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From modest beginnings, Fountain House has assisted the spread of the clubhouse philosophy across the United States, and more recently the clubhouse movement has spread internationally. At the same time that dissemination of the innovative clubhouse approach has taken place, there has been careful specification of the contents of the clubhouse approach.

The Clubhouse Research and Evaluation Screening Survey (CRESS) is a brief instrument designed to predict clubhouse readiness for certification assessment and, hence, performance in regard to expected model outcomes. The development of CRESS provides a practical example of the methodological challenges involved in creating a brief and valid screening instrument. Developed over a period of 5 years, CRESS is grounded in a series of workgroups, surveys, and pilot studies conducted by Fountain House and the International Center for Clubhouse Development (ICCD) in New York City. CRESS is shown to have criterion-oriented validity for the measurement of ICCD clubhouse model-related performance, as well as demonstrated ease in administration to a national sample of mental health programs.

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From the very beginning of his professional life, John Beard chose men and women suffering from mental illness as his people, the people he sought to understand, and for whom he endeavored to devise a model of rehabilitation that would enable them to take their rightful place in our society.John Beard came to Fountain House as Executive Director in 1955 and found an ideal environment to develop a culture in which his people could feel that they were wanted, that they were needed, that they were welcomed, and within which they could make a contribution that would allow them to gain or regain their sense of vocational competence and social independence.Central to this culture was his unique design of transitional employment that he had originally conceived in the early 1950s while a young social worker at a mental hospital in Detroit. He brought this concept with him to Fountain House and built it into a rehabilitation partnership with commerce and industry that has proved an outstanding success in facilitating the vocational rehabilitation of clubhouse members at Fountain House and in facilities nationwide.The unique model that John created at Fountain House attained national recognition. In 1976, under John's leadership, a National Training Program was initiated at Fountain House that has resulted, thus far, in the establishment of over 131 clubhouse programs across our country, based on the Fountain House model.