Knights of Columbus

Knights of Columbus: a priest's 1882 widow fund became a $30B insurer

In 1882 Catholic priest Michael McGivney got about 200 men to pool money to support the family of a parishioner who had died. That mutual benefit society became the Knights of Columbus, a fraternal order with 2–3 million members and $30 billion in assets that makes its money selling life insurance to members.

“So he convinced something like 200 of his male people and his priests to join what he called a mutual benefit society, where they would all chip in money and they would help pay for this guy's family for a little while. And then if any, any of them other died, some of the money would go towards them. This sounds very similar to life insurance, right? And that's sort of what it became. And so the Knights of Columbus is now an organization It's a fraternal organization that's been around since 1882. It has something like 2 or 3 million members. They have $30 billion in assets.”

Ride the loneliness wave: a membership club monetized by insurance

Sam points to the Knights of Columbus, Good Sam (RV owners), and USCCA (concealed carry, about $400M a year in revenue) as long-lived businesses built on shared identity. His pitch is to start a new one aimed at today's loneliness epidemic and make money from financial products.

“When you get your concealed carry license, you can pay $300 and you can get access to monthly trainings for like gun ownership. But also You get insurance if you ever get prosecuted for shooting someone. And they do about $400 million a year in revenue. And these are huge businesses that last a very long time. And in my opinion, there's a lot of interesting opportunities to jump on this whole loneliness thing and monetize it via financial products.”

Steal thisBuild an identity-based membership club for a lonely niche, then partner with a carrier to sell members insurance.