The Six Days Grey Oaks Turned Every Court, Trail and Card Table Into a Fundraiser

The first time Grey Oaks Country Club tried to raise money for the community outside its gates, it took one day and one sport. A golf tournament, some raffles, a live auction. The club's inaugural Grey Oaks Cares effort brought in $750,000 for 50 local nonprofits, and the volunteer committee running it set a goal for the following year: top $1 million.

They didn't come close to just topping it. This February, the same initiative ran for six days instead of one, touched nearly every recreational space the club owns, and closed with more than $3.8 million raised for 70 Collier County nonprofits. That's not a modest overshoot of a stated goal. It's nearly four times the target the club set for itself, and roughly five times what the first year brought in.

The number is the headline. But the more interesting story, if you actually live behind those gates, is how the club got there. It didn't raise more money by asking harder. It raised more money by handing almost every member a way to participate in whatever they were already doing that week.

One Tournament, One Ask

The first Grey Oaks Cares was built around a single event: a one-day golf tournament, organized by a volunteer committee that included Donna Burke, Jeff Diermeier, Bryan Gentry, Steve Granger, Jim and Kim Hummer, and Ann McAloon. All of the proceeds went straight to the charities, with the committee covering costs separately so 100 percent of what was raised reached the nonprofits. Nine primary beneficiaries anchored that first round, among them Grace Place, Guadalupe Center, Habitat for Humanity of Collier County, St. Matthew's House and Warrior Homes of Collier County.

It worked. Fifty organizations split $750,000 from a single afternoon of golf. But a one-day, one-sport format has a ceiling. If you don't golf, or you're traveling that particular Saturday, there's no way in. The committee's stated ambition for the next year, reported at the time, was to expand the format into a full Week of Giving and push past $1 million.

What Actually Happened Over Six Days

This year's Week of Giving ran February 1 through 6, and the schedule reads less like a single fundraiser and more like an inventory of everything a Grey Oaks membership actually includes. Pickleball and bocce competitions. Tennis drills run by the club pros. An off-court trivia contest. An eight-mile cycling ride around the Grey Oaks community loop. Mahjong and canasta sessions. Then, toward the end of the week, the golf tournament that had carried the whole event in year one, now just one leg of it, generating dollars through donations, raffles and a live auction. The week closed with the second annual Grey Oaks Cares dinner.

Line those activities up against the club's actual amenity map and the pattern is obvious. Courts, trails, card rooms, the dining room and the fairways all got activated in the same six days. A member who never picks up a golf club could still show up for the cycling loop or a canasta table and put money toward the same cause. That's a structural difference from year one, not just a scheduling one, and it's the most plausible explanation for why the total didn't just grow, it multiplied.

Where the Money Actually Landed

The 2026 primary beneficiary list grew to include Grace Place, Guadalupe Center, Habitat for Humanity of Collier County, Harry Chapin Food Bank of Southwest Florida, Naples Children's Foundation, Naples Zoo, Neighborhood Health Clinic, Pathways Early Education Center of Immokalee, St. Matthew's House, The Shelter for Abused Women and Children, and Warrior Homes of Collier County, among the 70 organizations that shared in the total. Several names carried over from year one. Others, like Naples Zoo and Neighborhood Health Clinic, are new to the primary list, which suggests the club widened who it was trying to reach, not just how much it could raise for the same handful of causes.

Don Emery, the club's general manager, framed the effort as a matter of institutional habit rather than a one-off campaign. "At Grey Oaks Country Club, stewardship, generosity and community guide how we operate," he said. "Grey Oaks Cares is an intentional expression of those values. As an organization, we are proud to galvanize our members, staff and partners around a shared purpose and to channel that energy into meaningful support for the nonprofits that help strengthen Collier County."

The Number That Actually Tells the Story

It's easy to read $3.8 million and move on. The figure that matters more sits right next to it: the club's own goal, set publicly a year earlier, was to raise over $1 million. They cleared that by nearly $2.8 million. A one-day golf tournament raising $750,000 is a good result for a private club. A six-day event that beats its own stated target by close to 400 percent is evidence that the format change, not just more effort or a bigger ask, did the real work.

That distinction matters if you're trying to understand how a community like this actually functions day to day. Grey Oaks isn't raising money the way a single charity gala does, with one big-ticket night carrying the load. It's spreading the ask across the ordinary rhythm of a week, tennis on Tuesday, cards on Wednesday, a bike ride Thursday morning, so that giving becomes something people do alongside whatever they were already doing, rather than something they carve out separate time for.

What This Means If You're Already Living Here

If you're a Grey Oaks resident, the practical takeaway is simple: the first week of February is no longer just a golf tournament on the calendar, it's six days where the club's entire social infrastructure points toward the same cause. That's worth knowing if you want to be part of it next year, whether that means signing up for the cycling loop, showing up for a canasta table, or just watching for details on the following February's dinner. Naples Press covered this year's total alongside other Collier County civic news, which is a reasonable place to check for the announcement when the 2027 dates get set.

It's also a small but telling data point about the texture of life inside the gates. A club can have three golf courses and a 30,000-square-foot wellness center and still have its most meaningful annual event be the one week when none of those amenities are used for their usual purpose.

If you're weighing a move within Grey Oaks, curious what a home in the community is worth right now, or just want a conversation with someone who follows this neighborhood closely, Laurie Bellico has spent years working this stretch of Naples and is happy to talk through it. Get your instant home valuation whenever you're ready to see where your property stands.