How Southport Makes Club Spending Decisions | CAQ

Every croquet club runs on decisions made off the lawn. Budgets, equipment, facilities, contractors. Get these right and the club stays healthy. Get them wrong and you're in trouble.

Southport Croquet Club president Charlie Ernst has made plenty of these calls. One of the biggest: how to maintain their lawns.

Lawn maintenance is one of the biggest ongoing costs for any croquet club. Southport weighed up the options between contractors and doing the work in-house, factoring in quality, reliability, and long-term cost. Getting that balance right means the lawns stay playable without eating through the budget.

Good decisions aren't always about cutting costs. Sometimes they're about making the club a better place to be. When Southport got a liquor license, it wasn't about selling drinks. It was about giving members a reason to stay after the game. A cold drink on the veranda after a game keeps people around longer, and that social time is what turns casual players into committed members.

Charlie explains why they got a liquor license and how they keep it simple. Cashless sales mean less work for the treasurer.

Before any big spend, Southport does the maths. They run a formal cost-benefit analysis and take it to the committee before committing. That discipline means fewer surprises and more confidence that spending will deliver results.

Charlie describes how Southport runs formal cost-benefit analysis before major decisions.

Every decision comes back to the same question: does this make the club better for members? Good lawns, good equipment, somewhere nice to sit afterwards. It all adds up.

Having a nice veranda, new lights, nice mallets and good equipment all add up to members enjoying their time at the club.

Southport's approach comes down to three things: do the maths before you spend, invest in what keeps members coming back, and make the club feel like somewhere people want to be. Share what's working at your club on ClubHub.