The Benevolent-Society Era and the Associated Charities

Aid societies through the nineteenth century — the Associated Charities' reports survive from 1908

The era: Before charity had offices, it had societies. Through the nineteenth century, relief in South Bend ran through the congregations — ladies' aid societies that sewed, cooked, held fairs and all-day meetings, and carried money and food to households their members knew by name. The form is documented in the city's own press at the era's end: the Ladies' Aid society of the First Presbyterian church holding an all-day meeting in November 1916, and the St. Joseph's Hospital Aid society — more than a hundred guests at its November 1916 meeting — furnishing a room on the hospital's third floor in the society's name. That hospital society's institutional home belongs to Hospitals; it stands here as evidence of the era's machinery, at its documented size.

The Associated Charities: The charity-organization movement — investigate every application, register every case, cooperate instead of duplicating — reached South Bend as the Associated Charities and Philanthropies of South Bend. Its annual reports survive in the HathiTrust digital library: the sixth volume covers 1908, and volumes eight through eleven cover 1910 to 1913, published by the Charities itself. At Christmas 1916 the South Bend News-Times carried its report under the headline "Associated Charities Reports More Want and More Responses This Year." The society's founding year is not stated in the catalog record of its reports reached for this account, and the report run is what prints: an organized, publishing, case-registering charity in South Bend by 1908, still reporting publicly in 1916 — the direct ancestor in method, if not in corporate line, of the federation that follows.

Sources:

1. HathiTrust Digital Library, catalog record 011455924 — Annual report, Associated Charities and Philanthropies of South Bend, Indiana: v.6 (1908), v.8–11 (1910–1913), published at South Bend by the Charities.
2. South Bend News-Times, 18 November 1916 — the St. Joseph's Hospital Aid society meeting and the furnished room; the Ladies' Aid society of First Presbyterian church.
3. South Bend News-Times, 24 December 1916 — "Associated Charities Reports More Want and More Responses This Year."