If your club runs on a January 1 fiscal year, the 2027 budget feels like a fall problem. It isn’t. The numbers that will define next year — dues, capital, the assessment you do or don’t ask for — are being framed right now, in the quiet weeks of July, August, and September. Clubs on an October 1 fiscal year are already at the finish line: their 2027 operating plan has to clear the board before the month is out, a cadence tied to the same budget cycle Club Benchmarking tracks industry-wide. Whichever calendar you keep, the work is the same, and it is happening this quarter.
Here is the shift that should shape every one of those conversations. The era of the reflexive 9% dues increase is over, per Club Benchmarking data reported by Golf.com: clubs budgeted a median 5% operating dues increase for 2026 — the same as the year before, and down from 9% in 2022–23. Pricing power hasn’t vanished, but it has narrowed, and the clubs that thrive in 2027 will be the ones that fund their ambitions through discipline and deliberate repricing rather than a blanket hike on the existing base.
The 5% ceiling and what it costs to ignore it
Some context on how far dues have already traveled, per Club Benchmarking’s survey data. Average full yearly dues reached $11,718, up from $9,961 two years earlier — roughly a 25% climb, per a September 2024 Club Benchmarking GM survey summarized by CMA Ontario. Members absorbed those post-pandemic increases because service and facilities were visibly improving. That patience is not infinite. When the median settles back to 5% — a figure confirmed by Club Benchmarking’s survey data — it suggests boards can no longer close a budget gap simply by raising the monthly bill; that pattern is what the data increasingly shows.
Meanwhile 45% of clubs carried a waitlist in 2025, flat against 2024 and down slightly from 47% in 2023, per Club Benchmarking data reported by Golf.com. Scarcity remains real, but it is not universal, and a waitlist at the front door does not automatically license an aggressive increase on members already inside. The discipline question is what separates the clubs building durable budgets from the ones papering over structural gaps.
What most clubs still get wrong
The single most revealing statistic in club governance this year: 93% of clubs measure performance against their budget, and 85% against prior periods, but only 41% measure against their strategic objectives — and roughly one-third have no strategic plan at all, per the 2025 Club Leaders’ Perspectives report from GGA Partners and CMAA.
Read that again. Nearly every club builds next year by looking at last year. Fewer than half build it against where the club is trying to go. That is the difference between a budget that keeps the lights on and a budget that funds a future. A club budgeting against strategy asks what the 2027 member experience needs to be and prices backward from there. A club budgeting against last year asks what changed since December and adjusts at the margin. The first approach produced Sawgrass. The second, left unchecked long enough, produced Capital City.
Pricing power, used correctly: Sawgrass Country Club
Sawgrass Country Club in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida shows what it looks like to fund capital without leaning on the operating-dues base. In October 2025 the membership approved a $55 million Capital Improvements Plan — a 27-hole Fry/Straka golf renovation, a 7,347-square-foot fitness expansion, a new Beach Club Pavilion, and 13 HydroCourts — per the Jacksonville Daily Record and Club + Resort Business.
The move that matters for budget season is what the club did on the revenue side. Rather than fund $55 million by squeezing existing members, Sawgrass repriced the front door: the joining fee rose from $85,000 to $125,000 effective December 1, 2025 — a nearly 47% increase — with the club at capacity behind a six-to-nine-month waitlist, per Club + Resort Business. That is pricing power deployed where the club actually holds it: on incoming members choosing to buy into a demonstrably better product, not on the loyal base who would simply feel taxed. The sequencing — approve the plan, prove the value, then reprice entry against it — is the template.
“We wanted our members to understand the importance of investing in our Capital Improvement Plan before making any adjustments to the initiation fee. Once the plan was approved by the membership, increasing the fee became the logical next step, reflecting the strength of the Club, the continued demand for membership, and the significant investment being made in its future.” — Stefan Brunt, General Manager/CEO, Sawgrass Country Club
The cautionary math: Carolina Golf Club
Contrast that with a club that discovered its contingency was too thin at the worst possible moment. Carolina Golf Club in Charlotte levied an $18,750 member assessment for a course renovation, then hit a $5.8 million cost overrun mid-project, per Yahoo News reporting. When leadership returned to the membership for a second assessment — an additional $3,700-plus per member combined with a $75-per-month capital-dues increase for two years — members rejected the package 229 to 166; a related lawsuit was dropped in January 2026, per Yahoo News reporting.
The lesson is not that the renovation was wrong. It is that the contingency was sized for a market that no longer exists. A board that assumes it can always come back for a second assessment is budgeting on a bridge it may not be allowed to cross. Members will fund a plan they approved; they will not reliably fund the same plan twice.
That is exactly where construction inflation becomes a budgeting input, not a footnote. Over the past year construction labor rose 4.1% and materials 3.1% — and materials had already jumped 8.7% in 2024 — such that a $2 million project now needs an additional $80,000 to $140,000 in contingency, with overall membership-facility costs up roughly 60% since 2019, per the McMahon Group. Size your contingency to those numbers, not to the last cycle’s.
The terminal case: Capital City Country Club
If Carolina is a warning, Capital City Country Club in Tallahassee is the ending you build the whole budget to avoid. Years of deferred capital reserves left the club facing self-funding of at least $25,000 per member for essential upgrades, per Tallahassee Reports. In April 2026 the membership instead voted 167–9 to transfer control to a private investor group — one that includes the Tampa Bay Rays’ owner — for an acquisition of roughly $1.255 million, with the group pledging more than $30 million in renovations and post-reopening memberships projected at $50,000 to $75,000, per WCTV and Tallahassee Reports.
That is what a reserve study ignored for a decade eventually costs: not a dues increase, but the club itself. Deferred reserves are the slowest-moving line on the budget and the most expensive one to neglect.
The July-to-approval budget calendar
Whatever your fiscal year, the sequence is the same; only the dates move.
October 1 fiscal year (FY2027 begins Oct 1, 2026) — you are in the final stretch.
– July: Department heads submit zero-based worksheets; refresh the reserve study and capital-tier list.
– Early August: Finance committee consolidates the draft and runs dues scenarios against strategy, not just against last year.
– Late August: Board reviews; lock the dues and any capital ask.
– September: Communicate the value story to members, then take the final board vote before October 1.
January 1 fiscal year (FY2027 begins Jan 1, 2027) — you have room to do it right.
– July–August: Zero-based department worksheets; sort capital into critical, urgent, and enhancement tiers.
– September: Finance committee builds the consolidated draft and models dues scenarios.
– October: Board review and revision.
– November: Member communication and, where warranted, dues letters — before, not after, the value case has been made.
– December: Final board approval.
Two disciplines make that calendar produce a strategic budget rather than a recycled one. The first is zero-based budgeting — rebuilding each department’s number from zero rather than inflating last year’s line by a few percent, an approach club-finance specialists increasingly recommend to surface waste and fund priorities deliberately, per Club Capital Group and PBMares. The second is a tiered, multi-year capital horizon — a 3-to-5-year plan sorting projects into critical, urgent, and enhancement tiers with blended financing, per PKF O’Connor Davies and the National Club Association’s capital budgeting guidelines. Together they answer the two questions a board actually faces in September: what do we spend, and how do we pay for it.
What operators should do now
- Budget against strategy, not just last year. If your club is among the majority — 59% don’t measure results against strategic objectives at all, per the 2025 Club Leaders’ Perspectives report — this is the cycle to change it. Start the FY2027 build from the 2027 member experience you’re trying to deliver and price backward.
- Reprice where you hold the power. Sawgrass raised the joining fee, not the base dues. Look hard at initiation, guest, and category pricing before you reach for a blanket increase on loyal members already near the 5% ceiling, per Club Benchmarking data.
- Size contingency to today’s inflation. Add $80,000–$140,000 per $2 million of project scope, per the McMahon Group, and assume you get one assessment vote, not two. Carolina’s overrun was a contingency-sizing failure, not a bad project.
- Refresh the reserve study before the draft. Capital City is what deferred reserves cost at the end. A current reserve study is the cheapest insurance on the budget.
- Make the value case before the dues letter. For clubs on the January 1 fiscal-year calendar outlined above, the member communication in November has to precede the invoice. For related guidance, see our own mid-year marketing audit on the metrics boards should be reviewing now, and our own breakdown of what dues actually cover for framing that conversation.
Sources
- Club Benchmarking via Golf.com/MSN — median 5% dues increase for 2026, down from 9% in 2022–23; 45% of clubs with waitlists in 2025 (47% in 2023)
- CMA Ontario / Club Benchmarking — average full yearly dues $11,718 vs $9,961 two years prior
- GGA Partners / CMAA 2025 Club Leaders’ Perspectives — 93% measure vs budget, 85% vs prior periods, 41% vs strategy; one-third have no strategic plan
- McMahon Group — construction labor +4.1%, materials +3.1% (+8.7% in 2024); +$80–140K per $2M project; costs +60% since 2019
- Jacksonville Daily Record — Sawgrass $55M plan approval and scope
- Club + Resort Business — Sawgrass capital plan and joining-fee repricing detail
- Yahoo News — Carolina Golf Club assessment, $5.8M overrun, 229–166 rejection, lawsuit dropped
- WCTV — Capital City CC control transfer vote
- Tallahassee Reports — Capital City CC $25K/member ask and investment proposal
- PKF O’Connor Davies — 3–5 year capital horizon, project tiers, blended financing
- National Club Association — capital budgeting guidelines
- Club Capital Group — zero-based budgeting for clubs
- PBMares — club budgeting process
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