On Course for Success: How a Babson MBA Grad Built a Golf Charity Platform

Eric Sedransk MBA’14, founder of Member for a Day, a golf charity platform that’s raised more than $15 million, describes his career as having two distinct phases: before Babson College and after.

“I was nervous and shy,” he said of his pre-Babson self. “Post-Babson, I had the confidence that I could sit in any room across from any person in business and conduct myself in an intelligent, strategic way. That is priceless.”

The confidence and business mindset Sedransk developed at Babson would eventually help power the creation of Member for a Day, a charity platform he launched in 2020 that connects donors with exclusive golf experiences at private clubs, with proceeds benefiting charitable organizations.

“There aren’t many better ways to spend two years of your life than gaining confidence in something that you want to spend the rest of your career doing,” Sedransk said of his time at Babson.

His path to the College began with a white-knuckle drive through a blizzard to Wellesley. At the time, he was living in New York City and exploring graduate programs, unsure how to turn his goal of starting a company into reality. That changed after hearing then-President Leonard Schlesinger H’14 speak.

“If this person is leading this institution,” he recalled thinking, “I can only imagine how brilliant the professors are.”

The experience sealed his decision to enroll—a choice that would reshape his career.

The Babson Effect

At Babson, Sedransk embraced the school’s hands-on, entrepreneurial approach, including the Summer Venture Program, which accelerates student startups. His co-founded venture was an app that allowed customers to pay to skip lines at Boston nightclubs. While the idea didn’t last, the experience helped clarify an important lesson: passion matters.

Babson’s greatest impact wasn’t a single course or concept, but a broader transformation, Sedransk said.

“Babson has a way of giving you the confidence to go and do things,” he said.

Equally influential were Babson’s faculty—many of whom were seasoned entrepreneurs.

“One of the biggest benefits for me was that (seemingly) every professor at Babson has been an entrepreneur,” Sedransk said.

As an undergraduate at Tulane University, he had avoided the front row. At Babson, that changed.

“When someone like Len Green walks in and explains how he created Blue Buffalo and SoBe Beverages, both of which sold for billions of dollars, you listen,” Sedransk said. “I sat in the front row and took as many notes as I could.”

Hearing their entrepreneurial experiences, Sedransk said, “made the idea of starting a company and having a successful outcome feel possible.”

From Crisis to Creation

That sense of possibility would prove critical years later, when Sedransk found himself navigating one of the most challenging periods of his life.

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, he was laid off. Just days earlier, his father had passed away. Amid grief and uncertainty, he relocated to be with his mother.

“I started feeling an incredible amount of guilt,” he said. “All my friends were in New York, and I wanted to give back somehow.”

That impulse sparked the idea for Member for a Day. The model is simple but powerful: members of private golf clubs donate tee times or experiences, which are then promoted—largely through social media—to potential buyers. Participants gain access to otherwise unattainable courses, while the majority of proceeds go to nonprofit partners.

What began as a one-time effort to support frontline workers quickly gained momentum. Within a week, Sedransk had raised more than $100,000.

“It just happened so fast,” he said. “Nonprofits couldn’t host events during COVID, and here I was raising money online.”

A New Kind of Business Model

As the platform grew, Sedransk had a realization that reshaped his view of business.

“I thought there were two types of organizations: for-profit and nonprofit,” he said. “The ‘aha’ moment was realizing I could run a for-profit business that helps nonprofits.”

Member for a Day now donates the majority of its revenue each year while operating as a sustainable business, an approach that reflects the values Sedransk said were reinforced at Babson.

“Businesses need to be good to society,” he said. “Any business I create in the future will always have charity combined.”

“Post-Babson, I had the confidence that I could sit in any room across from any person in business and conduct myself in an intelligent, strategic way. That is priceless.”
Eric Sedransk MBA’14

The company evolved organically rather than from a formal business plan.

“I wrote maybe a one-page plan,” he said. “This was never intended to be a business.”

Instead, growth followed demand. Member for a Day has offered experiences at elite venues and alongside well-known athletes and celebrities, fueling rapid expansion—including a reported 300 percent growth rate in 2024. The platform recently hit 8.9 million views on its social media during 2026 Masters week.

That kind of success has attracted plenty of interest, and recently Member for a Day formed a strategic partnership with Troon Golf, LLC.

“It felt like a Babson case study happening in real life,” Sedransk said. “I was making these decisions in real time.”

Like many founders, he faced financial uncertainty in the early days, going months without taking a salary.

“I didn’t take a salary for a while,” he said. “But I loved it so much I would have done it for free.”

That mindset—embracing the grind while staying connected to purpose—remains central to his approach.

“Entrepreneurship is the hardest thing ever,” he said. “But if you love it, it doesn’t feel like a sacrifice.”