organiser · · By Simon Berriman, Founder of Caddie Live
The Golf Society AGM: Agenda, Roles and What to Actually Decide
The Golf Society AGM: Agenda, Roles and What to Actually Decide
Most golf society AGMs are one of two things. Either nobody comes and three people make every decision in the corner of a bar, or everybody comes and two hours disappear into an argument about whether the away day should be in May or June.
Both are avoidable. An AGM has a narrow job: close off the season that just ended, settle the handful of decisions that shape the next one, and make sure the people doing the work have agreed to keep doing it. An hour is plenty if you know which decisions you're there to make.
This guide is the running order. If you're setting a society up rather than running one, start with our complete guide to starting a golf society — the AGM comes later.
When to hold it
Late October to early December, once the season's last round is played and before anyone books their spring holidays.
That timing is not arbitrary. The decisions you make at the AGM — subs, dates, venues — need to be settled before members commit their year elsewhere. A February AGM is too late: the popular courses are booked, the good dates are taken, and you spend the season working around choices you didn't get to make. Hold it while the season is fresh enough to review honestly and early enough to act on.
Pair it with something. An AGM tacked onto the end of the presentation night gets three times the attendance of one scheduled on its own, because people are already in the room.
Who needs to be there
Every paid-up member is entitled to attend. In practice you will get somewhere between a third and half of them, and that is fine — what matters is that the meeting was properly announced and open, not that everyone came.
Give at least two weeks' notice, in writing, with the agenda attached. "Writing" means the channel your members actually read; for most societies that's email plus a message in the group chat. The notice period matters less as a formality than as a fairness point: nobody should be able to say a decision was slipped through while they weren't looking.
Set a quorum in your rules — the minimum number who must attend for decisions to be binding. A third of members, or ten people, whichever is smaller, works for most societies. Without one, four people in a pub can raise the subs for forty.
The agenda
Here's an order that works, with rough timings for a one-hour meeting.
1. Apologies and last year's minutes (5 min). Who sent apologies, and does anyone object to the record of last year's meeting? This is a formality and should be treated as one.
2. The captain's review of the season (10 min). What happened, what went well, what didn't. Keep it honest — a review that says everything was marvellous teaches nobody anything. Name the things that need fixing: the venue that let you down, the format nobody enjoyed, the day that lost money.
3. The accounts (10 min). What came in, what went out, what's in the bank now. Circulate the numbers before the meeting so people can read them properly rather than squinting at a projector. The treasurer should be able to answer three questions: are we solvent, did any event lose money, and what are we holding for next season?
4. Subs and entry fees for next season (10 min). The decision most likely to generate discussion, so give it real time. Covered in detail below.
5. The fixture list (10 min). Dates and venues for next season, or at least the shape of it. Also covered below.
6. Officers (10 min). Who's doing what next year.
7. Any other business (5 min). Bound it. "Any other business" is where meetings go to die — take items in advance so you know what's coming, and park anything that needs real thought for the committee rather than solving it live at 9:40pm.
The decisions actually worth making
Three things need a decision at the AGM. Everything else can be delegated.
Subs and entry fees
Someone needs to say out loud what it costs to be a member next year and what a typical day will cost on top. If you're raising either, say why — "green fees are up about eight per cent and we've kept subs flat for three years" is an argument; "we're putting it up a tenner" is an announcement that generates an argument.
Two numbers, kept separate: the annual sub (what membership costs, whether you play or not) and the per-event entry fee (what a day costs). Conflating them is how societies end up subsidising the people who play twice a year at the expense of the ones who play twelve times.
A fuller guide to setting society subs and entry fees is coming — the AGM is where the number gets agreed, not where it gets worked out from scratch. Bring a proposal.
The fixture list
You do not need every date and venue nailed down at the AGM. You need agreement on the shape: how many events, roughly when, what mix of home and away, and whether the away trip is happening.
What to settle in the room: the number of fixtures, the month of each, the away trip in principle and roughly what it'll cost. What to leave to the committee: exact dates, which courses, who books what. Trying to pick venues by committee vote in a bar is how you end up at a course nobody wanted at a price nobody checked.
Officers
Three roles cover most societies: someone who runs it, someone who holds the money, and someone who organises the golf. Captain, treasurer, secretary — or whatever you call them. Bigger societies add a handicap secretary or a trips organiser.
Ask explicitly whether each person is willing to continue. The failure mode here is silent: the secretary who's been quietly fed up for a year doesn't resign, they just get slower at replying, and by April nobody knows who's booking the June day. A direct question at the AGM — "are you happy to carry on?" — gives them a graceful exit and gives you eight months to find a replacement instead of eight days.
If a role changes hands, hand over the actual things: the member list, the bank access, the login to whatever you run the society on, the club contacts. A handover that consists of "it's all in my email" is not a handover.
Members, fixtures, results and standings living in one place rather than one person's inbox is what makes a handover survivable. Society Caddie holds all of it, and the incoming secretary gets access rather than an archaeology project.
Write it down, then send it out
Someone takes notes. Not a transcript — just the decisions, who proposed them, and the result of any vote. "Subs held at £25. Proposed by the treasurer, carried unanimously." Four lines of decisions beats four pages of discussion.
Send the notes to every member, not just the ones who attended. The people who didn't come are the ones who most need to know what was decided, and a society where decisions get communicated is a society where fewer people feel things are being done to them.
Then put the dates somewhere members can see them without asking. A fixture list that lives in one person's spreadsheet is a fixture list that generates forty "when's the next one?" messages between now and April.
A note on formality
Golf societies sit on a spectrum. At one end, twelve mates who play four times a year and settle everything in a WhatsApp poll. At the other, a hundred members, a constitution, a charity arm and a proper set of accounts.
Match the formality to the size. A twelve-person society holding a motion-and-seconder AGM is play-acting. A hundred-member society settling its subs in a group chat is asking for a dispute it can't resolve, because there's no agreed record of what was decided or who agreed to it.
The rough threshold is money and memory. Once there's enough money moving that someone could reasonably ask where it went, or enough members that not everyone was in the room, you want written rules and recorded decisions. Below that, keep it light.
What to do next
Set the date now, before the season's momentum goes. Send the notice two weeks out with the agenda attached and the accounts circulated. Bring a proposal on subs rather than an open question. Ask each officer directly whether they're continuing. Write down the decisions and send them to everyone.
Then the next thing is the fixture list — and that's the piece that decides whether next season runs itself or gets organised in a panic each month.
Everything an AGM decides — members, subs, fixtures, results and the season standings that come out of them — is what Society Caddie was built to hold in one place. Create your society, put next season's fixtures in, and share one link so members can register and pay themselves. Scoring on the day runs on Caddie Live, and each result rolls into the standings without anyone updating a spreadsheet. It's free while we're in beta.
Running a golf day?
Create your event free in Caddie Live and score it live. Create your event free