With Street Week 2023 currently in progress for the Class of 2025 and some members of the Class of 2024, Princeton’s eating clubs have been the main topic of interest. In addition to questions such as “What is bicker?” and “Which clubs are sign-in?” many students may wonder how the eating clubs generate income, manage their budgets, and fund operations.
To answer those questions, The Daily Princetonian analyzed each eating club’s publicly available Form 990 filings over the past 16 years. Form 990s — required for all income tax-exempt organizations — detail everything about an eating club’s finances, from stock investments to expenditures for food and beverages.
The ‘Prince’ reached out to every club and the Interclub Council (ICC), and received a response from Cloister’s general manager. Every other club and the ICC either did not reply or declined requests for comment.
For a more detailed explanation of the ‘Prince’s methodology, please see the methodology section.
Click on the highlighted parts to explore the data we analyzed!
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Form 990s from 2004-2019 were collected for all eating clubs with the exception of Tower Club, whose last available filing was 2017. The eating clubs tax forms contain data from July 1 to June 30 of the following year, which aligns with the University’s academic year. For example, the tax form containing financials from July 2018 to July 2019 will be referred to as 2018 throughout the project.
The date range of data on the popular securities varied across the eating clubs and is as follows: Cap & Gown (2004-2007), Charter (2004-2012), Cottage (2008 and 2014-2017), Ivy (2005-2010), Tower (2004-2007 and 2013), and Princeton Prospect Foundation (2011-2019). If a club held the same or similar security over multiple years, the year with the highest amount was used for the visualization.
Dates for stocks are indicated by the selling date, not the acquired date.
For total assets only, unless otherwise specified, the data from Ivy, Charter, Cottage, and Cannon also include the assets from their respective foundations.
Information about property taxes were taken from the New Jersey Property Record.
Used in per capita calculations, historical data about club membership was gathered from the Wayback machine captures of The Eating Clubs of Princeton University website.
Percent of tax deductible contributions out of total contributions is calculated by summing all the tax deductible contributions divided by total contributions. Tax deductible contribution is taken as the sum from the Prospect Foundation listed outward grant to that particular club and the club’s own foundation grant to the club, if applicable. The one exception is Cottage, which, starting in 2008, began to directly use Cottage Foundation money for building maintenance and improvement. In these cases, the entire donation to Cottage Foundation is used, instead of only the part given to the club. Total contribution is typically just the amount reported on the Form 990 of the club’s own form. Some exceptions were made to account funds that went directly from a foundation to usage, such as Tiger Inn’s renovation — where it received $5 million from the Prospect Foundation over a two year period but only a $1 million grant was reported on Tiger Inn’s Form 990.
This project involved multi-year data spanning over a decade. However, there had been no adjustment for inflation. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Product Index calculator, there has been a 36 percent increase since the beginning date of 2004. Therefore, the multi-year progression of the data may not be an accurate depiction of expenses and per capita expenditures.
Grace Zhao is a contributing writer for the Data section of the ‘Prince.’ She is a first-year concentrating in operations research and financial engineering (ORFE).
David Yan is a contributing writer for the Data section of the ‘Prince.’ He is a first-year concentrating in computer science.
Head Data Editor Elaine Huang contributed data collection. She is a sophomore concentrating in Operations Research and Financial Engineering (ORFE).
Editor’s Note: This project has been updated in Line 21 to correctly state that Tiger Inn has seen substantial increases in its net valuation. A previous version of the project had erroneously stated Charter Club as opposed to Tiger Inn. The ‘Prince’ regrets this error.
Please direct any corrections requests to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.