Club Benchmarking has been conducting surveys related to club governance since 2017. Over the last several years, many respondents have expressed concern or uncertainty about the nomination and succession planning process at their club. Our 2024 Club Governance Survey focused on the nominating and succession process in the private club industry. In this report, we share a summary of key findings to better understand how clubs manage and build volunteer leadership teams.

Survey
The 2024 survey invitation was distributed to 3,185 General Managers and COOs who were asked to take the survey and encouraged to invite their current board members and nominating committee members to participate. The survey was open for approximately eight weeks, and we received responses from 995 individuals representing 528 clubs. Survey distribution was targeted to specific roles in the club and those roles are reflected in the breakout of respondents: 13.3 percent were board members currently serving on their club’s nominating committee, 35.3 percent were board members not currently on the nominating committee, 6 percent were nominating committee members not currently on the board, 38.4 percent were General Manager/CEO/COOs and about 7 percent identified themselves as “Other.”

Based on previous surveys which revealed significant variation in the way clubs approach elections and the nominating process, we elected to use a combination of question types for the 2024 survey including agreement scales, simple yes/no questions and open-ended response options to fully capture the current landscape.