Insights & Perspectives
Short essays on stewardship, governance, and the strategic finance decisions facing clubs, hospitality-focused businesses, and the growing businesses that lead their sectors.
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Showing 4 of 49 essays
Topics in Private Clubs
Private Clubs
Initiation fee cash arrives looking like income, but its accounting character — capital contribution, deferred revenue, or refundable liability — decides what a club board can actually do with it. Most boards find out the hard way, in February.
Private Clubs
Roughly 70% of clubs subsidize their food and beverage operation, yet most boards still treat the F&B loss as a failure to be fixed. The better move is to set the subsidy as a deliberate member-benefit line item with a target — and to know what the real number is.
Private Clubs
Commissioning a reserve study feels like capital planning, but the study is an inventory of needs — not a plan for paying for them. Three numbers tell a club treasurer whether the club is actually funding its future or quietly drifting toward an assessment.
Private Clubs
Holding dues flat doesn't avoid the cost of running your club — it converts five years of small, forgettable increases into one assessment members will never forget. We walk through the actual math, member by member.
