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According to John Carroll, “You cease to be a club member when you sign onto
the board. You become a kind of guardian, sharing responsibility for the club’s suc-
cess and for its future.”
Although written with the private club in mind, the common-sense
solutions Carroll offers to those responsible for overseeing the running
of an organization apply to a much broader audience. Carroll has dis-
tilled the complexities of leadership and governance into practical
action. With thirty-five years of experience with boards of all types,
including eighteen years of service on club boards (usually as presi-
Club Board
Members
dent), he shows how a fine-tuned sense of “people skills,” coupled with
an understanding of how the club functions, creates an atmosphere
where decisions can be made for the benefit of the club and all its mem-
bers. He emphasizes that board members become guardians of their
club’s tradition and history while ensuring that the organization moves
forward as times change.
The author guides you through the complex operations of a private
club, all the while explaining how to deal gently with the complex
human dynamics that make club board membership both invigorating
and challenging. Along the way you are treated to an overview of the
history of private clubs, first in Europe and then in America, including
Guide
the development of golf and the changing face of modern-day clubs.
Learn what to expect as a member of the board:
• How is the president chosen?
• What are your legal responsibilities?
• How should meetings be handled?
• What about issues of money? privacy? complaints?
m e an E f f e c t ive
• How do you select an effective general manager or deal with an How to Beco B o a rd
John L. Carroll
ineffective one?
u r C l u b
Member of Yo
John Carroll practiced law in Indiana for more than forty years
and was president of the Indiana State Bar Association. He has
served as a member of more than twenty educational, charita-
ble, professional, and corporate boards and as president of
Frank Harrison
Name
Club
Date
Club Board
Members Guide
How To Become
an Effective Member
of Your Club Board
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by
any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by
any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publisher.
First Edition
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Introduction xi
4 Legal Matters 27
Fixing the Blame 27
How to Hire a Lawyer 31
Cover Yourself: Insurance 33
9 Money Matters 75
Checking the Books 75
What to Look For 76
Taxes 79
Appendix: Model Bylaws for a Country Club Using Equity Memberships 177
Index 195
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note: Female readers may take issue with my use of the mascu-
line pronoun throughout these pages. I don’t blame them. But anyone
who has ever tried to read a gender-neutral sentence, let alone write one,
knows how convoluted language can become in the interest of cultural
equality. I tried several ways to introduce a balance of female pronouns,
but the result was always cumbersome. So I went with “he/him/his”—at
least this time.
The increasing participation of women at all levels of club governance
is one of the most significant changes I have witnessed in a lifetime of
board service. Perhaps by the next edition of this book, women will have
become so involved in club affairs that I’ll be able to use “she/her/hers.”
ix
Introduction
Be Prepared
While most of your time will be taken up by such matters as greens fees,
dues, budgets, and membership, board service in the twenty-first century
can also mean dealing with tricky questions of discrimination (“No girls
allowed,” indeed), sexual harassment, and environmental protection. As a
board member, you will be called upon to authorize the expenditure of large
Introduction xiii
▲ Part One ▲
1
The earliest club boards typically consisted of charter members and/or those
members with a financial interest in the organization, such as the partners in
the land syndicates that built many of the early private clubs here and abroad.
British Beginnings
During the middle of the eighteenth century, roughly a century after
Cervantes first noted that “birds of a feather flock together,” a group
of affluent English merchants and landowners took to flocking
together from time to time at a London public house called
Almack’s. Englishmen of privilege did not (as a rule) patronize
pubs, which were places for workingmen to do their drinking with-
out offending the sensibilities of the higher orders, who usually did
their drinking at home. But Almack’s quickly became known as a
haven for men of title and position. They could relax there, let down
their powdered hair, and enjoy the thrill of slumming, elbow-to-
elbow, with dockworkers and hack drivers and gamekeepers. Well,
not elbow-to-elbow exactly: Edward Boodle, the general manager,
took care to shield his special customers from the rabble in a pri-
vate salon safely distant from the main bar.
In time, these pub evenings became so popular that the crowds
of gentlemen they attracted could not be contained in a back
3
room. Beginning in 1762, Almack’s was closed for one night every
fortnight for the exclusive use of these interlopers, who formalized
themselves as a chartered club they named “Boodle’s,” after the
helpful proprietor.
Boodle’s is considered the precursor of the modern club. Unlike
older London clubs such as White’s, for example (founded a gener-
ation earlier for the male members of its charter families), Boodle’s
took in new members wholly on the basis of their compatible per-
sonalities, regardless of such traditional markers as birth or means
or marriage. In other words, men got into Boodle’s if the publican
and his members wanted them in.
By the time of the American Revolution, London’s social scene
was bustling with dozens of private clubs established in the
Boodle’s mold. Many of them, including the prototype, quickly
became far too large and prosperous to be restricted to occasion-
al pub outings. In the auspicious year of 1776, Boodle’s itself
moved into its own clubhouse—a classically Georgian pile of mar-
ble and brick on St. James Street, paid for by a syndicate of mem-
bers who leased the facility to the club.
Similar financing schemes produced many of the grand club-
houses that to this day contribute mightily to London’s architec-
tural character. Clubs jockeyed for distinction by building instant
landmarks in the city’s better neighborhoods. A club called The
Travelers block-busted the venerable Pall Mall in 1831, locating
itself in a pseudopalazzo that ushered in the Renaissance Revival
era of architecture and design.
The splendor of their quarters suggests the elite status that pri-
vate clubs came to enjoy in London society. Membership became
increasingly competitive, and techniques were devised for the selec-
tion of suitable new members.
Notes James Mayo in his exhaustively researched book, The
American Country Club: Its Origins and Development (Rutgers University
Press, 1998): “In the 1820s London’s Union Club and many others
followed the practice of having a ballot box for each membership
candidate. Each member was allowed to put either a white ball for
approval or a black ball for denial into the candidate’s ballot box.
Thus the denial vote became popularly known as “blackballing.”
Enter Golf
Regardless of its Scottish ancestry, golf was a pastime seemingly
made for America at the turn of the twentieth century. Anybody
could play it, for one thing, and the risks of physical danger in doing
so were minimal, at most. Golf was not identifiably a game for vig-
orous young people nor did it require years of training (like, say,
horseback riding) nor extraordinary investment (like yachting).
Golf was competitive and yet, because it was played in groups, the
game fostered fellowship. And golf was new to America. Because the
pastime was not bound to traditional associations of old-money priv-
ilege—as was polo, for example—it was especially appealing to an
emerging class of affluent men.
Golf was first played sometime early in the fifteenth century. King
James I is believed to have introduced the game to London around
1608. The first golf club in the modern mold was the Royal and
Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrew’s, Scotland, established in 1754.
Popularly called the R&A, St. Andrew’s became the governing body
for golf throughout the Commonwealth and beyond. Today, the
international rules of golf are set jointly by the United States Golf
Association and the R&A.
The first formal golf course in America was a three-hole course
built in 1885 by a wealthy gamesman in Foxburg, Pennsylvania, for
his own use. Just three years later, however, St. Andrews Golf Club
in Yonkers, New York, became the first private club to build a golf
course for the use of its membership. It began with three holes at
first. Later, three more were carved into an adjacent cow pasture.
The founders of the American St. Andrews were both Scots—
Robert Lockhart and John Reid, the latter dubbed the “father” of
American golf. It was Reid who pushed the game—then played with
three woods, three irons, and “gutta-percha” balls made from
plant materials imported from Malaysia.
Over the next fifteen years, more than one thousand such clubs
were established in the United States, including the elegant