What Does Club Excellence Actually Look Like?

Written by: Jennifer Morton

There are presentations you sit through. And then there are presentations that make you pull out a notepad and start writing things down.

Jeff McFadden’s session at the National Club Association Conference in April was the second kind.

McFadden is the CEO of the Union League of Philadelphia—one of the most historic private clubs in America, founded in 1862 to support Abraham Lincoln and the preservation of the Union. Under his 28-year leadership, it has become something else entirely: a $136 million operation, the second largest club in the country by revenue, with nearly 5,000 members, three golf courses, eight properties, and a wait list that keeps growing.

But the numbers aren’t the point. The story behind them is.

It Started With Terminal Cancer

When McFadden took the GM job in 1998, the Union League was nearly bankrupt. He was, by his own admission, the fifth person they offered the role to. The club was trapped—comfortable with its history, protective of its tradition, and slowly dying because of it.

His diagnosis: terminal cancer. His prescription: change everything.

The analogy he used to open his talk stuck with the room. Smith Corona—the typewriter company—invented early word processing technology, then walked away from it. Their board declared, “We are in the typewriter business. We are not in the word processing business.” They lost the patent. They went back to making typewriters. You know the rest.

McFadden looked at the Union League and saw the same trap. A great history. A proud tradition. And a slow drift toward irrelevance.

The question he asked then—and still asks today—is one every club leader should write on the wall: Are we building your granddaughter’s club?

The Strategy: Think in Generations, Not Fiscal Years

The Union League’s strategic plan has remained the same for 20 years: Build Your Granddaughter’s Club. The goal is to attract a young urban professional at 28—and keep her until she’s 88.

That kind of thinking changes everything about how you make decisions. McFadden was blunt about what it means in practice: when your board is debating sesame seeds on the hamburger bun, something has gone very wrong.

Instead, the club organized itself around three operating principles:

• Always think multiple generations ahead
• Stay fiercely member-centric as you grow
• Amplify your professional management team and let them run the club

That last point matters more than people realize. The Union League is member-governed but professionally managed. McFadden is emphatic about the difference. Governance and management are not the same job, and confusing the two is one of the most common ways clubs underperform.

The Amenity Flywheel

Here’s what changed the trajectory of the Union League—and the insight that has the most direct application for golf retail leaders.

The club bought a parking garage. Revenue tripled in three years.

The club discovered that members were spending summers at the Jersey Shore—and opened a small restaurant there called The Bungalow. They added 500 net new members in a single year.

The lesson crystallized: every time they added a meaningful amenity, dues revenue followed. Not because the amenity itself was profitable—their $25 million rooftop dining project loses $1.5 million a year—but because amenities drive membership, and membership is the business.

“I added an amenity and it drove the dues. That’s when the light bulb went off.”

For golf retail, the parallel isn’t about buying restaurants. It’s about understanding that the experience you create around the transaction is what actually drives the relationship. Members don’t just come back because you have good merchandise. They come back because being in your shop feels like being part of something.

Data as a Competitive Weapon

McFadden’s COO has fed an enormous volume of transaction data into an AI platform—every golf reservation, every dining charge, every retail purchase—and uses it to predict member behavior, personalize communication, and make smarter investments.

One finding that stopped the room: the member with a 12.2 handicap index spends the most money. Get someone from a 30 to a 12, and spending climbs the whole way. Push them past 12 toward scratch, and spending actually declines—they become too focused on their game to socialize and spend.

So what did McFadden do? He made golf lessons free for unlimited golf members. Because data told him that better golfers spend more money—up to a point. And building that habit early creates lifetime members.

The question for your shop: What do you actually know about your best customers? What are they buying, how often, and what brings them back? You may not have the Union League’s data infrastructure, but the principle is the same. The shops that use data intentionally will outperform the ones that run on instinct alone.

Your Team Is the Product

When McFadden talks about culture, he doesn’t use complicated language. He flipped the org chart upside down.

At the Union League, employees come first. Members come second. Leadership comes last. The logic is simple: if you want members to have a great experience, take care of the people delivering it.

The hospitality philosophy he’s built the culture around is seven words: The answer is yes. Now tell me the question.

Staff are empowered to solve problems without escalating. They’re trained to look for what’s going right—not just what’s wrong—and to reinforce good behavior when they see it. He still recommends Ken Blanchard’s One Minute Manager to every supervisor. “Give it to every supervisor. You can get it for $9 on Amazon.”

For golf retailers, this is both a reminder and a challenge. In a world where any product can be found online and prices compared in seconds, your team is the only thing that can’t be replicated. The greeting, the recommendation, the moment of genuine connection—that’s what turns a transaction into a relationship.

The Mechanics That Actually Work

McFadden shared a handful of operational moves that are simple, proven, and worth stealing:

• Eliminate tipping and add a 20% service charge. Food and beverage revenue goes up. Staff income stabilizes. The experience improves.
• Put everyone on automatic monthly credit card billing. The Union League saw average membership length increase by 2.2 years after making this change. People don’t cancel what they don’t actively think about canceling.
• Offer a refundable new member capital fee. New members pay $12,000 to join the club, then an additional $100/month for their first three years. That accumulated $3,600 is fully refundable—returned to them when they successfully sponsor just one new member during that period. New members are your best recruiters. Incentivize them immediately.
• Downsize committees to 5–7 people. Require an application essay. Require that committee members have successfully sponsored at least one new member. This alone eliminates most of the dysfunction.
• Consolidate capital and operating dues into one number, indexed to CPI. No more special assessments. No more arguments about irrigation systems. Everyone pays, everyone benefits.

Purpose as a Growth Strategy

The final act of McFadden’s presentation was the most unexpected—and arguably the most compelling.

The Union League has taken over Founding Forward, President Eisenhower’s personal foundation, dedicated to civics education. From a 75-acre campus in Valley Forge, they host students and teachers annually—teaching the Constitution, character, leadership, and American history. All of it free to participants. The club is currently raising $150 million to fund it.

Why does a private club run a civics education program?

Because younger members—Gen Z especially—want their memberships to mean something. They want to belong to something bigger than a dining room and a golf course. Purpose-driven organizations attract purpose-driven people. And purpose-driven people stay.

You don’t need to launch a national education initiative to apply this insight. But it’s worth asking: What does your club or shop stand for beyond the transaction? What would make a 28-year-old feel proud to be associated with it?

“People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.”

A Final Word

Jeff McFadden spent 28 years turning a nearly bankrupt city club into one of the most admired private clubs in the country. He did it by refusing to be in the typewriter business, by thinking about his granddaughter’s club before it existed, and by building a culture where the answer is always yes.

The golf industry is in a strong moment. Participation is growing, the audience is expanding, and interest in the game has never been broader. What McFadden’s story offers isn’t a warning—it’s a blueprint. The clubs and shops that will define the next decade aren’t waiting to see what happens. They’re building something their members can’t imagine leaving.

The question he’d probably ask you is the same one he asked himself in 1998: What are you willing to change?

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