How we started
The Charity Challenge Golf Series was the brainchild of Gary Dawson OAM and Matthew Laverty way back in 2003.
Both Matt and Gary (or “Smokey” as most refer to him) felt there was a void in supporting the lower profile charities within the community. With their profile in Corporate Golf and Charity Fundraising, the ‘boys’ would regularly field requests from Charities for support, either by running their event or donating prizes.
Whilst saying no is not in Smokey’s and Matt’s vocabularies, supporting dozens of charities was also not logistically possible, given that they were also running many Corporate Golf events, but there was scope to build something special.
After careful planning, Matt and Smokey settled on a model that supported a number of worthwhile Charities with the buy-in of many regular Corporate followers and on the 8th May 2004, the Charity Challenge Golf series was launched, with the first event held at Macquarie Links International Golf Club. They typically run around 12 core events per year, plus a selection of other special Charity events in the series. A further spin-off event is the very special Gala Ball with recipient Charities and around 600 regular golf attendees and their connections all coming together for a fantastic night, to cap off each year.
In the first 12 years, events in the Charity Challenge Golf Series raised in excess of $10 Million dollars for various charities. The series continues to go from strength to strength.
The Charity Challenge Golf Series has forged many great friendships and business relationships – partnerships – in fact, the Charity Challenge Series is now formally a part of many Corporate golfing calendars, with senior executives of many large organisations attending these events. Further, the Golf Series and our partnerships have allowed us to informally facilitate Corporate introductions at the very highest levels – just the tip of the iceberg. Our upcoming Corporate Network lunches will signal the start of many more formal opportunities to stimulate significant business networking between our partners.
We are very fortunate to have a great team of staff that help to make our events a great success. Two people in particular make a massive contribution. Peter Hensman from Global Promotional Products and Earl Schonberger from scored.com.au – both have added that extra gloss to ensure players receive great giveaways at registration and experience world class scoring and leaderboard technology, together with unique action photography.
