The Story of TFOA: A Network for Single Family Offices

Video transcript

The Family Office Association was founded in 2007 as a peer network for single family offices. Over the years, members have met regularly to exchange ideas, share best practice, and discuss a broad range of family office related issues. Our group is for education, networking, pooling, diligence, selective co-investment, and a resource for family office professionals to share ideas, deal flow, and best practice. What distinguishes the family office association from the many other family office groups is that we're a true peer network and are not looking to monetize our relationships. Members of TFOA join the group for three primary reasons. education, deal flow, and networking. Over the past few years, we've watched many groups attempt to aggregate the family office community. This is not an easy thing to do, and most groups have founded. At the end of the day, they suffer from conflicted business models, high cost, and a lack of trusted relationships. By definition, the value of such groups disappear as soon as non-family office stakeholders penetrate them. That is why TFOA remains a pure peer network with no business model or monetization strategy. While TFOA was founded in Texas, our membership now includes families from all over North America as well as Asia, Europe, and Latin America. Our private membersonly online portal is a great way for members to communicate between meetings or when separated by distance. Members frequently come together to hear from industry practitioners and policy experts to learn about cuttingedge research and to share highly curated proprietary deal flow. TFOA today includes some of the largest and wealthiest families in the world and has evolved into a tight network of trusted contemporaries. We never share member contact information with non-members and members are expected to adhere to a strict code of conduct around privacy, confidentiality, and non-solicitation. Our group is open to a limited number of new members a year. Historically, we've grown organically through referrals. Because TFOA is not a commercial business, we're able to retain alignment and trust that exists only within a pure peer network. To support our members, we try to match family office members with others facing the same issues and challenges given the scale of their offices. While there's no clear assets under management test for what constitutes a family office, our members tend to be in the nine and 10 figures and are not actively soliciting other members. In terms of deal flow, we have a rule that members are not allowed to pitch their own deals unless they are no fee, no promote co-investments. However, members may share opportunities from third parties if they are considering investing in that opportunity and have conducted their own significant due diligence. Our culture has never strayed from our core mission to serve the family office community and at the end of the day TFOA membership is about adhering to the culture, values and principles of our group. Our annual symposium is the preeminent event for the family office buy-side community to hear from leading industry practitioners and policy experts. This is a forum for single family offices, not registered investment advisers, broker dealers or sales representatives. For family offices, it's an opportunity to hear from highly regarded thought leaders on family office and investment related issues and learn about the latest research and ideas in the fields of public and private market investing and family office management. Since TFOA is not a commercial organization, everything we do is designed to ensure a high quality and high impact experience for our stakeholders. Symposium attendees are family office executives and principles who actively engage in our single family office community throughout the year. Speakers are invited to attend based on their expertise, not because they pay for the opportunity. We partner with leading educational institutions to emphasize our commitment to learning. The limited opportunities we have for sponsorship are aligned philosophically with our long-term relationship and brand building approach. There is no solicitation. And lastly, profits from our symposium are donated to our education partners for student scholarships. Thank you for listening. We hope you have enjoyed this content. Please share with others or visit tfoa.info to learn more.