You know something’s not right when you feel guilty on a golf course.
That was precisely Eric Sedransk’s predicament. You see, he left his apartment in New York City on March 16 to stay with his parents during the pandemic. While he was working on his short game in beautiful Hilton Head, South Carolina, his friends back in the city were all weathering the coronavirus storm.
The 35-year-old has a passion for not just golf, but giving back. So he asked himself an important question: What can I do?
“There’s two things I have: One is I have a relatively decent following on Instagram and through playing golf I have a pretty good network of both members and club professionals at pretty high-end golf courses,” explained Sedransk. “So I thought ‘You know what? I’m just going to reach out.’”
And that’s what he did. He explained how he wanted to auction off rounds of golf with all the proceeds going to charity, and clubs started saying yes. Over eight days from May 13-21, the @Member4aDay Auction raised more than $100,000 to provide over 10,000 meals for frontline hospital workers in New York City.
As if that isn’t impressive enough, Sedransk did it mainly by himself in just three weeks. He didn’t take a penny. In fact, he lost money.
What’s my $25,000?
Once the ball got rolling, it came time to choose the charity. Sedransk said it didn’t feel right working with one of the big organizations, and he had a reason.
“I had no idea how much money I was going to raise, so if I’m donating to a charity that raises $50 million a year, what’s my $25,000?” said Sedransk. A friend connected him to Project Frontline, whose goal is simple: Help feed healthcare workers across the country.
For two and a half weeks Sedransk hustled to get as many courses on board as possible, and he wasn’t going for the easy ones. Sedransk wanted the best-of-the-best. Courses like Shinnecock Hills, Medalist, Preswick (Scotland), Interlachen, Valhalla, etc. Ever heard of them?
When the site launched, he had 20 signed on. The only public course was Sweetens Cove, Golfweek’s top-ranked track you can play in the state of Tennessee.
Within the first 24 hours, @Member4aDay Auction raised $12,000, which was considerably above Sedransk’s target goal of $50,000, realistically thinking they’d get $25,000-$30,000.
“The most interesting part to me was the response I got from people I don’t know. All of a sudden I started getting messages from both members and club professionals wanting to pitch in and help,” said Sedransk, who was adding courses up until 24 hours before the end of the auction.
When time ran out, 48 auction items were donated, more than double what he started with. More than 220 individual people submitted bids. Groups of friends were even on conference calls working together as teams to try and earn a winning bid.
“More than 50 percent of rounds donated came from people that I’ve never met out of the goodness of their heart,” said Sedransk.
One final push
With three hours to go, the total was $65,000. Sedransk put the auction site up on his parents TV and watched the total rise as time expired. With less than 10 minutes on the clock, a bid for $11,000 for a round at Shinnecock, host of the 2018 U.S. Open, came in.
“When I first set out to do this I thought the only reason people would bid would be 90 percent to play the incredible golf course and 10 percent because it’s charitable,” said Sedransk. “At the end, I think it might be more charity, less golf.”
The auction total finished right around $96,000. When time ran out, Sedransk got emails from people asking if any other rounds were available. He can’t explain why, but he reached out to one of the courses to ask for one more round. The head pro said if the bid is enough to get the total over $100,000 he’d host another foursome, and the deal was done.
“We all have this desire during times of need to give back. The first question is always ‘how?’ What I want people to know is I don’t have a magic bullet, there’s no reason it was successful. I just went out and did it,” said Sedransk. “If you really want to give back and you’re willing to put the effort in, you can do something just as well as I did and make a real difference.”
