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President's message |
Our chapter partners
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GCSAA and its chapters share a lot. We share members. We share a similar mission and goals in terms of advancing and promoting the golf course management profession, helping our members achieve their career goals and growing the game of golf.
We also share frustrations.
We share frustration with failure to grow membership. We share frustration with lack of participation in programs and meetings, with communicating everything we have to offer members and employers, and with the time and other pressures that sometimes keep potentially excellent leaders from volunteering.
In a nutshell, we share frustration that, in the 10 years since we decided to strengthen our bond with shared membership and affiliation requirements, we all still operate pretty much in our own orbits with little partnership or anything else to show for it.
Over the past three years, the board of directors has met with dozens of chapters of various sizes and strengths as we’ve moved our quarterly meetings around the country. During these meetings, we’ve heard terrific success stories, such as Rocky Mountain GCSA’s outstanding membership penetration rate, Oregon GCSA’s recognition as a leading authority on environmental stewardship, and Northern California GCSA’s outreach to golfers and employers. But in general, local success tends to stay local.
GCSAA has been busy this past decade, too, developing new programs and tools, including excellent workshops and symposia for chapter executives, the chapter needs assessment, and a pilot field staff program. But we really haven’t seen results. As a matter of fact, we really haven’t even defined exactly the results we want. No doubt that’s part of the problem.
The GCSAA board has commissioned the Chapter Relations Committee to take a comprehensive look at the relationship between GCSAA and its chapters, and recommend some strategic indicators that will help us define and recognize progress toward this currently amorphous vision of partnership. In a process similar to the Professional Development Initiative, we are charging this group of highly engaged members to leave no stone unturned in examining how chapters and GCSAA can mesh our respective strengths to accelerate success in achieving shared goals.
We’re asking a lot of this committee, and the board expects that it will take at least a couple of years for them to tackle the job. Like you, I’m eager to see the end product. I have no doubt it will be of high quality, because it will synthesize the input of many members and chapters, with creativity sharply focused on how best to serve members.
As my predecessor, Sean Hoolehan, is fond of saying, the chapters and GCSAA aren’t “us” and “them.” We are the chapters, and the chapters are us.
The board is confident there can be more success for GCSAA, chapters and members through stronger partnerships. With shared membership, we are partners in every sense of the word, and now is the time to leverage this union for the common goals we share.
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