The Initiation Fee Boom, in the Filings: $1.45 Billion Across 1,123 Clubs

The report “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, finds that private clubs reported $1.45 billion in initiation fees and capital contributions on their fiscal 2024 tax returns, a figure drawn from IRS Form 990 e-file data for the 1,123 member-owned, tax-exempt clubs in our database, each of which filed a Form 990 showing a positive amount on Part V, line 10a. It is not a survey and not a fee schedule. It is what clubs told the IRS they actually collected.

The more telling number sits underneath it. The analysis “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, finds that in a constant panel of 864 clubs that reported line 10a income in every fiscal year from 2019 through 2024, that income grew 64.8 percent over five years and total revenue at the same clubs grew 41.8 percent. Joining money is now roughly one dollar in seven of everything those clubs take in, and boards setting 2027 fees should understand exactly what kind of dollar it is.

What Line 10a Actually Measures

The IRS document “Instructions for Form 990 Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax (2025),” published by the Internal Revenue Service, directs every 501(c)(7) social club that files a full Form 990 to answer a question in Part V, line 10a: the initiation fees, capital contributions and unusual amounts of income included in total revenue on Part VIII, line 12. That wording matters, and it is part of the story rather than a footnote. The line captures joining fees paid by new members, but it also captures capital contributions and other unusual income that a club books as revenue. A club that books a large one-time capital contribution in a given year can report a line 10a figure several times its normal level without admitting a single additional member.

So the line is best read as a measure of capital flowing in, rather than a clean count of initiation fees. In the years where a figure jumps sharply, a capital contribution or an unusual income item may be sitting inside it. The 990 does not split the components, and neither can we.

Five Years of Growth in a Constant Panel

To measure the trend without clubs entering and leaving the sample, we held the panel fixed. The report “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, defines it as 864 clubs with total revenue of at least $1 million and a positive line 10a figure in each fiscal year from 2019 through 2024, and shows those clubs reporting $784.4 million in fiscal 2019 and $1.29 billion in fiscal 2024, an increase of about $508 million.

Initiation Fees and Capital Contributions, Constant Panel of 864 Clubs, by Fiscal Year

• FY2019: $784.4M
• FY2020: $807.9M
• FY2021: $986.2M
• FY2022: $1,037.6M
• FY2023: $1,130.1M
• FY2024: $1,292.8M

The report “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, tabulate Part V line 10a for 501(c)(7) clubs with total revenue of $1 million or more and a positive line 10a figure in every fiscal year 2019–2024 (n=864). Fiscal year is the year the reporting period ends.

The shape of the curve is worth noticing. The data summary “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, shows that in fiscal 2020, when total revenue at these clubs fell 5.3 percent, line 10a income still rose 3.0 percent, and that fee income rose 14.4 percent from fiscal 2023 to fiscal 2024 while total revenue rose 9.4 percent. The step up came in fiscal 2021, and the line has climbed every year since. The most recent year was the strongest.

Over the full five years, fees outgrew the rest of the business. The report “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, finds that revenue other than line 10a income grew 38.6 percent, from $5.60 billion to $7.76 billion, and that line 10a income accounted for about $508 million of the $2.67 billion in added revenue, about 19 percent of all new dollars. As a share of revenue, it moved from 12.3 percent in fiscal 2019 to 14.4 percent in fiscal 2021, eased to 13.7 percent for two years, and returned to 14.3 percent in fiscal 2024.

The typical club tells the same story. The analysis “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, puts median line 10a income per club in the panel at $494,459 in fiscal 2019 and $900,366 in fiscal 2024, an 82 percent increase, and the median club’s own growth over the period at 70.7 percent. The report “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, also counts 351 of the 864 clubs, about 41 percent, that at least doubled their line 10a income and 167 clubs, roughly one in five, that reported less in fiscal 2024 than in fiscal 2019. The gains were broad. They were not universal.

The Wider Field in Fiscal 2024

The analysis “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, looks beyond the constant panel to every club in our dataset with a fiscal 2024 return and finds that 1,408 clubs answered line 10a, with 1,123 reporting a positive figure and 285, about 20 percent, reporting zero, and that those 1,123 clubs collected $1.45 billion against $10.42 billion in total revenue, a 13.9 percent share, with the 864 panel clubs alone accounting for $1.29 billion of that total.

The money is concentrated. The data summary “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, finds that the median club with a positive figure reported $675,933 while 453 clubs cleared $1 million and 39 cleared $5 million, and shows a quarter of reporting clubs drawing 4.2 percent or less of revenue from line 10a, the median club drawing 10.4 percent, the top quarter drawing 16.3 percent or more, and 180 clubs drawing at least 20 percent. The report “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, lists New York clubs as reporting the most by state at $196.9 million, followed by California at $129.8 million, New Jersey at $103.5 million and Florida at $97.4 million.

Seven Clubs, Two Patterns

The seven clubs below are drawn from our dataset to illustrate two patterns. The analysis “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, reports that each posted at least $7.6 million on line 10a in fiscal 2024 and that together they account for $105.4 million. Read year by year, they fall into two distinct groups. Port Royal, Houston, Maidstone and Bellerive each reported a fiscal 2024 figure more than double the prior year; Army Navy, Cherokee Town & Country and The Olympic Club did not.

Initiation Fees and Capital Contributions, Seven Featured Clubs, FY2019–FY2024

The ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer pages “Port Royal Club Inc – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica”, “Houston Country Club – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica”, “Maidstone Club Inc – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica”, “Army Navy Country Club – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica”, “Bellerive Country Club – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica”, “Cherokee Town & Country Club Inc – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica” and “Olympic Club – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica,” published by ProPublica, report the line 10a figures in the table below, current through the filings of May 2026 (Port Royal), August 2025 (Houston), October 2025 (Maidstone), February 2026 (Army Navy), July 2026 (Bellerive), January 2026 (Cherokee) and August 2026 (Olympic).

Line 10a is Part V, line 10a of IRS Form 990. Fiscal year is the year the club’s reporting period ends (for example, Army Navy’s ends in March and Cherokee’s in February).

The first group is the one-year spike. The Nonprofit Explorer profile “Port Royal Club Inc – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica,” published by ProPublica and current through the club’s May 2026 filing, shows that Port Royal Club in Naples reported $27.4 million on line 10a in fiscal 2024, about 7.5 times its fiscal 2023 figure and three times its previous five-year high, equal to 76.9 percent of the club’s $35.5 million in revenue that year against $10.1 million in total expenses, while its total assets grew from $42.5 million in fiscal 2019 to $104.9 million in fiscal 2024 and $121.3 million in fiscal 2025. The ProPublica listing “Maidstone Club Inc – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica,” published by ProPublica and current through the club’s October 2025 filing, reports that Maidstone Club in East Hampton followed the same shape: $13.7 million in fiscal 2024, about 7.3 times the prior year, after five years between $1.2 million and $2.5 million. The Nonprofit Explorer profiles “Houston Country Club – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica” and “Bellerive Country Club – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica,” published by ProPublica and current through the clubs’ August 2025 and July 2026 filings, record that Houston Country Club went from $9.0 million to $22.4 million and that Bellerive Country Club in St. Louis went from $4.1 million to $11.6 million.

Jumps of that size are hard to explain with joining fees alone, and the 990 does not say what caused them. The likeliest reading is that capital contributions or unusual income sit inside each figure, and the following year’s returns point the same way, though they do not prove it. The ProPublica filing pages “Port Royal Club Inc – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica” and “Bellerive Country Club – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica,” published by ProPublica and current through the clubs’ May 2026 and July 2026 filings, show line 10a falling back in the fiscal 2025 returns, to $10.7 million at Port Royal and $3.6 million at Bellerive, with total revenue falling to $28.1 million at Port Royal from $35.5 million and to $17.6 million at Bellerive from $25.5 million, a 31 percent drop. The ProPublica filing page “Bellerive Country Club – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica,” published by ProPublica and current through the club’s July 2026 filing, lists figures that, on our arithmetic, show the roughly $7.9 million decline in total revenue almost exactly matching the roughly $7.9 million decline in line 10a. Houston’s fiscal 2025 return was not yet listed on its ProPublica page when we checked in October 2026.

The second group grew steadily. The ProPublica records “Cherokee Town & Country Club Inc – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica”, “Army Navy Country Club – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica” and “Olympic Club – Nonprofit Explorer – ProPublica,” published by ProPublica and current through the clubs’ January 2026, February 2026 and August 2026 filings, show that Cherokee Town & Country Club in Atlanta dipped in fiscal 2020, then rose every year to $10.6 million, 53 percent above fiscal 2019; that Army Navy Country Club in Arlington more than doubled over the period, from $5.4 million to $12.2 million, reaching $12.2 million in fiscal 2022, dipping to $9.9 million in fiscal 2023 and returning to $12.2 million in fiscal 2024; and that The Olympic Club in San Francisco moved from $5.6 million to $7.6 million, a 36 percent gain, drawing 9.8 percent of revenue from the line, close to the median share for all reporting clubs. These clubs show multi-year growth rather than a single-year spike, a pattern consistent with a continuing flow of new members, though the return does not show how many members joined.

What This Means for Your Club

Budget fee income as volatile, because it can be. The analysis “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, counts 167 of 864 panel clubs that collected less in fiscal 2024 than in fiscal 2019, even in a strong market, and the featured clubs show how far a single year can swing. A 2027 budget that treats this year’s joining income as a baseline is building on a line that moved sharply at the featured clubs.

Treat it as capital, not operating income. When initiation fees and capital contributions fund dues relief or cover an operating gap, the club is spending its balance sheet to subsidize its income statement. Boards that ring-fence line 10a money for capital reserves and debt are in step with the IRS, which excludes capital contributions and initiation fees from the gross receipts it counts in its 501(c)(7) tests.

Separate the components in your own reporting. The IRS combines joining fees, capital contributions and unusual income on one line. Your board package should not. Track new-member fees, transfer fees and assessments separately, so a spike year is not mistaken for a pricing success and a quiet year is not mistaken for a demand problem.

Benchmark share, not just dollars. The data summary “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, finds that a quarter of reporting clubs drew 16.3 percent or more of revenue from line 10a and that 180 clubs drew at least 20 percent. If your club sits in that range outside a planned capital year, it may be more exposed to a slowdown in new-member demand than most peers, and the fee decision for 2027 should be weighed against that exposure.

Price against the pipeline. The steady-growth clubs did not need one large year. Before raising the fee, the useful question is whether the waitlist and the application rate can carry it for several years in a row.

How We Did This

We matched private clubs in the Private Club Marketing database to their 501(c)(7) Form 990 filings and read Part V, line 10a, “Initiation fees and capital contributions included on Part VIII, line 12.” The report “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, includes only clubs with total revenue of $1 million or more in a given year. Fiscal year means the year the club’s tax period ends, so fiscal 2024 covers returns for periods ending in 2024. The analysis “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” published by Private Club Marketing in October 2026, defines the constant panel as the 864 clubs reporting a positive line 10a figure in every fiscal year 2019 through 2024, and the fiscal 2024 totals as covering all 1,123 clubs reporting a positive figure that year.

The caveats are material. Line 10a includes capital contributions and unusual income booked as revenue, not only joining fees, and the return does not separate them. Clubs that are not tax-exempt under section 501(c)(7) do not file this return and are not here. Some large 501(c)(7) clubs are not matched in our dataset, so “largest” means the largest in our dataset, not nationally. The aggregate figures in this article are Private Club Marketing’s own calculations from public IRS filings, and the club-level figures can be checked in ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer. Fiscal 2025 figures for Port Royal (filed May 2026) and Bellerive (filed July 2026) come from their fiscal 2025 Form 990 filings as published there; the five-year analysis ends at fiscal 2024.

For more on what the filings reveal about how clubs are run, see our board governance 990 analysis, and for the other side of the 2027 budget, our look at dues increases and retention math.

Sources

• “Instructions for Form 990 Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax (2025),” Internal Revenue Service (Part V, line 10a; Appendix C, gross receipts tests for section 501(c)(7) organizations)
• IRS, Form 990 (Part V, line 10a)
• IRS, Form 990 series downloads (PDF and e-file XML)
• “Research Notes: Form 990 Line 10a, Private Clubs, FY2019–FY2025,” Private Club Marketing, October 2026 (aggregate tabulations of IRS e-file data)
• ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, club pages linked above