Travelers Championship 2025

We spoke with Travelers Championship Tournament Director Nathan Grube about the Travelers Championship and the mission behind the golf tournament. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning. Thank you for listening to Community Access. I'm
Allison Demurs. My guest this morning is Nathan grub He's
the Travelers Championship tournament director. Good morning, Alicein, good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
You bet Oh my gosh. So many great things going on.
We have the Travelers Championship going on between June eighteenth
and the twenty second. Tell us about that.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Well, I would say, I'd like to say, it's how
we kick off summer in Connecticut. You know, I mean,
everybody looks forward to it. It's you know that we
have that date the third week in June where people
know the tournament's happening and you can kind of feel
the excitement, and you know, I mean, first of all,
is a you know, one of the top events in
the country. To be honest, when Travelers made a signature event,

(00:43):
they elevated the purse to twenty million. The top players
in the world are coming. We have at the moment
ten of the top ten and the official World Golf ranking,
and that's only gonna get better as we have we
have a field. So I mean, I'm just excited about
the tournament. Around the corner, I know what it means
for our fans and you know all of our sponsors
and our volunteers how excited they get. But that just

(01:04):
gives us a really cool platform to, you know, talk
about charity and the impact of the tournament in our community.
But we have to be a really, really good PGA
Tour event first to be able to make all the
rest of that happen.

Speaker 1 (01:15):
And I believe last year alone you raised over three
million dollars for charities here in the state.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
It was so we had about two hundred charities and
it was a little over three point two million, and
that was a record for us. That's that's the most
we've ever given back to the community. And it's a
really cool business model that we get to run this
event and you know, all of the net proceeds get
pushed back out to the community. Very unique business model.

(01:42):
You know, some people think, oh, Travelers, you know, they
must make money on that. They don't. They spend a
lot of money to sponsor this and whatever. You know,
the community comes out in supports and if we have
more support, that means more money going out. We've been
very fortunate that every year since Travelers has taken over
the dollar amount going back to our charity who has
grown every year, and that's something we're really proud of.

(02:03):
And I think since Travelers took over, they're over thirty
million dollars for actually almost a thousand different charities since
Travelers took over, and we could spend time talking about
all the stories of all those charities and the impact
that they have online community. It's really fun to be
a part of that. You know their mission. The better

(02:23):
we run our golf tournament, the better more money we're
able to give out and support their mission. So it's
a very fun story and it never get tired of
talking about it.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
So for people who don't know about Berdiees for Charity,
which we're alluding to, tell us about that.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
So it really is a program that we wouldn't have
without a part like Webster Bank oversees the program for
us and they subsidize a ton of things for us
and make this program possible. But the easiest way I
can say it is it doesn't cost nonprofits a penny
to be a part of this program. And if you
have a staff of one or you have a staff

(02:59):
of one hundred and you can get involved in this program.
And we have somebody in our team Taylor Whiting, who
oversees the program, and it is the easiest turnkey program
you can possibly have. Some charities raise one hundred dollars,
some charities raise seventy five thousand dollars. Like it really
depends on your level of engagement. But what's pretty cool,
and you know that's Alison what The charities need money,

(03:21):
but they also need to be able to tell their
story to the community, to donors, you know, to be
able to say, hey, here's who we are, here's what
we do. So what we try very hard to do
is to bring in partners like yourself, you know, who
can help tell stories of what these charities are doing
in communities. And so we always like to say we're
raising money, but we're also raising awareness for charity. So

(03:42):
if you are a nonprofit and you're listening and you're
not involved with Bertie's for Charity, just go to Travelers
Championship dot com click on Bertie's for Charity. Like I said,
it doesn't cost you a thing. We build out a
website for you, we build out a donation platform, we
we do everything and we don't take a penny from
the nonprofits. We only help them raise money. So it's

(04:04):
probably too much to explain at the moment, but it
is a very easy, turnkey way to raise money and
awareness for what you're doing.

Speaker 1 (04:10):
So for every dollar raise this year for a charity,
fifteen cents is donated from Webster Banks, so people are
actually getting a dollar fifteen. So definitely go to Travelers
Championship dot com and you could help donate to a
bunch of different charities there.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Yeah. Absolutely, And to your point, it's super super easy.
Like I said, there's no fees or anything taking off,
no credit card fees, no nothing. It's you get fifteen
cents on the dollar and that adds up very very quickly.
You know, if you're a nonprofit and you're listening, which
I know you have a lot of them doing that,
just look at the program and give us a call
and we will figure out a way to raise awareness

(04:45):
or money for you.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
Wonderful I'm speaking with Nathan Groob, Travelers Championship Tournament Director.
Thank you so much for being here and for continuing
to serve the community.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
Thank you to the time Allison, See you soon.