What is it really going to cost and how will we pay for it?

The Phase I Number Is a Starting Point

The Overview produced in Phase I is built on reserve study replacement costs and high-level allowances for discretionary items. The numbers are a useful baseline but do not represent what the club will actually need to spend.

Phase II drills down—adding real-world costs, considering prioritization and sequencing, and evaluating the member impact.  The result, predictably, is that the spending number goes up. Often substantially. This is not bad news. It is the real number — and a plan built on the real number is a plan that can actually be executed. 

The gap gets larger as the picture gets clearer. The goal of Phase II is not to minimize the gap. It is to understand it — completely and honestly — so the board can make informed strategic decisions it will be able to stand behind.

What Projects Actually Cost at a Private Club

Consider a tennis court. The reserve study allocates $250,000 and that is what we included in our Overview from phase I.  That is not what a tennis court replacement costs at a private club.  By the time the lights (which don’t work well), the furniture (which is worn) and the fence, landscaping, and irrigation are all replaced, that project will likely cost $500,000.  A club with a budget of only $250,000 is in trouble.

This pattern is not unique to tennis courts. It is the reality of capital work at a private facility that has standards to maintain and members to manage. The reserve study captures the seed cost. Phase II begins considering the real cost and enables decision making based on real data not emotions.  

The Spending Plan: Building from a Baseline

Phase II begins on the spending side by establishing a minimum baseline: what the club must spend to maintain its physical plant and fulfill its obligations to members under a conservative, no-enhancements scenario. This is the floor. It is not aspirational. It reflects the real cost of keeping the club operational and in reasonable condition over the planning horizon.

The baseline is important because it gives the board an anchor. Every spending scenario above the baseline represents a choice — a decision to invest beyond minimum maintenance, with a corresponding funding requirement. When the board understands the baseline, the tradeoffs become visible: what does adding the fitness expansion cost, in terms of annual funding requirements? What does accelerating the pool complex renovation do to the reserve trajectory?

Are we maintaining the club, or making it better? Are we adding fitness, or staying with our traditional offerings? What would it take to fund the ‘full vision’ plan? What is the funding plan for the minimum baseline? These are the questions Phase II is designed to answer.

From the baseline, Provident works with the board to develop two or three realistic spending scenarios — typically a maintenance plan, a moderate investment plan, and a more ambitious plan — each with a clearly documented scope and cost. These become the options the board will evaluate and ultimately choose between.   This is not a ‘good-better-best’ budget for a specific project. It is a decision about the overall Capital Strategy the club will pursue – maintain the status quo, make minimal investments in upgrades, or pursue excellence across the board.

Matching Funding to Spending

Most boards have never explicitly chosen a capital funding strategy. They set contributions at whatever level precedent and membership tolerance suggest, and they hope it is enough. Phase II replaces hope with data.

For each spending scenario, Phase II models the funding plan required to support it: what combination of funding mechanisms would be required to keep the reserve balance above an acceptable floor over the full planning horizon.

At the end of Phase II, the board knows what it is going to cost to run the club at three different service levels, and has a funding scenario for each.  That is not a report.  It is a decision-making tool.

The output is a set of paired scenarios: each spending plan with a corresponding funding plan. Each option is viable, with different implications for dues levels, assessment levels, club marketability, and member experience. The choice is a governance decision.  No one can tell your board what the right option is, but we can give you the tools to make an informed, data driven decision that can be communicated to members and will protect your Club’s value.

Iterating to A, B, and C

The scenarios are not arbitrary. They are built around real questions the board needs to answer:

What is the minimum funding level the board believes is necessary to maintain the club as a competitive private facility? That is the floor. That is Plan A.

What would it cost to add the initiatives the membership has been asking about — the fitness expansion, the dining room renovation, the pool complex upgrade — on a reasonable timeline? That is Plan B.

What does the full-vision plan look like — everything the board aspires to accomplish, properly funded and sequenced with strong reserves? That is Plan C.

Each scenario gets refined through iteration. The goal is not to produce three perfect plans but to give the board three genuinely viable options it can use to make the Strategic decisions that inform the ultimate plan selection.

What the Board Can Communicate

One of the most important outcomes of Phase II is not a spreadsheet. It is the ability to have a credible, confident conversation with the membership.

A board that can explain its capital plan in three minutes has done the work. A board that cannot has not.

That communication builds confidence precisely because it demonstrates that the board has done the work — not just inherited a number from a reserve study and hoped for the best.

What Phase II Delivers

1. A spending forecast reflecting realistic project costs for anticipated and discretionary capital items over the planning period.

2. A minimum baseline scenario and two or three investment scenarios, each with documented scope, realistic cost assumptions, and timeline.

3. Funding plans modeled for each scenario, with annual contribution requirements, assessment timing, and projected reserve balances.

4. An updated Overview for each scenario— the same familiar framework from Phase I, now grounded in real numbers and supported by details and backup materials.

5. A formal board decision: “We are proceeding with Plan x Here is why. Here is what comes next”.

The Transition to Phase III

The decision made at the end of Phase II is a commitment to a direction, not a finished plan that is set in stone. The spending forecast is accurate at a budgetary level. The funding plan seems to be viable. The board has chosen a path. The members seem satisfied.  But the major items on that path — the pool complex, the dining room renovation, the fitness expansion — are still concepts, not projects.

Phase III is where those concepts become real. It is where the plan moves from the model to the field — and where the risk of losing the work done so far is greatest. Boards change. GMs change. Priorities shift. Without someone carrying the plan forward through those transitions, it is likely to end up in a drawer like every report that came before it.