Viewpoints · Survey Methodology

Members tell you how they feel. Viewpoints tells you why.

Every club leader manages three things at once: the club’s finances, its facilities, and the member experience. For nearly two decades, Club Benchmarking has brought data and fact to the financial side. Viewpoints brings that same discipline to the experience, and shows you which levers actually move it.

Request a proposal Survey portfolio See the methodology

Prefer to talk it through? Book a meeting with our team

The three foundations of club success

Finances, facilities, and the member experience are one loop

Every club leader is really managing three priorities at once: the club’s finances, its facilities, and the member experience. They work as a loop. Finances fund the facilities and the experience, and a strong experience drives demand, higher initiation fees, and members more willing to invest in the club’s future, which funds the next round. Clubs have trusted CB for fact over opinion on the finances for years. Viewpoints applies that same fact-based, benchmarked approach to measuring the member experience.

The side clubs already benchmark

Finances

Industry benchmarks for the financial and operational health of the club, and the capital that funds its future.

What the finances fund

Facilities

The amenities and campus members move through every day, the physical experience the club’s investment pays for.

The other half of the story

Member & Employee Experience

What it’s actually like to be a member and to work at the club. The heart of the club, and until now the hardest thing to manage on anything but instinct.

Most clubs still make decisions about the member experience based on what leadership believes members want, which is opinion, not evidence. Viewpoints replaces guesswork with tested direction, showing how the club scored and which drivers move the results.

The survey portfolio

Three populations that shape club performance

Whoever you need to understand (members, employees, or board), there is a survey built for that group, delivered end to end by the CB survey team. The annual experience survey is the right starting point for almost every club. Everything else is added when there is a specific need.

Members

Annual (Experience): The comprehensive, benchmarkable baseline you track year over year.

Interval & Pulse: A shorter cycle or a focused single-topic read.

Transactional & Event: Experience close to the moment.

Capital Planning: What members want before a capital cycle.

Employees

Census: The foundational annual engagement instrument for all employees.

Pulse: Shorter check-ins on specific topics, departments, or moments.

360 Feedback: Multi-rater input for leadership development.

Board

Board Self-Evaluation: How the board performs as a governing body.

Strategic Governance: Alignment on mission, direction, and effectiveness before planning cycles.

A CB-facilitated focus group service can complement the member survey. Run it beforehand to surface what members actually care about, so the questions reflect the club.

How we measure the key experiences at a club

We measure the experiences that drive the results clubs care about

The experiences of members, employees, and the board shape how they feel, how they act, and the results the club sees. Our surveys use tested metrics across all three, tailored to each club.

Member Experience

We measure the member experience the way it actually works, then show where that chain is strong and where it is slipping.

How the club benefits: the outcomes

Overall satisfaction and perceived value; advocacy (NPS), loyalty and intent to stay; participation, spend, and renewals.

What members experience: the drivers

Amenity level: F&B and dining, golf, pool, fitness, racquet, social events.
Club level: management, the board, communication. Plus community, belonging, and attachment to the club.

Employee Experience

Five needs drive employee engagement.

Enablement

Tools, training, clarity, and a manageable workload to do the job well.

Support

Recognition and useful feedback from supervisors and peers.

Culture

Respect, belonging, teamwork, and a voice in the day to day.

Growth

Training that builds skill and real paths to advance.

Purpose

Connection to the club’s mission and meaning in the work.

Additional modules available

Supervisor and Leadership EffectivenessOnboardingAccountabilityWellbeingManager Only Items

Employee Experience powers Member Experience. Engaged employees deliver exceptional service, members feel a higher level of service, and the club wins on retention and spend on both sides. When engagement dips, it shows up in member service scores. Run both surveys and you can see where a culture gap is quietly eroding the member experience first.

Board Governance

How effectively the board governs, and what it delivers. One research-based, 28-item instrument, refined from thousands of responses across the private club industry. Board members, the Strategic Planning Committee, and Senior Management all respond, so leaders see governance from both the inside and the outside, benchmarked against clubs nationally.

Governance Effectiveness

The overall measure of how well the Board governs. Every component helps explain it.

Institutional Results

What governance produces: data-driven decisions, team development, member value, and satisfaction.

Strategic Governance

Operating strategically rather than operationally, an effective plan, and committees aligned to it.

Fiduciary & Financial Oversight

Disciplined budgeting and controls, and responsible capital, reserve, and debt planning.

Risk & Compliance

Oversight of key risks and insurance, governance policies, and conflicts of interest.

Member Accountability & Transparency

Accountability to members, transparent communication, and putting members’ interests first.

GM Partnership & Oversight

An effective Board and GM relationship, a fair evaluation, and sufficient oversight information.

Board Renewal & Composition

Orientation, a strong nominating pipeline, representation of members, and leadership succession.

Board Leadership & Conduct

Board leadership, well-run meetings, a culture of trust, and honest self-evaluation.

The perception gap. Where the Board’s self-view diverges from Management and the planning committee is often what most shapes a club’s future. The results give the board a focused, evidence-based agenda for board development and strategic planning.

What sets CB apart

Other firms can field an experience survey. Only CB benchmarks the whole club.

Plenty of companies will send your members a survey, and some compare answers against a question bank of their own. What sets Club Benchmarking apart is the benchmarking platform behind every result: the same apples-to-apples discipline that powers our finance and operations data, now carried all the way through to the survey side.

1,000+

clubs’ financial data benchmarked each year

400+

clubs in capital planning

400+

member surveys completed

50K+

employee survey responses

Expert survey design

Question structure, scale construction, sequencing, and analysis grounded in research, built by a team with decades of club-survey experience.

The deepest club dataset

Every result sits against benchmarks drawn from more clubs than any other source, so a score always arrives with real industry context.

Full-service delivery

CB’s survey team designs, administers, and reports on every survey, ending in a live results presentation to leadership.

Benchmarking the full picture of the club

Because our financial, operational, staffing, and member data all live in one platform, a survey score never sits in isolation. We frame it against the complete profile of the club, the view no survey-only vendor can build.

Financial & operational profileThe finance side sets the size of the club and the offerings it can realistically support.

Amenities & offeringsCompared against clubs with a similar mix of amenities and services.

Employee survey resultsRead against real club compensation and staffing data, so you can see how pay and staffing relate to engagement.

Member demographicsCompared against clubs with a similar membership makeup.

From scores to what matters

Reporting shows the scores. Analytics shows you where to focus.

Every engagement ends in a board-ready report: benchmarked, statistically analyzed, and narrated, not a page of raw scores. Then we go further, with priorities, key-driver analysis, an importance and satisfaction view, and member segments that show a club exactly where to focus.

Reporting

The benchmarked results, NPS, and perceived value, every score put in industry context. Delivered as a board-ready report with a live results presentation to leadership.

Analytics

Priorities, key drivers, heatmaps, and segment differences that turn a pile of data into a plan of action.

Comment sentiment

Open-ended comments run through CB’s proprietary sentiment software, turning thousands of verbatim responses into clear themes and sentiment leadership can actually read and act on.

Clubs aren’t short on data. They’re short on knowing what to focus on.

Built to support business planning

A survey is only worth running if it changes what the club does next. Viewpoints reports are built with that end in mind: benchmarked results and clear priorities that feed straight into the club’s annual and long-range planning. Clubs that survey on a regular cadence use each year’s results to set objectives, check whether last year’s changes actually moved the numbers, and improve the member experience year over year.

How we work

A full-service model, with CB owning the heavy lifting

Every engagement runs through the same six stages. Your club has three light-touch jobs: review and approve the survey, provide the member or employee list, and send a short pre-survey note from leadership.

Intake & configuration

Framework walkthrough and tailoring to your club, with GM approval before build.

Build & QA

Survey built and quality-checked across every respondent profile.

Launch

Personal links deployed, with the invitation coming from club leadership.

Field & monitor

Response tracking, reminders, and progress updates to the GM.

Data & reporting

Scored, benchmarked, and narrated into the deliverable report.

Results presentation

From what we found to what to do about it, live with leadership.

Because CB is an independent third party, results are reported to the club only in aggregate, which is exactly why members and employees answer honestly.