If you wish to make a donation, thank you. Please visit www.giving.ox.ac.uk/vincents
or contact the President.
Why do old Members support Vincent’s Club?
W.B.Woodgate founded Vincent’s Club in 1863 partly because his friends said he wouldn’t, and partly because he
disliked the faux exclusivity of the Union, which ‘went through the farce of socially “vetting” every candidate,
and after all, passing all sorts and conditions of men as “sound” despite notorious antecedents’.
This dual spirit remains firm today. The Club’s electoral process continues to be exclusive and successive Committees
take great care to ensure that election is meritocratic, on the basis of ‘all round qualities; social, physical and
intellectual’, and not the result of clique connections. The result of this is a rare atmosphere, which is easily experienced
but difficult to describe. It gives its Members self-belief in what otherwise might be a baffling transition from top of the pile
at school to one of many at University. From these little premises every year, deep and lasting friendships spring amongst the next
generation of the very talented and fortunate.
In the modern era, it is important for the Club to answer this question: its existence must be relevant.
Vincent’s has survived for nearly 150 years to develop the young and talented. Recruitment strategists call these
people ‘leaders’; Vincent’s calls them ‘Members’. Society has valued leadership for many centuries.
A.L. Rowse, the All Souls historian, prescribed...
...not merely a dislike of the second-rate and the mediocre, but a proper appreciation of the danger that comes from giving them
responsibility and following their lead...
He was writing of the Second World War, but his words hold a certain prescient application today. Every society should give
priority to the well-being of the worst off. To make this a thorough-going concern, however, would encourage in society’s
leaders craven pursuit of self-interest, at the expense of social virtue. In the leaders of the future must be nurtured a sense
of duty alongside privilege.In this Vincent’s has excelled for generations.
Each student cohort is subsidised in its enjoyment of the Club by its predecessors. Vincent’s only gives and never requires,
so for its continued existence the Club is critically dependent on the extraordinary generosity of its old Members, of whom each
year nearly one-in-two contribute – well above the one-in-five for which Colleges aim, and yet Vincent’s has no development office.
Despite this signal of enduring affection, the Club’s future is insecure. The costs of running the Club are driven by
its commitment to provide for its Membership permanent social and dining facilities in central Oxford. These costs, coupled with
modern administrative demands and recent economic shocks have undermined the financial viability of the Club, and place in doubt
the survival of the Club beyond the expiration of the current lease on our historic premises in 2013. History has a strong sense
of irony: this date also will be the Club’s 150th Anniversary and the Trustee’s hope to use this landmark to secure its
future for a generation.
If you wish to make a donation, please visit www.giving.ox.ac.uk/vincents
or contact the President.
I can see myself as it seems but yesterday sitting a little boy here in these audiences, always feeling the thrill of your songs...and always praying that the day might come when I should have the honour of doing something to help forward the great association with which our lives have been connected’
Winston Churchill