Club Board Perspectives
Insights from Club Boards:
Long-Term Success Through Human Capital, Financial Health and a Future Focus
Private club boards are, by their own accounts, doing well: confident in their governance, financial stewardship and strategic direction. This year’s research tested that confidence against the practices, data, and documentation that would support it and found that belief and the actions to support it don’t always move together.
The 2026 Club Board Perspectives research, conducted in collaboration with the National Club Association (NCA), surveyed private club board members across North America on employer-of-choice standing, financial stewardship, and strategic focus. Rather than reporting averages alone, this year’s findings are built around a diagnostic framework: each finding names a potential governance gap, identifies its structural cause, and pairs it with a specific fix a board can act on.
In these reports, GGA Partners examines a pattern that recurs across all three research areas: board confidence consistently outpaces the evidence supporting it. On employer of choice, 66% of boards consider their club an employer of choice, yet fewer than four in ten report a market-referenced compensation philosophy, and the governance behavior most closely tied to that status rates only moderately. On financial health, 73% of boards believe their financial model is long-term focused, but nearly a third have no current capital reserve study behind that claim. On strategic focus, 73% of boards score as operationally anchored, with committee structures that surface updates rather than recommendations, which is most closely tied to that drift.
Together, these findings point to a governance opportunity: closing the distance between what boards believe and the actions that support those beliefs. Each article that follows explores this gap and attaches concrete questions and action steps a board can act on.
EMPLOYER OF CHOICE
WHY BELIEF ISN’T INFRASTRUCTURE
Two-thirds of board members consider their club an employer of choice. This year’s research separates the boards that claim the label from those that have built the governance behind it and provides boards with a series of questions to determine where they stand and what steps to take next.
PROTECTING FINANCIAL HEALTH
FALSE CONFIDENCE OR LONG-TERM FOCUS
Boards express strong confidence in their clubs’ long-term financial practices. This research examines a deeper question: whether that confidence can be substantiated. The findings show where the proof is missing and provide boards with a pathway to get on the right financial track.
STRATEGIC FOCUS
SMALL DECISIONS DETERMINE LONG-TERM SUCCESS
Boards say they are building a long-term brand by focusing on the future. The data reveals that daily habits are quietly pulling in the opposite direction, with operational meetings, reactive decisions, and informal recruiting limiting this goal.
The Authors
Michael Gregory
Managing Director & Partner
Neil Brown
Executive Director
Dr. Eric Brey
Director
Evan Van Eerd
Director
"*" indicates required fields
