Loyola University Chicago Family Business Center

The Family Business Center sits inside Loyola University Chicago's Quinlan School of Business and was founded in 1990, making it one of the older university-based family business programmes in the United States. It began with Loyola faculty from the business, social work and law schools, and that multidisciplinary origin still shows: the programming treats family relationships, governance and ownership transfer as one problem rather than three. Membership is a flat $7,500 a year per family business and covers the whole family. It buys an introductory primer for all family members, an annual goal-setting meeting, the newsletter, invitations to conferences and social events, a 15% discount on Loyola's open-enrolment executive education, and eligibility for the Center's advanced programmes at member rates. Those programmes are the substance: eight peer groups segmented by role and life stage, the 18-month Next Generation Leadership Institute for family members aged 25 to 50 preparing to lead, and the 18-month Stewardship Institute for family members across the enterprise. Confidentiality and non-solicitation are stated founding values, and family members from the same business are never placed in the same peer group.

How it works

A family business pays annual membership dues, which cover everyone in the family. Peer groups are bought on top and are the main ongoing activity: eight streams, typically five to twelve participants, meeting bimonthly for half-day sessions with one-on-one coaching twice a year. The Family Office group meets quarterly, mostly in 90-minute virtual sessions plus one annual in-person meeting, and CFO Roundtables are sponsored luncheons. The two 18-month institutes run as cohorts — NGLI opens with a two-day retreat then 17 day-long meetings and 15 coaching sessions; the Stewardship Institute meets six times for a day and a half, fully in person.

Typical member

The Center describes working with middle-market, multigenerational family businesses and serving "the whole family, both inside and outside the business". Membership is bought by the family business and extends to family members regardless of whether they hold a role in the company; peer groups separately admit non-family CEOs, CHROs, CFOs and female board directors.

The peer group design is the most carefully thought-through element here. Eight streams sorted by role and stage — current C-suite family leaders, next-generation family members outside the C-suite, non-family CEOs, CHROs, female board directors, a Legacy group for owners retiring within five years, a family council group for relatives outside the business, and a family office group — plus a rule that relatives from the same company never sit in the same room. That rule is what makes the confidentiality claim credible. Pricing is transparent up to a point: dues are $7,500 and peer groups are $3,500 for members against $5,000 for non-members, but neither institute publishes tuition, and the only figure available for the Next Generation Leadership Institute is the $1,000 deposit. Non-members can enrol in the institutes and peer groups at higher rates, so membership functions as a discount as much as a gate. Member numbers are not published.

Editorial analysis by Peer Group Guide editors. It is separated from the record above and follows the editorial policy.