Board-grade reporting & GM partnership
A monthly packet a board can read in ten minutes, with written commentary and a general manager who is never surprised by it.
Naples · Southwest Florida
Fractional CFO leadership for the most club-dense market in America.
Executive financial guidance for private clubs, resorts and hospitality groups across Naples, Bonita Springs and Southwest Florida — at a fraction of the cost of a full-time CFO.
Serving Naples, Bonita Springs, Estero, Marco Island, Fort Myers, Sanibel and Captiva.
Why Southwest Florida
Nowhere else in the country concentrates this much member-owned governance into this little geography.
Collier County alone holds roughly sixty private golf facilities against a population near 385,000 — about one private club for every 6,400 residents, among the highest concentrations in the United States. Extend the line north through Bonita Springs and Estero to Fort Myers and the corridor becomes something closer to a single continuous club market, where general managers know each other, capital projects get compared across property lines, and member expectations are set by whichever clubhouse opened most recently.
That density produces a specific financial reality that has nothing to do with wealth. It is a matter of timing. Dozens of member-owned organizations, most built between 1980 and 2000, are arriving at capital renewal simultaneously — clubhouses, irrigation, cart paths, racquet facilities, waterfront infrastructure — while each is governed by a volunteer board that rotates every one to three years and staffed by a finance office sized for transactions rather than strategy.
The result is a market where the questions are consistent and the capacity to answer them is not. Boards inherit capital positions they had no hand in setting. Finance committees are asked to approve numbers assembled by people who were not there when the assumptions were made. The work is rarely about finding a new answer. It is about building a model the next board can still defend.
"Season runs November through April. Fixed cost runs twelve months. The clubs that struggle here rarely have a revenue problem — they have a cash model that was never built to survive the summer."
National context
1 : 6,400
Private clubs per resident, Collier County
Approximately 60 private golf facilities against a population near 385,000.
5,411
Country clubs in the United States
Concentrated in the South, with Florida leading at about 459 — roughly 8.5% of the national total.
~40%
Average capital reserve underfunding
Even as roughly 60% of private clubs raise capital expenditure budgets.
Who we serve
Private & Equity Clubs
Country, golf, yacht and social clubs across Collier and Lee counties. Dues and initiation-fee modeling, board-grade reporting, 501(c)(7) discipline, and the reserve and assessment planning that keeps member conversations calm.
Resorts & Independent Hospitality
Owner-operated resorts, boutique waterfront properties and chef-led restaurant groups from 5th Avenue South to Marco Island. Multi-outlet reporting, prime-cost discipline, and cash forecasting built for a five-month season.
Owner-Led Businesses
Founder-run companies between $1M and $50M in revenue. Forecasting, KPI design, lender relationships, and the financial architecture that makes a business sellable when the owner is ready.
The capital picture
The capital conversation nobody wants to have unprepared.
This corridor carries a compounding capital burden. Assets built in a single development wave are reaching end of life in a single window. Storm exposure has reset insurance and reconstruction costs on a schedule no ten-year plan anticipated. And most clubs here have commissioned a reserve study without ever converting it into a funded plan.
A reserve study is a list of components and costs; it is not a strategy. The distance between those two documents is where assessments come from — and the distance is usually closed in a single quarter of modeling, not a year of study.
- Reserve-study integration and multi-year funded modeling
- Capital project and debt-service planning
- Assessment scenario modeling before it reaches the membership
- Lender and banking relationship management
What we do
Operating budgets, dues modeling & forecasts
Budgets built from operating reality, dues scenarios modeled before they reach the membership, and forecasts that get revisited rather than filed.
Capital reserves, assessments & project finance
Reserve studies converted into funded multi-year plans, with project sequencing and debt service modeled against actual cash.
Member dues, F&B and payroll discipline
Prime cost, labor productivity and outlet-level contribution tracked closely enough to act on mid-month rather than mid-year.
Audit readiness, IRS exemption & controls
Clean schedules, documented controls and 501(c)(7) discipline that hold up under an auditor's or an examiner's questions.
Behind-the-scenes finance leadership
Senior financial judgment beside the general manager and the owner, without the cost or permanence of a full-time hire.
Common questions
What general managers and boards ask first.
Do you work on-site with clubs in Naples and Bonita Springs?
Yes. Southwest Florida is a core market for our practice. Engagements here typically include on-site presence around the board and finance committee calendar, with remote work between meetings.
How does a fractional CFO fit alongside our existing club controller?
The controller keeps the transactional work — payables, payroll, the close mechanics. The fractional CFO takes the layer above: the board packet and its narrative, dues and capital modeling, reserve strategy, lender relationships and internal controls. The CFO does not sit between the general manager and the board. They sit beside the GM, in front of it.
Our reserve study is three years old and nobody has modeled it. Is that a starting point?
It is one of the most common starting points we see. A reserve study lists components and costs; it is not a funding plan. Turning one into a multi-year funded model a finance committee can defend is a discrete, well-scoped first engagement.
What does this cost compared with hiring a full-time CFO?
Against a full-time club or hospitality CFO — salary, benefits and executive search costs — the fractional model typically runs a fraction of total cost, because you are buying a cadence rather than a headcount. Scope is revisited quarterly, and can scale up around a capital project or transaction and back down once a system is running.
If you are earlier in the question than this page assumes, our overview of what a fractional CFO actually does is the better starting point, and our private club CFO practice sets out the engagement model in full. Boards weighing the alternatives — executive search, interim, management company — may find our comparison of club CFO alternatives useful before they commit. For the capital work specifically, see how we treat reserve studies and capital planning and what we mean by board-grade financial reporting. General managers often start with our guide to the GM and CFO relationship. Our sector writing also appears at clubfinance.org and cluboperations.org.
Elsewhere in our regional practice, the Palm Beach hub covers the east coast of Florida and the Charleston and Lowcountry hub covers the coastal Carolinas.
Start the conversation
A quiet, candid first conversation — no pitch, no obligation.
Tell us about your club or property and the questions in front of your board. We will tell you honestly whether a fractional engagement is the right fit for a Southwest Florida organization — or what we would suggest instead.