Family Office Association (FOA)

The Family Office Association describes itself as an affinity group dedicated primarily to the interests of single family offices, offering educational information and a forum for exchanging information of mutual interest. It serves family offices, entrepreneurs and wealthy individuals.

Check the name against the web address before you go further. A separate organisation called The Family Office Association, at tfoa.info, also appears in this directory and is a different body with different rules. This one is at familyofficeassociation.us.

Who joins

The association names family offices, entrepreneurs and high-net-worth individuals as its constituency, but it does not publish eligibility criteria, an asset threshold or a description of who is turned away.

That is worth stating plainly rather than filling in. Several organisations in this directory publish their qualification test in detail, and the test is often the most useful thing to know about a peer network, because it tells you who will be sitting across the table. Here you will have to ask.

How membership works

Membership is by application, and the association publishes neither the process nor a fee. The site does state that the association does not participate in the offer, sale or distribution of securities, and does not provide investment, tax, legal or financial advice, which places it outside the group of networks that monetise members by introducing them to deals.

Anyone considering it should approach the association directly with the specific questions the site leaves open: who qualifies, what it costs, how many members there are, and how many of them are principals rather than advisers.

What members get

Members receive access to resources, events and speakers, and can take part in two structures worth understanding.

The Resource Council involves members in shaping thought leadership and content rather than only consuming it. Peer Communities are smaller groups organised around particular subjects, including global impact, technology, sport and entertainment.

Those last two are unusual. Most family office networks organise their subgroups by function, so you get an investment group and a governance group. Organising instead around sport and entertainment reflects where a good deal of recently created American wealth actually comes from, and gives families in those industries peers who understand the specific shape of it.

For a family office weighing this against the better-documented networks in this directory, the fair summary is that the peer community structure looks genuinely useful and the public information is thin. Treat the first conversation as the real research.