Here’s a revised version: --- I’m currently facing two ongoing challenges in my position at a privately owned club within a gated community. All lot owners in the community are required to maintain at least a social membership. The club was previously owned by the developer who created the community, but about ten years ago, the HOA and the Country Club portions were divided between the two families that made up the development group. As a privately owned club, profit is understandably a primary objective. When preparing my first budget for this facility, I submitted a budget that I believed was necessary to run a successful program based on my experience. I did not inflate any numbers or build in safety nets on the expense side. Despite explaining this to my GM, he informed me that our owner wanted cuts on the expense side and more aggressive revenue projections. I told my GM that any adjustments to either would not be based on historical financial numbers or my professional opinion. Nonetheless, he arbitrarily increased revenue figures and cut expenses against my guidance. While it’s frustrating to use a budgeting process that disregards solid historical performance figures or the professional judgment of the department head—who should be the most qualified individual on staff in their specialty—I am pleased to say that we are outperforming the budget for the year, with better-than-projected instructional revenues and careful management of expenses. The other challenge I face is monetizing pickleball activity. Aside from my time at the Arizona Country Club, this has been a struggle in every pickleball program I’ve directed. We see strong participation in open play, challenge courts, and free events, but we struggle to build a robust instructional program like we have on the tennis side, where lessons, clinics, and team practices are all well attended. My initial organized leagues had a good response, but after the first couple of seasons, members mentioned that they were often competing against the same group repeatedly. This is also true for our intraclub tennis leagues, yet our members continue to enjoy the competition and appreciate having leagues organized for them. On the instruction side, pickleball players don’t seem to have the same drive to improve that our tennis players do. However, since I spearheaded the creation of our first ladies’ interclub pickleball league, we’ve seen an increase in pickleball lessons and clinics among the league participants. In its first season, we had two teams, both of which held weekly team clinics, and some individuals also took private lessons. I’ve only been at this club for a little over a year, and like the tennis side of our program, there was a ramp-up period before we hit our stride.

Member equity clubs do present unique challenges, but so do corporate-owned ones. However, in my experience, member equity clubs typically make those challenges worthwhile by offering better compensation and generally a more positive work environment.**

JD, thanks for sharing your professional background. Is your PB facility indoors, outdoors or both, and how many courts? What's the instructional program at Pickleballerz like? Do you feel like PB players are willing to play for instruction opportunities at a similar level to tennis players? I've had pickleball as part of my programs for the last 7 years and have found it's harder to generate income from the PB players than their tennis cohorts. Would love to know your thoughts. Thanks in advance for any information you can share.