Hope Becomes Reality For Golf Courses And Others In Need Thanks To BC Amateur Sport Fund
When The Banks Of The Coquihalla River Overflowed Last November, It Did Serious Damage To The Hope Golf Club - Image Courtesy Hope GC
By Brad Ziemer, British Columbia Golf
Eric Beamish isn’t sure the driving range addition at Salt Spring Island Golf Club would have been built last year without the help of the B.C. Amateur Sport Fund.
The club used the fund to help raise money for the addition of a covered post-and-beam driving range area that includes six mats under a shed-style roof.
“It probably doubled the amount of donations we got,” said Beamish, who is the club’s operations manager. “The fund provided a way for us to offer charitable tax receipts to people donating. It probably doubled the amount of donations that we got. We wouldn’t have been able to fund the project without that ability to offer charitable tax receipts.”
Other forward-thinking golf clubs are beginning to tap into the fund, which is administered by Sport BC.
Hope Golf Club is planning to use the fund to raise donations to repair some of the damage to infrastructure from last fall’s devastating floods. And Prince George Golf & Curling Club, which has already used the fund to raise money for minor driving range improvements, is planning to use it again to help rebuild its 15th green.
Andy Price, manager of development with Sport BC, is charged with helping organizations prepare their applications to the B.C. Amateur Sport Fund. “The way the B.C. Amateur Sport Fund runs is either Sport BC members like British Columbia Golf or their affiliated organizations, like their clubs, would get in touch with me and say we want to raise money for this particular project,” Price said.
“It can be a capital project, it can be program expenses -- for example, a lot of clubs want to run programs for kids or low-income kids -- or it can also be simple things like operating expenses.”
Once the paperwork is done and the application is approved, the project is registered with the fund. “And that means that a donor can make a donation to the B.C. Amateur Sport Fund with the intention that it benefit a specific project,” Price said. “The B.C. Amateur Sports Fund issues a tax receipt and then the funds sit in a pot for that project and when the project is ready it is made available.”
Don McDermid, general manager of Prince George Golf & Curling Club, said using the fund has made it easier to raise money for projects. “If they can get a tax receipt, people are pretty generous, at least more generous than if they didn’t get one,” he said.
Prince George has used the fund for one curling-related project and its current driving range improvement project. It now has another application in the works for a project that would rebuild the golf club’s 15th green to USGA standards in advance of Prince George playing host to the 2023 B.C. Junior Boys and Girls Championships.
“The course is 70-plus years old and we have re-done a lot of the greens, and No. 15 was just the next one on the list,” McDermid said. “It had some serious drainage problems and we wanted to make sure we had it ready for the provincial tourney.”
Hope Golf Club is looking to use the fund to raise money to replace its irrigation system which was destroyed when the Coquihalla River spilled its banks in mid-November. “We had a complete loss of our irrigation system,” said Kent McKinnon, who is president of the Hope Golf & Country Club Society. “We lost our pumps, we lost our pipes, so we have an estimate of somewhere around $350,000 or $400,000 to get that back on its feet.”
Image Courtesy Hope Golf Club
But the society won’t be doing any of that work until it finds out whether the course will get any disaster relief from the province. Hope Golf Club sits on Crown land leased by the District of Hope which in turn leases it to the society.
McKinnon said the club needs assurance that work will be done on the banks of the Coquihalla River to prevent future flooding before any major repairs are made. “We are certainly not going to build something new if Mother Nature can come by in another month and pull it all out again,” he said.
“So we are still working locally with our mayor and council to go on our behalf to the province and say 'listen, without armouring the river, this may be a fool’s errand.' We have to be mindful of our place in line,” McKinnon added, noting many other parts of Hope also suffered major damage.
“I know the government has to prioritize things and we have to be cognizant of where we are. We are recreational, but some people would argue what good is life without the recreation.”
The damage at the nine-hole Hope Golf Club extended well beyond its irrigation system. The flood waters deposited more than three feet of silt over much of the course. Thankfully, the greens were largely spared and the course hopes to begin its season this spring with a five- or-six hole rotation.
Much Of The Hope GC Was Covered In Silt Following The Flood - HopeGC Image
McKinnon estimates that the irrigation system will cost upwards of $400,000 to replace and he hopes much of that can be raised with the help of the B.C. Amateur Sport Fund. “Andy provided a lot of great information and helped us form our submission and gave us really good feedback,” McKinnon said.
“I think we are in a good spot with all of our paperwork there. It just comes down to timing. I don’t want to get ahead of the mayor, I don’t want to get ahead of Premier Horgan. But I do want to keep the drumbeat going because a golf course simply can’t lay fallow for a year without taking a pretty big hit to quality.”
Price is confident that the Hope project will be approved. “Because the Hope project is big and they are looking to raise in the neighbourhood of $400,000 through the BC Amateur Sport Fund, we need to have a lot more information and it has to go to a committee to approve. Right now, it is in process. They are still finalizing exactly what their project is going to look like, so their project is not approved yet, but it should be very soon.”
Price, who has extensive fundraising experience, is confident the Hope community will rally around the golf course. “Absolutely,” he said. “They have a great connection to their community. Everyone there knows what they have been through. They have seen the floods. A lot of people in that community were affected by that flood.”
The B.C. Amateur Sport Fund is, of course, available to more than just golf courses. Price said the fund currently has 456 projects in its system. “I would say about 200 of those are active in the sense they have received donations in the last few years,” he said.
For more information on the B.C. Amateur Sport Fund, visit sportbc.com