Carl Johnson,
I recall, that when the club was first being formed, that the Bon Air-Vanderbilt Company acting for the club,
purchased the option to buy about 365 acres for the club.
Subsequently, a company called the "Fruitland Manor Corporation" was formed to buy the property.
At the same time, a seperate corporation was formed to own the golf club.
Bobby Jones's father was the first stockholder in that corporation.
The idea was that the Fruitland Manor Corporation would initially lease acreage to the golf club and that the club would eventually buy the land from Fruitland.
Most accountants and attorneys will tell you that you can't co-mingle funds from seperate entities.
Ditto cavalier self dealing.
Pat, your answer does not really address the question of whether ANGC is a separate, stand-alone non-profit entity from Augusta National, Inc., which
on the record,
appears to be the club. I don't want to get into a who-knows-more argument, but effective January 1 of this year I retired as lawyer after 43 years of practice, most of it dealing exclusively with complex nonprofit organization issues. So, although I can no longer say I am a lawyer, I can claim to be a layman with a little knowledge of the law.
A sidebar, which may or may not be relevant here: Interestingly, as an academic question, a for-profit may control a non-profit. The simple way you do it is to organize a membership non-profit, and then make the for-profit the sole member of the non-profit. It happens. The result is in effect a parent-subsidiary relationship. However, that does not mean that the for-profit can subvert the non-profit and use it in any way, or cause it to do anything, not permitted of the non-profit under the non-profit and tax-exempt organization rules. (Note: although there are techincal differences between tax-expempt organizations and non-profits, they usually go hand in hand, and when I use the term non-profit here I mean an income-tax-exempt non-profit.) These sorts of layered arrangements, which may also include government entities (distinctly different from both for-profits and private sector non-profits), give the IRS, U.S. Labor Department, and other regulators lots of difficult problems to deal with. I will say no more.
Here's my bet - which is all it is . . . I do not know this to be a fact. There is one entity, "Augusta National, Inc." which is a for-profit corporation that runs both the Masters and Augusta National Golf Club simply as business divisions, not separate legal entities. I'd be curious to know whether this picture is correct. (As I mentioned in my first post above, if the club is a separate non-profit, where is it's Form 990? These things are all available to the public from the IRS and picked up on the web. For example, here's a link to the most recent 990 available for Myers Park Country Club, a typical golf and country club, in my hometown (and of which I am not a member):
http://dynamodata.fdncenter.org/990_pdf_archive/560/560333840/560333840_201012_990O.pdf ).
It would be interesting to see if Augusta National, Inc.'s articles of incorporation (charter) shed any light, but as best I can tell the Ga. Sec. of State's office does not put charters on-line. If you look up "Augusta National" on the Sec. of State's website the only thing you get other than ANI's annual registration statement is reference to a name reservation for "Augusta National's Realty L.L.C." filed in 2006, and since expired. So, I have placed an order with the Sec. of State for copies of all of ANI's filed documents. I'm promised to get them within 30 days.