Not even the organization most involved in growing the game of golf is immune to the nation's economic decline.
Earlier this week, in a cost-cutting measure, Steve Mona, CEO of the World Golf Foundation, announced in a message to the Foundation's major supporting organizations that he was eliminating three executive positions within the WGF, which oversees such high-profile initiatives as The First Tee, GOLF 20/20 and the World Golf Hall of Fame.
The positions eliminated included Senior Vice President of Communications, Research and Public Affairs, Bob Combs; Vice President of Legal and Business Affairs, Helen Atter; and Vice President of Development, Brent Davison. Mona says other Foundation employees will assume those responsibilities along with their current duties, some of which will eventually be transferred as well.
"It's basically like so many other orgnizations right now -- it's purely a financial issue. And we, like other organizations in golf, are facing difficult financial times and we have to take measures to try to respond to the times," Mona told GCM today.
Both Combs and Atter came over to the WGF from the PGA Tour, a major stakeholder of the Foundation -- Combs about a year ago and Atter almost 12 years ago. Between them they had been with the tour nearly 20 years.
Combs and Atter are staying on at the Foundation until the end of the year to help in the transfer of their duties. Davison, who joined the WGF a couple of years ago, leaves at the end of this month. Mona says Joe Louis Barrow Jr., CEO of The First Tee, will become more involved in WGF development matters to help in the transition of that department.
"We have this luxury of a six-month period of time in which Bob and Helen can effectively transfer their duties to other people in the organization while those people do the same with some of their duties," says Mona, who came to the WGF in March 2008 after 14 years as CEO of GCSAA.
The non-profit Foundation, which was created in 1993, employs about 90 people full-time and about another 30 part-time. Mona says the state of the organization is healthy overall and points to "unfortunate realities" as the cause of the staff changes.
"Everything is going very well from a directional standpoint and from a programmatic standpoint," he says. "The big issue is that, like everyone else, we're going through probably the worst economy since the Great Depression. It's a difficult time and that's 100 percent what drove these changes ... they weren't performance-related at all; in fact, all three have done excellent work for us. It's just a matter of making sure the organization can be supported through its revenues and those revenues are off. Our annual expenses have to line up with our annual income."
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