Solving Your Club's Culture Issue: 9 Things Your Club Should Stop Doing Today

A lot of clubs are wrestling with a challenge that doesn't have an easy answer: how do you keep legacy members engaged and happy while also welcoming the next generation who have different expectations around amenities, programming, and communication?

It's a real issue. The traditions and culture that made a club special to one generation doesn’t always resonate the same way with the next. And yet both groups are at the club, both paying dues, both expect an amazing experience.

What's interesting is that many cultural issues at clubs aren't actually about generational differences or changing member expectations. They're about operational procedures and communication channels that, often unintentionally, create confusion, distrust, or disconnection across the entire membership.

The good news? These are fixable problems. Clubs just have to be willing to look honestly at what's happening and be open to making some changes. Here are ten things clubs should consider stopping to build (or rebuild) a healthy culture for all generations.

1. Stop Keeping Members in the Dark

In the absence of information, people make up their own story. And it's usually not good.

At many clubs, leadership teams work on "big projects" at the board level for months without communicating to members until they are ready to send it to the members for a vote. The only problem? The big project is new information for the members. Or member-related incidents happen that leadership knows about, but members hear nothing official—so the rumor mill starts building momentum. Before you know it, speculation and suspicion create more problems than the original issue ever did.

If you're working on a master plan, tell members you're working on it and provide lots of updates. Share your thinking, even if decisions aren't final. When something significant happens that affects the membership, address it directly. You don't need to share every detail of every board meeting, but transparency builds trust. Silence leads to conspiracy theories.

2. Stop Using Assessments as Your Default Funding Strategy

For decades, many clubs have operated on a model where they assess members whenever they need to update something or add amenities. Need a new irrigation system? Assessment. Want to renovate the locker rooms? Assessment. This was just accepted as "how things work."

The highest-performing clubs today operate differently. They've built significant reserves in capital funds that can be used to pay for updates and enhancements without surprising members with sudden financial demands. When you constantly assess, you create financial uncertainty and member frustration. Some members can't afford unexpected expenses. Others resent being asked to fund improvements they may not live to enjoy.

Regular capital contributions, built into dues or funded through smart financial planning, create predictability. Members know what to expect, and the club can act strategically instead of reactively.

3. Stop Operating Without a Long-Range Plan

When members don't know where the club is headed, every decision feels arbitrary. Why are we spending money on pickleball courts instead of the pool? Why are we investing in technology when the parking lot has potholes? Without a clear long-range plan that all members know about and understand, you create confusion and distrust.

A solid long-range strategic plan answers fundamental questions: What are our priorities over the next 5-10 years? What investments are we making and why? How do we plan to balance preservation with innovation? When members understand the roadmap, they can see how individual decisions fit into a larger strategy. They may not always agree with every choice, but at least they understand the thinking behind it.

These strategic plans need to be revisited quarterly, at least, and when circumstances change and you need to adjust course? That's much easier to explain when you've established the original plan clearly.

4. Stop Treating Mission, Vision, and Values Like Meaningless Paperwork

Many clubs have mission, vision, and value statements that sound like they were copied from a template. "We value integrity, excellence, and hospitality." Great. So does literally every other club in America.

These aren't just words to put on a website. When done right, they become a north star—guiding everything from capital project priorities to governance decisions to how staff interacts with members. But that only works if values are actually distinctive and meaningful to the specific club.

Think of most generic values as "permission to play" values—things a club has to have just to be in the game. Of course integrity matters. That's table stakes. What makes this club different? What cultural elements should be protected and amplified? What should the club be uniquely known for in its community?

When every member and staff person understands and embraces these core elements, decision-making becomes clearer. Should the club invest in expanding junior programming or building a new event space? Well, if one of the core values centers on multi-generational community, that helps answer the question.

5. Stop Jerking Your Initiation Fees Around

Some clubs raise and drop initiation fees like they're adjusting the thermostat, and it creates chaos in the market. One year it's $75,000, next year it's $50,000, then back up to $65,000. This can make your club look unstable at best, shifty at worst.

It also creates resentment among members who joined at different times. Someone who paid $75,000 sees the club drop fees to $50,000 and feels like they got taken. They may not say it directly, but there's an underlying sense that they should have more say in club decisions because they paid more.

Clubs need to be more thoughtful and strategic about pricing. Study the market. Understand the value proposition. Set initiation fees at a level that reflects the quality and exclusivity of the club, then hold steady unless there are significant changes to justify an adjustment. Prospective members want to see stability. Current members deserve to feel like the club isn't playing games with pricing. If you are unsure what is the appropriate amount, ask consultants like Club Benchmarking who have data that can help you make the right move.

6. Stop Allowing Board Members to Micromanage Operations

Much has been written about this over the years, but it bears repeating - board governance and operational management are different jobs. When board members bypass the GM and membership director to "fix" things directly, it creates chaos. Staff gets mixed messages. Managers' authority gets undermined. Policies start contradicting each other.

The board's job is governance and strategy. They should be setting direction, establishing policy, and hiring great leadership to execute. They shouldn't be telling the head pro how to run tournaments, instructing the chef on menu items, or making promises to members about operational issues without involving management.

This is a hard boundary to maintain, especially with board members who are successful executives in their professional lives. They're used to being hands-on problem-solvers. But at the club, their role is different. When this boundary gets blurred, the club becomes nearly impossible to manage effectively.

7. Stop Waiting for Members to Complain

A lot of clubs operate reactively. They wait for members to complain, then scramble to respond. By the time leadership hears about a problem, it's often been festering for months and affected multiple members who never said anything—they just quietly downgraded their membership or resigned.

Creating regular, structured ways to gather feedback changes this dynamic. Annual surveys, quarterly focus groups with different member segments, or simple check-ins after major events can surface issues when they're still manageable. A club might learn that its new member onboarding process is ineffective, or that younger families feel left out with programming options, or that the pace of play on weekends is becoming a problem.

When clubs seek feedback proactively, they send a message: we want to know what you think before you get frustrated and leave. That's the foundation of a healthy culture.

8. Stop Ignoring Your Staff in Member Communications

Members notice how their club treats staff. When a server has been with the club for 20 years and it's never been acknowledged in the newsletter, leadership is sending a message. When the head pro wins a regional tournament and nobody mentions it, the signal is that people don't matter—only operations do.

This creates a transactional culture where staff feel like replaceable parts in a machine and members sense the lack of warmth. On the other hand, when clubs celebrate staff milestones, share their stories in member communications, and publicly recognize excellence, they're building something different. They're showing that the club values people, not just functions.

And here's the thing: for many new members, staff become their first real friends at the club. Whether it’s an assistant golf professional, the dining room manager or the person checking in families at the pool—these relationships are the building blocks of a member's connection to the club. Treating staff as invisible undermines the very community clubs are trying to build.

9. Stop Making Major Decisions Without Explaining the "Why"

At some clubs, leadership will announce a new policy or major change without any context, and then they’re surprised when members complain. "We're eliminating tee time reservations more than three days out." Okay, but why? If members understood that course utilization data showed 40% of prime weekend slots were going unused because members were holding times "just in case," they might support the change even if it personally inconveniences them.

When clubs don't explain their reasoning, even smart decisions feel arbitrary. Members are left to guess at leadership's motivations, and as we mentioned, in the absence of information, people assume the worst. But when leadership shares their thinking—the data they reviewed, the member feedback they considered, the problem they're trying to solve—it creates an opportunity for understanding. There may still be pushback, but it's informed pushback rather than reflexive resistance.

This doesn't mean clubs need member approval for everything. But it does mean members deserve to understand the rationale behind changes that affect them.

Moving Forward

Here’s the thing, clubs don’t intentionally try to create dysfunction. These habits develop gradually over generations, often with the best intentions. Club leaders are trying to make the “right” decisions, but often find themselves deep in the trees having lost sight of the forest. When they emerge with their “big idea” the members are often still at the starting point, while the leaders are focused on the finish line.

But what tends to happen is that over time, even well-intentioned habits can compound into something larger. They can create an environment where members, and even staff, feel disconnected from leadership, and distrust builds a breeding ground. The club starts to feel more transactional than communal.

In truth, no club has a perfect culture with 100% member satisfaction. They still make mistakes and face challenges, but they tend to operate with transparency, treat people with respect, plan strategically, and communicate consistently. They recognize that a healthy culture doesn't happen by accident. It's built through hundreds of intentional decisions about how the club operates and how it treats its members and staff.

If any of these patterns sound familiar, you’re not alone. However, the first step is recognizing them so your club can start building toward something better.