In times of pain, there is support. When tragedy strikes, there's a financial backstop. No matter how bad things get, people care and are there to help.
In 2024, a pair of devastating hurricanes blew through Florida within three weeks of each other. And while all eyes turned to North Carolina after Hurricane Helene flooded Asheville and flattened towns like Chimney Rock – places in the mountains, far from the ocean and at 2,500 feet above sea level – both hurricanes Helene and Milton left a 500-mile swath of destruction from Florida to Virginia as if God had swiped his hand across the landscape. On Florida’s west coast, people were left powerless and sometimes roofless for days and weeks. But for those employees at private clubs owned by Heritage Golf Group, anxiety never plunged into desperation. That’s because the company has created a 501-c-3 called the Heritage Cares Foundation to help employees in crisis.
According to Heritage partner and chief revenue officer Andy Miller, “Each year, our clubs host an event where all proceeds, plus all sponsorships and funds from auction items, go 50% to local charities and 50% to our Heritage Cares Foundation to help our employees in times of need. We’ve integrated that into our culture, and we’ve helped a lot of employees.”
Plenty of clubs, big and small, pass the hat when tragedy strikes. But when a hurricane rips through your golf course or tears the roof off your clubhouse, it’s hard to focus on the server who is suddenly homeless. That’s where Heritage Cares comes in. The foundation money is centralized away from the chaos so that it can be quickly and rationally allocated to those in need.
“No matter what market you’re operating [a golf course] in, clubs need to be good stewards. They’re part of the cultural and social fabric of a community,” Miller said. “So, we require every club to (host the charitable event) one day a year. Often, we will have 250 to 300 people per club for these.
“The result is that we’ve been able to help a lot of local charities. Members and employees identify those local charities, and they’re very passionate about the ones they choose. At the same time, we’ve been able to build a nice pool of money to help our employees when they’re hit by unforeseen circumstances. Most of those are related to fire, flood, death in the family, or medical situations, like a child with cancer, where we can get them some financial support.”
Hurricanes qualify. And with three properties on the Florida Gulf Coast, the foundation has been active the last two years. But that’s just part of what Miller and his partners, including CEO Mark Burnett who once ran ClubCorp (now Invited), see as a differentiator in the golf business.
“Mark’s thesis was that nobody was acquiring private clubs up the eastern seaboard from New York to Florida,” Miller said. “There were a few smaller, regional companies doing it, but nothing at scale. So, Mark and I came out of retirement to do this in 2020. Shortly thereafter we brought in Jim Oliver as our Chief Operating Officer. For the first nine months, we operated out of our chief financial officer’s kitchen in Northern Virginia. But now we have 37 properties.”
They started with six courses. Miller, Burnett and an investment partner bought the existing Heritage Golf in January of 2020, less than 100 days before Covid changed the world. By that summer golf had exploded.
“The supply and demand curve works now, especially after Covid where people discovered or rediscovered golf as an outdoor activity,” Miller said. “So, it’s been fun creating a little company where people are flourishing and growing. But we stuck to our knitting.”
That knitting is private clubs in markets that can support a membership. They aren’t reinventing the wheel. In places where Heritage owns multiple clubs, the company has created a Heritage Plus product that provides reciprocation. But the owners aren’t building a business based on a network.
“We have six-and-a-half courses on Hilton Head Island (South Carolina) and we have three in Colorado, three between Tampa and Fort Myers, three in St. Louis and three in New Jersey within 40 minutes of each other. But that’s not the core of our business. We have been strategic in that we like a nice grouping of clubs, because there are some member benefits to that as well as some economies of scale, but because golf has become more popular and members have become more possessive of their home clubs, we haven’t offered unlimited usage among various clubs within a market. The industry has moved to intimacy. So, we have been disciplined in that.
“Our business model depends on the needs of the individual club,” Miller said. “If you’ve seen one of our clubs, you’ve seen one of our clubs. All 37 are different. What we do when we acquire a club is we have a town hall meeting with the members. Then we have intense focus groups with 10 to 12 people. We have at least six of those where we get feedback on what the club does well, the areas where capital might need to be spent, and where there could be some operational improvements. Then we put together the plan from that member's feedback. From there, depending on how the club is positioned in the marketplace, if we need to spend millions it wouldn’t be uncommon for fees and dues to increase as those improvements come in.
“But there are clubs where you’re just raising the standards. When you do that, members use the club more. You see that in food and beverage where you add outdoor dining and improve the operation. One of the big numbers we examine is member usage. When members use the clubs more often, not only does that increase incremental revenues, but you also don’t have to replace members as often. It’s a gauge of member satisfaction. That helps you in the marketplace.”
It also helps with recruiting top talent when employees know that they are valued, especially in times of crisis.
“By the end of 2024, we will have raised over a million dollars for the Heritage Cares Foundation,” Miller said. “Everyone knows that fund is there. We’re all about helping our people when they need it most.”