Westchester Chapter Celebrates at Ridgeway Country Club

By Michael S. Settler

On Monday, June 20, the Westchester Chapter of the NYSSCPA declared that there will be no talk of any new FASBies at Ridgeway Country Club in White Plains, N.Y. Instead, this was a day that the chapter sat back and enjoyed a perfect day of golf and laughs at their annual golf outing.

Committee cochairs Jeff Schwartz, of Blaustein, Lynne & Co., LLP, and I, of Michael S. Settler, CPA, PC, have now completed our fifth year of running the outing and, I’m proud to say, have once again made this the most popular scheduled event on the chapter’s calendar.

“Give the members what they want, at a reasonable price, with lots of prizes for everyone, and you will be guaranteed to have a successful day,” said Schwartz. “Michael and I continually ask for member feedback regarding what they want for ‘their’ golf day via e-mail and follow-up phone calls, and that is how we formulated what we have today.”

The recipe for success is the low cost of the event, the competitive but fair course for the average golfer that is centrally located for the chapter, prizes for all that are useful (Circuit City and mall gift certificates), an endless supply of food and drinks, slide shows of the day that are sure to bring laughs to every table at dinner, and the opportunity to win large prizes (this year, many cars, trips and golf clubs were available).

Jeff and I have so many people to thank when it comes to this event. The people at Ridgeway Country Club, especially its manager, Joseph Cici, and head golf pro, Pete Donnally, continually go out of their way to make this event better and better. People like David Nierenberg and Carrie Smith, who do the photography and slide shows at no charge, are unbelievable. Frank Pellegrino’s efforts for the hole-in-one prizes, as well as an abundance of hole sponsors, just add more funds available for the give-aways and raffles. Our sponsors—JP Morgan Chase, Ashton Benefits Corp., Smith Barney, Paychex, and McCarthy Fingar—all do an incredible job by creating a large prize pool for the members. We keep the number of sponsors down, to allow them the opportunity to meet all the members, and build a one to one relationship with them.

“That was one fantastic day,” said Bradley Greenberg, of Ashton Benefits Corp. “This was our first opportunity to participate in this event, and I found it remarkable. The members of this chapter were so hospitable, and everything was great, from the course to the food.”

In addition to the great day of golf, the abundance of fantastic food, and the laughs and entertainment, the outing also provides a great opportunity to raise money for the American Cancer Society.

This year we had a 50/50 that raised an incredible amount of money, and the gracious winner, Vincent Pancaldo, donated a large percentage of it back to the Society.

“As always, we will be sending out our broadcast e-mail to all of the participants, which is in a 10-question format that gives us positive or negative feedback about the day. We also leave room in the questionnaire for comments or questions as well as suggestions. This enables us to tailor the event for our membership. Michael and I are already planning a huge surprise next year. We informally researched the opinions of some of the members, and we know it’s going to be a huge hit. Our biggest problem at this point is to accommodate all the members. We have traditionally tried to hold the field to 96 golfers to avoid slow play, so we are exploring some unique ideas to resolve this,” said Schwartz

Members this year were quite surprised to find out that two months prior to the outing, the field was almost sold out.

We encourage members to sign up for the event early to ensure their spot in the field. The funny thing is, we are finding that even some that can’t make the day seem to pay their way in to the cocktail hour and dinner, just to be part of the laughs and prizes.

In all, the day found some slices, some hooks, some long putts made, some short ones missed, a tremendous amount of food, fun and laughs; however, there were no FASBies.