Interim director offers grim analysis of PCCC financials

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Representatives of local charities lined up to receive reimbursement checks from their sponsorships of the Price Cutter Charity Championship golf tournament at a Missouri Sports Hall of Fame news conference on Dec. 17. The event also served to introduce the organization’s next leader.

The same nonprofit reps typically gather this time of year around an oversized check, accompanied by fanfare and photographs, in the PCCC Celebration of Sharing event, which had been set for Nov. 19 but was canceled abruptly due to lack of funds.

The charities receiving checks had purchased buy-ins, or sponsorships in exchange for support, from the PCCC golf tournament. In a typical year, the charities receive their buy-in fee back along with additional proceeds from the tournament. By the news conference this month, however, the reimbursement was all Missouri Sports Hall of Fame officials could manage.

PCCC and MSHOF interim CEO and Executive Director Jerald Andrews said the organization’s plan is for charities to receive the remaining funds that are owed to them.

Andrews took to the podium at the news conference to explain the series of events that led to the charities receiving only reimbursement checks for their sponsorship buy-in instead of proceeds from the golf tournament on the PGA’s Korn Ferry Tour.

Andrews outlined for guests how increased tournament expenses and declining revenue in 2023 and 2024 had led to a shortfall, with the nonprofit MSHOF still in debt to tournament vendors and considering drastic measures to pay its debts. The most drastic of all would be to sell the building where the state’s sports standouts are celebrated.

The reimbursement checks disbursed at the event to 42 nonprofit beneficiaries totaled $325,107 – less than Andrews’ salary of $351,475 in 2022, the last year for which salary figures for the nonprofit are available via a Form 990 filing with the IRS. Andrews was the MSHOF’s longtime leader before his recent retirement from the organization.

The total was also far less than the more than $1 million awarded to charities last year.

Most charities pay to participate in the tournament, with entry starting at $5,000 and one paying more than $50,000, according to Andrews. Andrews said media publications are reporting that all charities have to pay an entry fee, but this is not true; some – MSHOF Chair Dan Nelson says about 10 – participate for free as some of the original partners in the event.

The Dec. 17 event also introduced a new executive director for the MSHOF: Rob Marsh, who will begin Jan. 6 after a 27-year career with Pyramid Foods, which operates the Price Cutter supermarket chain and has been the longtime presenting sponsor of the tournament. Marsh exits as chief operating officer of the grocery business.

Neither Andrews nor Nelson would disclose Marsh’s future salary.

“That’s a confidential matter,” Nelson said in an interview after the event. He noted that the information would be disclosed in a future Form 990.

What happened
Andrews was CEO of the MSHOF for 27 years. He stepped down in July 2022 and left the organization entirely in February 2023. His successor was his son-in-law, Byron Shive. Shive, who resigned effective at the end of 2024, was not acknowledged or mentioned by name during the news conference, though Andrews introduced five MSHOF staff members.

Andrews said at the time he retired, he felt concerned about waning attendance and participation at tournament events.

“I also noticed things were very, very well done,” he said. “The gifts were nicer than they had been. The tents were nicer than they had been.”

Everything was attractive, he said – but from what he saw, he suspected revenues were falling and expenses were increasing.

In mid-October, Andrews said he was contacted by one of the lead sponsors of the tournament.

“That person contacted me to inform me that it was his understanding that the Price Cutter Charity Championship and the Hall of Fame were both in some financial trouble,” he said.

Shortly after the annual celebration event was canceled, Andrews said, the board reached out to him to see if he would be willing to help in an interim role. He accepted the role, he said, because the MSHOF and the PCCC were both so important to him.

“They’re my legacy, for the most part,” he said.

Andrews said he had five ordered objectives for the MSHOF and its tournament: to figure out where both entities were financially, to stop financial bleeding, to stabilize both entities, to start developing calendars of events for 2025 for both entities, and to get them back in the black.

“We’ve made some progress on each of these fronts,” he said.

He said both entities are cash-strapped.

“It appears to me in reviewing everything I can get my hands on that this really started in 2023,” he said, noting that tournament did not do as well as it had done in previous years.

“For the charities to receive what you got in 2023, money was borrowed from the Hall of Fame by the tournament to the tune of $350,000,” he said. “Obviously, that benefited you as charities, but it obviously hurt the Hall of Fame and our financial position at that time.”

The Hall of Fame has since been at risk, he said.

The tournament distributed $1.025 million to 53 charities in 2023, according to a news release. The total included reimbursement of the charities’ buy-in amounts.

In 2022, Andrews said, the tournament grossed about $2.5 million and spent about $1.3 million on expenses, giving about $1.1 million to charities.

This year, the tournament grossed about $1.8 million, he said – a significant drop from two years previously. It spent about $1.7 million, he said.

“Thus, the tournament actually netted this past year less than $100,000,” he said.

The MSHOF was also struggling financially, he said, in part because of long illness-related absences of its longtime accountant.

Andrews said when he came into his interim role, he eliminated some staff positions, cutting the payroll dramatically.

“We’re only paying bills such as insurance, salaries, utilities and other necessities at this point in time,” he said. “The Hall of Fame does owe quite a bit of money to vendors as well.”

Andrews said the PCCC currently has about $340,000 in the bank with about $100,000 still owed to it. The tournament owes about half a million dollars to vendors, including the purse to the PGA Tour, Big Cedar Lodge, Sunbelt Rentals, Silo Ridge Country Club, Highland Springs Country Club, insurance and other expenses.

“We’re making sure that we’re paying critical payables as well,” he said. “We’re working through that, and to be blunt with you, that’s going to take a while to pay everyone back that we owe money to.”

Andrews said the upcoming 2025 Hall of Fame enshrinement event is expected to gross about $400,000, which will put the organization in a much better position.

Collecting accounts receivable is also a focus, he said, as the tournament is owed money from sponsors and the MSHOF is owed money from fall events.

Charities should be receiving $742,410 total from the 2024 tournament, he said, meaning $417,000 remains owed to the charities.

“If we had that amount of money, that’s what we’d be writing checks for today to you,” he said.

He noted that one local corporation, which he did not name, gave a gift of $100,000 because it knew the tournament was in trouble. That made the first disbursements to the charities possible, he said.

Andrews said the organization would try to raise money through donations to take care of its shortfall. Other options are to take out a large loan on the Hall of Fame facility or even to sell the building.

“Nothing’s off the table in terms of looking at how we’re going to get out of this financial trouble that we’re in at this point in time,” he said.

Springfield Business Journal reached out to the leaders of several of the nonprofits that participated in the tournament, but none of them responded on the record.