let me tell you, their material. We should be proud every time we make one of those requests. And if you never meet that person, that’s really the spirit of giving. My email’s down there, mnpratts@yahoo.com. You can always reach out to me. And I think my cell phone number’s down there. You can always reach out to me. I’m always available. I am passionate about this. I know our board members are passionate about this, our community members are proud about this, and the people who’ve benefited from this are extremely proud of this. I hope we can just do more. 

Derek Craig, really appreciate you coming on. We would encourage all of our listeners to go to holesforehope.org. Check it out, get involved, and share that information with your club. Let’s grow this organization and help it continue to expand as it’s doing some amazing, amazing work. Thanks, Craig. 

Craig Thank you. 

Derek Thanks, everybody, for tuning into Brands Made Meaningful. We will see you again next time. Have a good one. Thanks for listening. Sussner is a branding firm dedicated to helping make a meaningful mark, guiding member organizations into the next chapter of their story. Learn more at sussner.com.