Visual Summary / DVFZ Books
How American clubs manufacture exclusivity
A directory of private clubs, read across: what the gates are made of, what they cost, and what they are really selling.
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01 What is on sale
Every club in this book sells the same thing
The book runs through ten kinds of club, from a food buying club to a golf course you cannot pay your way into. The product is identical in all ten. It is company you have been sorted into.
The opening chapter puts a number on why that is worth paying for. Professor Fabio Sani and colleagues at the University of Dundee found that people who belonged to a group or club were 20 times less likely to suffer from depression, and that pupils who could identify with their school, friends or family were four times less likely to suffer psychological distress.
What members themselves say they are buying is narrower. The book cites GGA Partners, a private club consulting firm: 34 percent of people said private clubs were important, mostly for building and keeping friendships, and about 73 percent of members use their club to make new connections.
People find exclusive clubs alluring, as they exemplify their status, while they can enjoy luxurious amenities in ultimate privacy.Most Exclusive Clubs in America, conclusion
02 The mechanism
Exclusivity is built, part by part
Read across the book and the same small kit of parts keeps reappearing: a fee, a sponsor, a vote, an invitation, a fixed number of seats. Clubs combine two or three of them. Almost none uses money alone.
The New York Athletic Club, which the book calls the oldest athletic club in America, is invitation only and requires two trusted sponsors to put your name up; a letter of recommendation goes to the membership board, and the board decides. The Ivy Club at Princeton runs ten one-on-one interviews, then 130 members vote, and a single vote against ends it. Pacifica House at Brown taps 15 juniors a year. Oakmont, Augusta National, Nanea, The California Club and The University Club of Washington, D.C. are all listed as invitation only.
Scarcity is the fifth part. Country clubs cap their rosters and run waiting lists that carry their own monthly fee. Rao's in New York has ten tables and, the book reports, is booked for the next 40 years.
Pick any club named on this page and look for its initiation fee on its own website. Of the 36 exclusive clubs the book names, 16 have no figure printed at all. Silence is part of the mechanism.
03 The money
The fee is a filter, not a price
A club charges in four separate ways, and the book is unusually clear about all four. A one-time initiation fee sorts who comes in. Annual or monthly dues decide who stays. Assessments, which the book says can fall at intervals of about ten years, pay for upgrades. And some clubs set a minimum you must spend on site each month.
Because the initiation fee does the sorting, it moves with demand rather than with cost. The book says plainly that when clubs lose members in a bad economy they lower the cost of joining, and when the economy is steady and the club nears capacity they raise it. Waiting lists have their own monthly charge, paid to hold a place you do not yet occupy.
The spread is the point. Across the 19 clubs that print a figure, the cost to join runs from $250 at the low end of The Algonquin Club in Boston to $1 million at Cherokee Plantation in Yemassee, South Carolina. That is a factor of four thousand for the same basic product.
Before comparing two clubs on price, write down four numbers for each, not one: initiation, recurring dues, assessments, and any monthly spend required on site. The book treats all four as normal.
04 The categories
Different clubs charge in different currencies
The book's own conclusion names five things a club can ask for, and the ten chapters sort neatly against them. Money is only one.
Whether you need skills, a certain career, an altruistic personality, wealth, or an invitation to join, the possibilities are endless.Most Exclusive Clubs in America, conclusion
Skill opens hobby, sports and school clubs. A credential opens professional societies, which the book divides into member-benefit associations, designation-granting associations, certifying bodies and regulatory bodies, and where entry runs through exams and continuing education hours rather than a fee. Altruism opens service clubs such as Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions and Zonta, which the book says have declined for lack of applicants.
Some clubs charge almost nothing. The UNFI Buyers Club, the book notes, has no membership fee and no handling fee. A personal club, made of family and friends, has no gate at all.
05 The geography
The map is two states and a handful of cities
A book titled for a whole country turns out to describe a very small piece of it. Counting every exclusive club the book names by name, from The Vintage Club in chapter two to Rao's in chapter ten, gives 36 entries.
Eleven of them are in California and eight are in New York, so 19 of 36 sit in two states. Within those, the addresses repeat: San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City. Pennsylvania has three. Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Washington, D.C. have two each. Seven more states have one apiece, and one entry, The Supper Club Inc., spans five cities at once.
That concentration is not incidental to exclusivity. A club that runs on sponsorship needs its members within reach of one another, and the oldest clubs the book lists are city institutions: the Somerset in Boston from 1826, the Union Club in New York from 1836, the Duquesne in Pittsburgh from 1873.
06 What changed
Some doors opened, and the book says which
These are old institutions and their rules have moved, unevenly. The book records the changes plainly, so this page reports them the same way.
Phi Beta Kappa, founded in 1776 by John Heath at The College of William & Mary, admitted only men at first; the book says women are also allowed today. Shut out of existing societies, women founded their own: The Adelphean Society at Wesleyan College in Macon, Georgia, in 1851, described as the first secret society for women. The word sorority was coined in 1874 for Gamma Phi Beta. Of the New York Athletic Club, formed in 1868, the book writes: "Although it was initially an all-male club, it allows females to join today. It also accepts minorities and people of various religions." Of the Knickerbocker Club, founded in 1871, it writes only that the club "is for men only."
Initiation itself has been legislated. The book reports that more than 40 male students died in hazing rituals between 2007 and 2017, that four hazing-related deaths were reported in a single month in 2019, and that by 2019 hazing had been banned in 44 states, remaining legal in Montana, South Dakota, Alaska, Wyoming, New Mexico and Hawaii. It distinguishes hazing, which it calls harmful and forced, from pledging, a trial period of about six weeks.
07 The return
Membership buys access to the people who choose the next member
This is the part that makes a gate self-sustaining. You are admitted by members. Once inside, you become one of the people who admits. The club does not need an owner to stay exclusive.
The book's clearest numbers are for Greek-letter organizations: an alumni network it puts at more than nine million in the United States, over 750,000 current members, and, citing Epps, 76 percent of members of Congress and 85 percent of Fortune 500 executives affiliated with a house. On a smaller scale it reports Leisha, a country club member for a year, meeting business owners and people working in real estate, medicine, insurance and law.
The sponsorship rules make the loop explicit. Two trusted sponsors at the New York Athletic Club. A recommendation from a current member at CORE: Club. A nomination from a current member at The Battery. In each case the existing membership is the admissions committee.
Read any club's membership page and note which verb it uses: apply, nominate, sponsor, or invite. The verb tells you who actually controls the door.
08 The whole book
A directory of doors, and what each one is made of
Ten chapters, dozens of clubs, one repeating structure. Strip away the golf courses and the spas and three parts are left.
Built, not found
Sponsors, a board, a ballot, a tap, a fixed number of seats. Money is usually the last step, after somebody already known has vouched for you.
A filter with four parts
Initiation, dues, assessments, spend minimums. It moves with demand, not cost. Sixteen of the 36 named clubs publish no figure at all.
The room, and the door
What a member gets is proximity to other members, and the standing to admit the next one. That is how the gate keeps itself shut.
The book's own last word on the mechanism is the honest one: you need skills, a career, altruism, wealth, or an invitation. Only one of those can be bought.
Adapted from Most Exclusive Clubs in America
Sweet Palmer · © 2022 DVFZ Training Consultancy Services · 90 cited sources and 16 image credits in the source edition
Fees, dues and membership rules are as printed in 2022 and will have moved since