The frame: two halves of one sector, and the societies told elsewhere

The division of labor — relief is in Charities; this section is the civic machinery

The division: The Charities section tells the service organizations in full — the United Way of St. Joseph County, REAL Services, the YWCA North Central Indiana, the shelters, food agencies and mentoring programs. This section tells the other half: who organizes the city's civic life, who holds its pooled charitable money, who rebuilds its neighborhoods, and what the whole sector measures when the counters come. The two halves touch constantly — the community foundation below is the largest single funder of the Charities section's organizations, and the development corporations build the neighborhoods the service agencies work in — and at those touches each section names the other rather than retelling it.

The societies carried at pointer size: Three of the city's great civic corporations belong, by their subjects, to other sections, and are named here so the sector's roster is complete. The Northern Indiana Historical Society, established in 1867 by St. Joseph County's leading citizens and described in its own institutional histories as the second-oldest historical society in Indiana, is the corporation behind The History Museum — through the 1990s it operated as the Northern Indiana Center for History, and in December 2014 it took The History Museum as its operating name; its museum, the Oliver Mansion gift of 1988 and its archives are the Museums section's spine. The Potawatomi Zoological Society — organized in 1971 as the Friends of the Zoo, formally the St. Joseph Zoological Society in its first years — supported the city-run zoo for four decades and took over its operation whole on 1 January 2014; that story is told in the Zoo section. The South Bend Museum of Art, founded in 1947 and housed in the Century Center, is likewise carried in the Museums section. What remains — associations, foundations, development corporations, leagues and arts companies — is this section's own.

Sources:

1. Charities (the Charities section of this history) — the relief and service organizations in full; cross-referenced throughout this section, not rewritten.
2. The History Museum, institutional history (AAM employer profile; the museum's own account) — the Northern Indiana Historical Society established 1867, "the second oldest historical society in Indiana"; the Copshaholm gift of 1988 and the 1994 move; the Northern Indiana Center for History name in the 1990s; the operating name changed to The History Museum in December 2014.