Perpetual Emigration Fund
Established in 1849 by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Perpetual Emigration Fund distributed loans that enabled more than 30,000 Mormons to settle in the American West. Read more…
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Society of St. Vincent de Paul
Throughout much of America’s early history, Catholic philanthropy was characterized by its decentralization. Nearly all giving originated in and was disbursed by individual parishes, often through religious orders supported by Read more…
Fighting Poverty in a Personal Way
When the Panic of 1837 caused widespread economic dislocation, charitable organizations in America’s growing cities experienced sharply increased demand for their services. Many Christian philanthropists became concerned that the mushrooming Read more…
Religious Colleges Come (and Go) in Waves
A majority of America’s private colleges and universities were founded with a distinct religious affiliation and aim. Yale was created by Puritan clergymen. Harvard was named for a Christian minister. Read more…
Evangelical Do-gooding by the Tappan Brothers
Arthur and Lewis Tappan first imbibed their evangelical Protestant beliefs at the Northampton, Massachusetts, church where Jonathan Edwards had preached. They were apprenticed to Boston merchants and soon began a Read more…
American Colonization Society
In the early nineteenth century, American philanthropists desperately sought peaceful solutions to the horrid dilemmas of slavery. One proposal involved buying the freedom of slaves and repatriating them to western Read more…
American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
The ABCFM was founded during the Second Great Awakening by several students from Williams College, with the intention of helping to spread Christianity worldwide. The organization was supported by individual Read more…
Catholic Schools Launched by the Sisters of Charity
Elizabeth Seton was raised an observant Episcopalian in New York, but after she was widowed at age 29, with five young children while living in Italy, she was exposed to Read more…
Bible Societies
Early American Christian philanthropists placed great importance on sharing the Bible through various associations—preeminent among them the New York Bible Society and the American Bible Society. The founders of the Read more…
Andover Theological Seminary
The oldest graduate school of theology in the U.S. (and oldest graduate school of any sort, for that matter) is the Andover Theological Seminary. It was Boston merchant Samuel Abbot Read more…
Building Evangelicalism
As Unitarianism started to become fashionable in New England, a group of Boston Congregationalist parishioners joined together in 1804 to form a “Religious Improvement Society” that would reinforce traditional Christian Read more…
Charleston’s Hebrew Orphan Society
When America was born as a nation, Charleston, South Carolina, had the largest Jewish population in the U.S. The city had been the main receiving point for Sephardic refugees for Read more…
Rebecca Gratz
At the tender age of 20, Rebecca Gratz founded the Female Association for the Relief of Women and Children in Reduced Circumstances, an 1801 charitable organization that assisted victims of Read more…
A Charity By Women for Women
In 1797, devoted Presbyterian Isabella Graham and future nun Elizabeth Seton founded the Society for the Relief of Poor Widows with Small Children in order to provide food and financial Read more…
Sunday Schools Spread Literacy and Constructive Behavior
When the Sunday School movement began to spread across America in the 1790s and early 1800s as part of the Second Great Awakening, these gatherings were the only places many Read more…
Benezet and the Quakers Aid the Forgotten
Anthony Benezet immigrated from France to North America with hopes of becoming a successful merchant. When he fell on hard times instead, he sought support from the Society of Friends, Read more…
California’s Missions
For nearly a century starting in 1768, Spanish priests (mostly Franciscans) founded and operated 21 missions across California to bring Catholicism and European-style development to the far coast of North Read more…
A Shrine to Religious Liberty
As the oldest extant Jewish house of worship in America, dating from 1763, Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, would be famous under any circumstances. But Touro’s place in history Read more…
A Great Awakening of Mass Philanthropy
In the first half of the 1700s, a crucial religious revival swept the American colonies. In addition to setting the stage for a political revolution based on the sovereignty of Read more…
Ursuline School, Hospital, and Orphanage in New Orleans
When 11 Ursuline nuns arrived in New Orleans in 1727—at which point the French colonial city was a raw settlement just nine years old—they established a school for girls. It Read more…